Your child and creativity…you are the catalyst

By Marga Gray Pediatric Occupational Therapist and Author of Sensible Stimulation

Children have to learn habits and routines to cope with everyday life. These also provide security and stability. However, to cope in the broader spectrum of life, to be independent and to be able to solve their own problems, they need to be creative. Children need to know that it is possible to change routines, to create new ways of completing tasks and that it is acceptable to do things in a different way than others.

Encourage creativity by providing opportunities for your children to solve their own problems. Give fair opportunity for freedom. Respect children as persons with their own opinions and thought processes. Create opportunity for play, fantasy, joy and actions for both parents and children together. Creativity uses imagination, shaping of strategies, curiosity, fantasy, investigation, ideas, unstructured environments, multi tasking, visualization, change, integration of different components, analysis and synthesis. And to me the most important: nurture the child within you, play with your children, look at life from their viewpoint, and play, play, play...