I have a deep desire to ensure that my children grow up with a healthy view of creative expression. I’m still working myself out of unhealthy beliefs about things like writer’s block and creative productivity. There are days when I don’t do the thing I know I want to do because I believe on some cosmic level I’m incapable of it that day, for myriad reasons.
My children don’t need to be actively programmed out of that. Instead, they need to have positive creativity on exhibit, and they need to not fall for the lies we often tell about creativity as they get older.
My son hasn’t ever had artist’s block. He pulls out paper and crayons or a pencil and goes to work. It doesn’t occur to him that maybe he can’t do it today because the muse hasn’t struck. He doesn’t wonder if this is his best work. He doesn’t worry about whether it will ever find its audience. He draws.
To be fair, he’s not trying to refine as he creates. He’s not motivated by a grand vision. He doesn’t think about the best way to construct a sentence. He just does those things.
The challenge for us is to provide the tools for improvement, for creating good things, without the extra stuff that so often accompanies creativity.
I was hoping this would be more of a showing rather than a telling type of post. But I’m still figuring this out. So, help a brother out: Tell me, how are you helping your kids to grow in consistent creative expression? How do you help them to establish a journeyman’s mindset about doing the work?
It’d be a great gift for our children to grow up creatively-inclined without creative-culture inhibitions.
- Tumbleweed Thompson Comes Home - October 15, 2024
- Mice that speak and the language of imagination - July 26, 2017
- The Warren & the World Vol 4, Issue 40 - October 8, 2016
Modelling is a good way. Eh.