How to Raise a Creative Child? Step One: Back Off
I have been asking myself this questions since I found out my little boy is a creative fountain, few years back. i never git a very definitive professional answer, but the more I asked, the more I realized that the answer was to just let it be (or as Adam Grant brilliantly points at his New York Times article– to just back off).
Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it’s easy to thwart. By limiting rules, parents encouraged their children to think for themselves. They tended to “place emphasis on moral values, rather than on specific rules”.
Harvard psychologist Teresa Amabile
Yes, parents encouraged their children to pursue excellence and success — but they also encouraged them to find “joy in work.” Their children had freedom to sort out their own values and discover their own interests. And that set them up to flourish as creative adults.
Read the full article here.
⊗ In featuring picture my private bundle of joy freely expressing his creativity in TA Museum of art
