Creativity isn’t just about pipe cleaners and construction paper. Creativity is about thinking in new ways and stepping outside of your comfort zone. It’s about using imagination in everyday life and straying away from black and white, and moving towards a metaphorical rainbow. 

If you can encourage your children’s creativity, you will significantly increase your chances of raising a confident, curious, and resourceful adult. The good news? Boosting your kids’ creativity doesn’t require hours of your time, or even buying anything. Here are some tips for sparking your child’s inner child.

Let Them Get Messy

That’s not to say your child’s room should be allowed to be a bomb site, but allow certain points of the day to get a little messy.  Creativity isn’t always neat and tidy, but rather often a beautiful mess. Whether they’re painting or experimenting with a science kit, allowing your child the freedom to explore and get their hands dirty.  A little mess isn’t always a bad thing, and if you allow them to embrace messiness, you allow them to explore their freedom a little more.

Answer Questions With Questions

It may sound crazy, yet it’s one of the best ways to create freethinkers and creative souls—answer questions with questions.  When your child asks you a question, sure, you can answer it most of the time if it’s a straightforward yes or no inquiry. However, if your child is asking you why the sky is blue, or how babies are born, reply with another question. That is to say, try asking “why do you think the sky is blue?” This will allow them to spread their wings a little bit, and think outside of the box. You may even have some good laughs hearing their answers.

Allow Free Time

With school and extracurricular activities taking up so much of your child’s schedule, sometimes it can be hard to schedule the fun stuff. However, it’s important that along with homework time or cleaning your room time, you should also make sure that you schedule free time.

Free time is an unstructured chunk of time where they’re allowed to explore, daydream, or create however they want to. Allow them to choose what they do at this time, and by letting them make the choice, you will significantly boost their creativity.

Celebrate Mistakes

All too often we only reward kids when they do something right. However, what we forget is how important and beneficial mistakes can be.  By celebrating mistakes, not perfection, you’ll encourage your child to take more risks. Creativity is all about trying new things, and if we lived in constant fear of making a mistake, then no one would ever create anything new.

Get Interested

Sometimes we may not always be entirely invested in the run-on sentence that is coming out of our child’s mouth or the kind of music they’re currently listening to on YouTube. However, showing an interest in these things is incredibly important. When your child proudly shows you something that they believe to be creative or interesting, show an interest too! Ask them more about it and show a little excitement, and you’ll show them at the same time that their ideas truly matter.