How parents can encourage creativity in children.

Henry, age 4, dressed as a knight for Halloween. The day after Halloween, the knight's sword became a fire hose, the breastplate became a firefighting vest, the helmet was tipped back to protect his neck, and the distinctive, rhythmic sounds of a firefighter's oxygen supply could be heard coming through the former knight's facepiece, which was now a smoke-filtering mask.

Children are often far more gifted than their parents or teachers realize--and in different ways. IQ tests do not measure creative talent (Fasko, 2001; Proctor & Burnett, 2004). By depending on them to measure intelligence, therefore, we miss out on the talents of many of our most gifted youngsters. Most children start life with valuable creative potential. Unfortunately, many of them have it knocked out of them, so to speak, by the time they reach the 4th grade (Worthington & Carruthers, 2003). It is not that parents and teachers deliberately squelch creativity; rather, they fail to recognize it, sometimes mistaking it for unruliness, eccentricity, and even stupidity (Runco, 2003). Creativity involves getting away from the obvious, safe, and expected, and producing something that--to the child--is new (Fasko, 2001; Moran, 1998).

To encourage creativity, parents need to help children develop their individual potential and ability. Unlike IQ, creative potential cannot be measured by totaling the number of right answers a child gets on a standardized test or by comparing the total with the number of right answers obtained by the majority of children his age. Sizing up a child's creative gifts will be a matter of individual judgment. By simply observing the child at work and at play, you may detect creativity, if you look for the following key signs:

* Curiosity. The child's questioning is persistent and purposeful. She is not content with glib explanations, but rather digs under the surface. Curiosity is not always oral. A baby handles, shakes, and twists things, and turns them upside-down. A youngster takes things apart, not to ruin them, but to see "how it works" or what is inside. The creative child experiments with words and objects and ideas, always trying to wring new meaning from them.

* Flexibility. If one approach doesn't work, the child quickly thinks of another. For example, when he saw some older boys trying in vain to throw a rope over a high tree branch to make a swing, 8-year-old Jack suggested, "Why not fly a kite over it and then pull up the rope with the string?"

* Sensitivity to Problems. She is quick to see gaps in information. She is sensitive to contradictions between prior rules and what she hears or reads.

* Redefinition. He can see hidden meaning in statements that others take at face value, find new uses for familiar objects, and see connections between things that seem unrelated to others.

* Self-feeling. She has a feeling of being somebody in particular. She is self-motivated, self-directed, and can work alone for long periods--provided it's on her own project. Merely following directions bores her.

* Originality. He has surprising, uncommon, interesting ideas. His drawings and stories have a style that marks them as his own. Even the most creative child, of course, is unlikely to make any really new discoveries--it is the spontaneity that counts.

* Insight. She has easy access to realms of the mind that non-creative people visit only in their dreams. She toys with ideas that easily come to her. As one 5-year-old told her mother at a birthday party, when she reached into a grab bag for favors, "That's how I get ideas--just reach in and scrunch around in my mind till I feel like pulling something out."

Qualities like these count very little in IQ tests, which measure memory, vocabulary, mathematical ability, and general reasoning. These abilities are valuable, and the creative child does usually have them. However, the child with a so-called genius IQ of 180 is in reality no more likely to be a genius than the child with a slightly above-average IQ of 120. In fact, evidence suggests that some children with high IQs may develop memory and logical reasoning powers at the expense of insight, imagination, and adventurousness--qualities that are essential to genius (Proctor & Burnett, 2004).

Some teachers favor the high-IQ child over the highly creative one. In fact, the highly creative child may have learned as much as the high-IQ child when measured on such standard achievement tests as the Iowa Basic Skills Battery and the Gates-MacGinitie Test. Why is favoritism shown toward the high-IQ child? In large part, it's a matter of personality.

Scores of personality studies have listed the characteristics of creative children: they accept disorder, are attracted to the mysterious, are playful, like to toy with ideas, have offbeat ideas, are emotionally sensitive, find fault easily, are spirited in disagreement, display courage, take risks, and have energy to burn (Proctor & Burnett, 2004; Worthington & Carruthers, 2003). To find out the qualities teachers prefer and reward, several hundred were asked to rate a list of character traits in order of preference (Runco, 2004). At the top of the list were such traits as promptness, courtesy, popularity, receptivity to the ideas of others, ability to take criticism, and good memory. At the bottom of the list were qualities like adventurousness, always asking questions, courageousness, unwillingness to accept directives, willingness to take risks, and vision.

At the heart of the creative child's problem in finding acceptance is the fact that he is never content to learn only by authority; instead, he persists in finding out for himself through constant questioning, probing, and experimenting. His independence may make him appear rebellious. Or, her capacity for complete absorption in her work may give the impression that she is antisocial. His humor and playfulness, combined with his clear-eyed view of the world, may strike grown-ups as mocking or disrespectful. Her off-the-beaten-track ideas give her a reputation as a screwball among her peers.

When children give up their creative spark, it is because of outside pressures. How can you, as a parent or teacher mitigate their effects on a child?

* Don't discourage fantasy. One of the qualities of the creative person, young or old, is the ability to move freely back and forth between the world of facts and reason and the vast realms of the mind that lie just below the surface of consciousness. The creative person's greater flexibility, depth of feeling, and keenness of insight come from being open to vague feelings and hunches that others dismiss as silly.

* Don't hold back. Working from the belief that nothing succeeds like success, many parents are so intent on sparing their children the hurt of failure that they deny them a chance to learn from their mistakes.

* Make creativity rewarding. Children, like adults, achieve most within whatever areas bring the most satisfaction. In one study, when 8th-graders were rewarded for originality, they produced about twice as many original ideas as when they were rewarded for the sheer number of ideas, regardless of quality (Torrance, 1974).

* Avoid sexual stereotypes. Don't let a boy feel that it is "sissy" to be open to feelings and interested in color, form, movement, and ideas. Don't make a girl feel that it is "tomboyish" to be intellectually curious, interested in destruction or experiments, or competitive. Gender stereotypes destroy creativity.

* Don't judge a child solely by his or her reading and writing skills. Creative children often lag behind their peers in verbal abilities. It is sometimes difficult for them to put their ideas down on paper. One 9-year-old, who is at the academic bottom of his class because of reading and writing problems, turned out to be near the top on creativity tests.

* Allow freedom to experiment. To think creatively, a child needs to toy with subjects, play around with ideas, and try out wild and far-fetched guesses. Instead of laughing at him, encourage him to test his statements and imagine what the world would be like if they were true. Don't pin him down to "right" or "wrong."

* Help them use creativity in social relations. Help them use their sensitivity to be kind, their insight to be understanding, and their tolerance to get along with those who don't see things in the same way. Show them how to assert themselves without being domineering, work alone without being withdrawn, and be honest with others without being overly critical. Prepare them to accept the fact that anyone who has original ideas must be prepared to be a minority of one, at least for a time.

Adults can encourage creativity by emphasizing the generation and expression of ideas in a non-evaluative framework and by concentrating on both divergent and convergent thinking. Adults also can try to ensure that children have the opportunity and confidence to take risks, challenge assumptions, and see things in a new way.

References

Fasko, D. (2001). Education and creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 13(34), 317-327.

Moran, J.D. (1998). Creativity in young children. Urbana, IL: Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED306008 88)

Proctor, R. M., & Burnett, P. C. (2004). Measuring cognitive and dispositional characteristics of creativity in elementary students. Creative Research Journal, 16(4), 421-429.

Runco, M.A. (2003). Parents' and teachers' implicit theories of children's creativity. Child Study, 23(2), 91-113.

Runco, M.A. (2004). Children's diversity thinking and creative ideation. Developmental Revoew, 12, 233-264.

Torrance, E. P. (1974). Torrance tests of creative thinking. Bensenville, IL: Scholastic Testing Service.

Worthington, M., & Carruthers, E. (2003). Research uncovers children's creative mathematical thinking. Primary Mathematics, 7(3), 21-25.

Sham'ah Md-Yunus is Assistant Professor, Early Childhood, Elementary, and Middle Level Education, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston.