Nurturing creativity
We went for curriculum updates last week for Cayson and the week before for Cayen. Bumped into the English teacher who told me that Cayen eats his lunch very well including vegetables (doesn't sound like him at all). She also mentioned that Cayen likes to test boundary. Recent case in point , teacher would ask the children to not talk in the toilet as it could be noisy for the children in the adjacent classroom. As he wasn't allowed to talk, he purposely started singing instead. Then our discussion was cut short and I wondered how the teacher responded to his singing eventually.
Nonetheless , this is one of the many instances where Cayen would not do things the conventional way. In Cantonese, I might even call him "Seng Mok" (savvy). For instance , previously , he was spotted sipping lime cordial juice on a plate -he has helped himself at the dispenser without my knowledge . One would have usually told him off but I decided to ask him why he did that. He said that he wanted to try to use a plate to drink the lime juice, so he would know if it's possible to do so the next time if cups run out.
Next, I spotted him filling up three cups with lime juice. Again, I was tempted to just tell him off for wasting cups and being environmentally unfriendly. When I asked him why, he replied that he wanted to be more efficient , and using three cups, he did not waste time walking to and fro between the dispenser and the playground. Again, I was speechless. I just reminded him that it's wasteful and shouldn't do that again.
In the same evening, he was spotting holding a stack of plates and spoon. Prima facie, it looked like he's up to no good with all the utensils again. Given the last two incidents in the same night, I decided to watch from the side. Then I realised that he's trying to replenish the empty spaces on the table as the cake cutter was trying to fill up the plates with cake. So he's just trying to help to top up the spaces asap the moment a plate was used up.
Through all these instances, I was bemused at how he had so many ideas of doing things and in the adult world, we may even call it as creative , savvy or thinking outside the box. But as a kid, it's easy to be labelled as just another troublemaker. Also, it would have killed his alternative thinking if I were to lash out at him instead of asking him why he's doing what he's doing.
As such, while there's been many articles written about promoting creativity or teaching creativity at home, I find that part of the trick lies in not killing the innate creativity during such day to day events when concerned adults would usually stop kids in their tracks or tell them off when certain actions are observed. It's hard to be thinking outside the box if they are prevented from doing so in the first instance during their experiments. Yet many a times, their acts will be viewed as being uncooperative , pushing the boundaries or simply being mischievous by many .
At the end, I think it's about striking a balance, a fine one between discipline and creativity. In conclusion, in my view , creative thinking and mindset start at home, and start from the little things if kids are given some leeway to try things , even though they may break some rules in between as long as they are not harmful to self or to others.
Food for thought: kids are born creative , until our educational system dumb them down :
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