5 Tips for How to Raise Creative Children

Again and again I hear parents’ wish for their children to grow up creative. They don’t want the education process to beat it out of them, so to speak. Growing up creative doesn’t necessarily mean becoming a visual artist, musician, or dancer for example (although it could). More broadly, it means growing up retaining the ability to think creatively and, by extension, the ability to impart meaning and direction to one’s own life from within. How do we achieve that? In this post, we will deliver five tips for how to raise creative children.

Tip #1 for How to Raise Creative Children: Don’t Teach Them to Read Too Soon

Waldorf Education generally puts off reading until first grade at the earliest. Some teachers believe it’s better to wait even longer than that. In fact, the genius behind Waldorf, Rudolf Steiner, didn’t learn to read and write until age 12.

What do we accomplish by waiting? Einstein is attributed as saying, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” I would qualify that slightly by saying, “Tell them fairy tales,” instead of just reading them. When you keep the education strictly oral and imaginative at a young age, you build the forces of heart and imagination in your children. They have to create their own images of stories. You free them from developing the intellectual aspect of reading too soon. This is something the mainstream gets 100% wrong. There is a right and wrong time to do a thing. If we want to know how to raise creative children, tell them lots of stories when they are young and save the intellectual activities for later.

Good intellect is build on a foundation of imagination. Einstein knew that. As a rule of thumb, keep things like a fairy tale early on.

Tip #2 for How to Raise Creative Children: Art, Art, Art

This one seems obvious, but on the path of how to raise creative children, the role of art cannot be overemphasized. In fact, when Dr. Steiner was asked what he could change after the first few years of the Waldorf School, he replied, “More art.”

Art of all kinds – painting, drawing, sculpture, music, poetry, speech/recitation, theater, dancing, eurythmy, etc. – brings idea into form. Put differently, art is the means by which the unseen manifests into the seen. It is how spirit meets matter. One could even call this marvelous world of nature spread before us the artistic work of higher forces of intelligence. Doing art with our children often invites them into this creative process of giving form to ideas.

Tip #3 for How to Raise Creative Children: Be Careful How You Explain Things

There are couple principles to tease out here. First, when they are very young, try to explain as little as possible (barring safety concerns, like a hot stove). We don’t want to stimulate head forces when they are very young. So, if your 4 year old asks you why it rains, just say, “I wonder.”

Secondly, if your child is very precocious and demands answers, give them a truthful metaphor appropriate to their age. For example, you could say, “The water fairies in the pond get hot one summer day so they go for a flight to cool off. It gets cold up there, so they huddle together for warmth. The clump of them gets quite heavy, though, so they fall back down into the pond.” Truthful metaphors keep young children in the imaginative realm without resorting to hardened concepts like evaporation, condensation, and precipitation which are above their head.

Finally, when they reach puberty and no longer put up with your fairy talk, you should still be careful how you explain things. At this age, let them find it out for themselves as much as possible! Create an experiment with a beaker of water and bunsen burner. Let them watch the water vaporize, condense on the sides of the beaker, then fall as droplets. Let THEM discover it, in other words. That contributes to their creative will to seek truth.

Tip #4 for How to Raise Creative Children: Make Them Work with Their Hands

Make your children do activities that require creative engagement with the hands. I don’t mean video games which do not accomplish this. It’s not enough to engage the mind in youth. You have to engage the hands. Video games thereby become junk food for the developing nervous system.

Rather, if you want to know how to raise creative children, make them do things like finger knitting, knitting in general, sculpture, building and tinkering, playing musical instruments, etc. Once they’re literate, it means writing cursive (an absolute must – don’t you dare skip this) and calligraphy.

There are many possibilities here, but the principle is: what they do with their hands as youth becomes their thinking later in life. If you want to know how that works, read the biography of Nobel physicist Richard Feynman who spent his childhood tinkering by hand with stuff in an old junkyard. That activity became his genius in adulthood. So, put away the video game systems, don’t give them a smartphone until college, and let them solve problems with their fingers.

Tip #5 for How to Raise Creative Children: Teach from Whole to Parts

This one is not so obvious, but it is important. Modern society is full of specialists who tend to atomize things. Most people these days conceive of the world from parts to whole. Many actually never reach a holistic conception of the world but instead stay stuck in the parts. That is modern materialism in a nutshell. It can’t see the forest for the trees.

When we teach from whole to parts, by contrast, we reverse that flow and raise creative children. Here’s an example. When practicing times tables, practice 30 = 6 x 5. Don’t just do 6 x 5 = 30. Of course, you can do it both ways, but most teachers emphasize the latter and never do the former.

Similarly, when you introduce sciences, start with a whole picture of the world. In the early grades, you can tell the children that the world is a being composed of four parts: human, animal, plant, and stone. Tell them that the human being has the other three living within us as if the world were one of those nested Russian dolls. Over time, we will come to understand the parts of this being one by one, starting in 4th grade with the animals, 5th grade with the plants, and 6th grade with the stones. Teaching from whole to parts communicates unconsciously to the child that the world is interconnected and through creative thought they can intuit these connections.

Why This Matters

The most pressing reason to know how to raise creative children is that their inner freedom depends on it. Becoming an artist of life goes far beyond pretty pictures. It is a practical way to create a life one loves. Creativity and initiative are the two forces by which this happens.

Creative thinking also gives your children immunity to manipulation by large, powerful forces. When you have confidence in your own thinking, you don’t automatically believe what authorities say without scrutiny. This is become increasingly important every day.

Finally, creative thinking is the basis for all higher human development. If you want your children to be able to penetrate the mysteries of life and the universe, they need to be able to think beyond the senses. A strong imagination proves invaluable in this. While some scientists say intuition has no place in science, it’s actually the opposite. Science begins with intuition and then uses systematic means to prove what is and isn’t true.

How We Can Help

Enkindle Academy offers prerecorded and live lessons for students in grades 5-9. We teach all academic subjects plus fine arts, creative writing, and empowerment groups for teens. We also offer 1-on-1 tutoring on all subjects including fine arts. Visit our website for more info and for free sample lessons. Remember to subscribe for weekly updates, tips for homeschooling, and special offers.