Two Conditions for Creativity

Creativity requires 2 conditions: opportunity, and a feeling of safety. 

There is a crisis of creativity in our world. Why? Because creativity does not have so much opportunity, and because our world is filled with fears and anxieties. These two things are the cause of the dearth of creativity.  

Several recent articles point to the relationship of widespread portable electronic devices and decrease in creativity. (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-mobile-devices-rob-you-of-creativity/) When we, and our children, are allowed to be bored from time to time, with no devices that entertain and occupy, our imagination is free to be active. The children need these times to develop their own creativity that will be their lifelong capacity. Boredom is the medium that creativity can develop within. Children that are allowed the opportunity to daydream without being constantly entertained develop powerful muscles for self-generated creativity and happiness. (see the late Burton White, Ph.D., Harvard Univ.)

To nurture the development of imagination in young children the essential ingredient is play and lots of it. To create a foundation for adult capacities of creativity, innovation and imagination, make sure that child gets plenty of time for free, creative, unstructured, improvisational play. Play in which the point is the playing, the process. Play where the real world falls away and the experience seems to make time stop. Play that is self regulated by the children and is free of adult direction and goals.

The important thing is that the young child’s play must be self-directed and allowed to proceed without adult intervention (unless safety is compromised). When the child in fully engaged in his play, totally gone from the ‘real’ world such as we adults know it, he is making discoveries and connections and laying the foundation for creativity and innovation that will be a lifelong capacity. True early childhood play has no goal or product intended, it is pure improvisation.

Adult fears and worries interfere with the young child’s possibility of play. Fear and anxiety pervade the adult world. Politics and advertising rely on fear as a persuading tool, and it permeates our culture. The children of today are surrounded by the fears of the adults, and the world of the adults is filled with more and more fears and anxiety. Adults' fears interfere with play, the children’s avenue for developing social skills and mastering their own fears. 

As we know, the young child as wholly sense organ experiences not only the sense-perceptible world, but also the feelings and even thinking of those in her surroundings. Fear and anxiety in the adults is experienced in an immediate way by the young child. Fears in the adults around them yield anxious children. 

Anxious children have difficulty entering into free creative play with others. True play can live when the environment feels safe to the child. Then protective and defensive behaviors are at a minimum, and the child can be vulnerable. One has to feel safe to be vulnerable. Play is based on vulnerability. A tense and anxious or fear-filled atmosphere for a child evokes defensive and protective behavior. The nature of play involves risk. So we adults have to establish a foundation of safety so play can arise.

There are so many fears that affect adults in our time. I will not list them, suffice to say that the adults' fears and anxieties can result in the child being unable to let go into play. The nature of play involves risk. Children need a lack of outer control over their play. Yet out of fear, how much adult controlling of the children's play happens? 

Are there ways to decrease our anxiety and fear? Can we learn to let go of control and allow the children to freely play? There is no recipe for these, but we each owe it to the children and the future to find the way. One part of the answer is in finding our own joy so we can create an environment of love and joy. Then the child can play and his capacity for creativity is strengthened.

Play allows the child to control their own fears. It can be a safe environment in which to deal with fear issues. And play can only be in an environment where the child feels safe.

We adults need to create a safe space for the child where they feel cared about, loved, and allowed to express themselves and without our anxiety rising up, so the children can open up and embrace the universe through their play.

There is a crisis of creativity in our world. The way to change that is to nurture an environment of play, play, play for young children.

“Grandpa, can you see what’s in my mind?”

It’s easy to take things for granted. I was reminded of that when my 6-year-old granddaughter recently said to me, “Grandpa, can you see what’s in my mind?”

As an adult, I experience that the world of my own thoughts is mine and mine alone. (Of course, there are some people who have access to others’ thoughts, but that is rare.) A young child does not have this experience. She can sense what others are feeling and thinking. We all have had experiences when a young child somehow received our unspoken thoughts or feelings. Adults have filters that are not very developed in young children. Additionally, the neurology of the young child is not mature so the capacity for reasoning and understanding abstract ideas is minimal. (See my previous recent posts for more on this.)

Alongside neurological development a complementary process is taking place in the young child. The experience of the separateness of her own self is arising. The newborn experiences a oneness with all sense experiences. That experiencing is of the sense perceptions themselves, but not of a center, a self that is having those sense experiences. You can say it is perception without conception, of experiences without thinking about those experiences. You could say that the newborn lives fully in her periphery without an experience of a center, a self. Relating to the world from a ‘self’ develops slowly over years and is not complete until one is in her twenties.

When I wake up from a dream, I am aware that I have had a dream. When my granddaughter, or any young child, wakes up from a dream she does not have the same awareness that it was a dream. Dreaming and waking experience have the same sense of reality for the young child.

So, the combination of an immature neurology and an immature sense of self leads to my granddaughter’s questioning of whether her mind is her own private domain. And I celebrated her curiosity and questioning of what she experiences and her reflections on that experience.

I am going to keep this post short and sweet and I hope you take away this important thought:

Young children experience the world differently that adults do. In part it is because of the developing brain, and in part because of the developing sense of self. Your young child experiences the world differently than you do!

Repeat after me;

Your young child experiences the world qualitatively differently than you do!

Milburn T. Maupin: A Catalpa Model School

August 12, in Jefferson County, Kentucky, the Milburn T. Maupin: A Catalpa Model School opens. 

The Jefferson County School District in Kentucky recognized that their schools were not producing the desired results. In 2014 they created a contest to find innovative approaches to education that could meet the students’ needs. 92 proposals were entered. On August 11, 2014 two winners were chosen - and one of the two winning innovative programs was a proposal championed by four dedicated Jefferson County teachers in collaboration with Kentahten Waldorf Teacher Training (http://kiwiky.com/). The Catalpa Model is the developmental and multi-disciplinary approach of Waldorf education and meets the Kentucky’s Core Academic Standards in creative and innovate ways. The school district chose a facility and teachers were given the opportunity to join this historic initiative. On August 12 students will arrive and start a new school year at Milburn T. Maupin: A Catalpa Model School - a Waldorf public school in Louisville, Kentucky!!!!

I feel honored to have been part of the summer teacher training for these dedicated teachers, I worked with the early childhood teachers for two weeks this past June. What an amazing process we went through together. At the start of the two weeks, one of the teachers put it so well, “We have to do a lot of unlearning.” And together we did plenty of unlearning and lots of learning.

A central feature of the kindergartens in the new school is that the program is play centered. Play is a developmental ground for the capacities that will be needed for later academic learning. Unstructured creative play for the young child is the laboratory where the child’s own body can develop, where nature and science can be explored and where the social world can be experimented with. With ample opportunity for social interactive play, the children can develop social skills and a deep understanding of the way the world works.

The teachers all described a process of letting go of the way they had done things previously and learning how to be open to the children in front of them. Their previous experience in the kindergarten classroom was of academic lessons and much time spent sitting at desks and teacher ‘presentations.’ In all Jefferson County classrooms, including kindergartens, “smart boards” are mounted on the wall next to the chalk board. A smart board is a large, interactive computer monitor mounted on the wall next to the chalkboard and is used for lesson presentation. In the kindergartens of the new program there will be no smart boards and no chalk boards. Chalk boards are waiting for the students when they get to first grade. Academic lessons are first presented in First Grade in the new school. Kindergarten teachers are focused on creating an environment of opportunities for self-initiated learning of the kindergarten students.

In our two weeks in June, the focus became how to understand and work with the principle of imitation. For young children, imitation is the natural way of learning so what sorts of examples can the kindergarten teachers offer for the children to imitate? The approach of explaining and instructing is not effective yet it is something we all have to unlearn because it is how adults tend to operate in the world. Learning how the neurology of the young child functions and how to support neural development is key in all of this. A key neurological developmental feature is that the prefrontal cortex is the last portion of the brain to fully develop and it is not finished and mature until one’s late 20’s. This means that young children do not develop complex decision-making and planning skills until much later in their development. With young children (whose prefrontal cortex is barely developed) adults might be spending a lot of time trying to explain to them, even though their brain is not ready for the type of understanding the adult is expecting. 

I am on my soapbox again; the part of the brain that is key to reasoning, problem solving, comprehension, and impulse-control is the prefrontal cortex. These executive brain functions are needed when we have to focus and think, mentally play with ideas, use our short-term working memory, and thinking before reacting in any situation. Adults tend to assume there to be a more developed neurology in the young child than is even possible. Many educational philosophies also assume this capacity to be present in the young child. These experienced teachers had to unlearn many past practices and grapple with the reality of neurological development, and how best to address that in a kindergarten classroom setting.

Alongside learning how to be an example for the children, we considered what sorts of enrichment for their developing imaginations we can offer. Stories and the songs and poems of circle time can offer inspiration for play. Circle time also offers the children opportunities for integrating their senses and developing more freedom of movement 

Are there ways to engage the children without telling them what to do? Learning only happens when we do it ourselves - it can’t be force fed. So the art of educating young children becomes creating an environment where learning can happen uniquely for each of the children.

Congratulations to the teachers and staff, and the students and parents who have chosen to be part of this new educational opportunity. The road ahead will surely have challenges and the rewards will be worth the struggles. 

Rhythm Method?

Summertime is in full bloom! August is nearly upon us.

In the summer, our daily routine slips away, meal times are more random and bedtime is usually later than usual. The approaching new school year will be here before you know it. To head off many possible challenging situations and back-to-school conflicts with your young child, I suggest that now is a good time to start moving gradually toward your fall time/school time routine.

Having a daily routine or rhythm is a great way to avoid many daily conflict moments because when you have your routine in place the day just flows. When I use the term ‘rhythm,’ I do not mean a rigid schedule or routine, but a flowing in much the same way the tide has a rhythm. Young children are especially creatures of habit and a daily routine becomes like a habit. With habits, we are not paying attention, we are simply doing the habit. If you want your child to wash hands before eating, develop that habit in her and then you won’t have to ‘nag’ about it all the time.

When there is daily rhythm, a regular order of events in the child’s day, when her day flows from one thing to the next in much the same way each day, she feels secure in that flow and there is much less conflict! 

To create a rhythm of your day, think it through. What do you want in the day, and what do the children need. Then, be consistent in establishing and maintaining that rhythm. Watch to see that the needs of the children and other family members are being met. Adjust your rhythm if necessary to better meet the needs. Then relax and enjoy the lower level of stress you have created for your life and your child’s. 

Young children live much more in the present moment than we adults do. Their development, as well as their sense of security and well-being, is supported by structure and regularity. Having a daily family life rhythm with regular timing for daily routines supports mental and emotional health and less anxiety for all involved.

So, let’s look ahead to having a daily rhythm and consider some aspects of that to work toward.

Sleeping/Waking - Is the child getting enough sleep? (Read The 7 0‘Clock Bedtime by Inda Schaenen.) What about an after lunch nap? Are her awake hours active enough so she sleeps well? Are her last few hours before bed each evening free from all electronic media? It physiologically interferes with sleep.

Having an after-dinner routine that carries all the way to sleep time is important. Here is an idea - dinner, then bath and next brushing teeth. Then into bed for story and sleep. Every day just like this. After the first few days you won’t hear, “I don’t want to brush my teeth.” It has just become what you do. Every day. Just like the tides, you can’t argue with it. It just happens. 

Does your child wake up on her own in the morning? Or do you have to awaken her to be ready for the day’s activities? Make bedtime early enough so that she naturally wakes up in time to eat and dress before you have to take her to day-care or school. Start now aiming toward achieving a waking up time early enough in time for the start of the school year.

Eating/Not Eating - Do some of her meltdowns happen because of low blood sugar? Does an extra snack time need to regularly be put into the day? Is there sufficient time of not-eating to allow the digestive system to work? If your child “grazed” all afternoon and then is not hungry at dinner time, something needs to shift. 

Perhaps a not-eating time for a few hours before dinner could help. In a family, not everyone’s digestive system rhythm is the same. We can find a rhythm that fits most and then maybe for one family member, an extra afternoon snack is needed. It is up to the adults to assess the real food needs of the children, and create the rhythm accordingly.

The best way to start establishing a family rhythm is to have dinner at the same time each day. This will ripple into the rest of the day because if dinner time is consistent, then after dinner activities leading up to bed time will become consistent. And waking up in the morning will become consistent.….Your life will be easier, your child’s life and your child’s care provider or teacher’s will too.

I can tell you now that there will be deviations from the rhythm. It can’t be rigid. Dinner at grandma’s house will deviate from the norm - our rhythm has to be able to flex to include what comes up in life. The friend's birthday party will not fit into the usual routine.

A family daily rhythm functions as a structure from which we can meet life with flexibility. Daily rhythm is a blessing for the developing person and for the adults around her. Creating a healthy rhythm is a secret “discipline" for everyone involved. 

Remember this formula: Rhythm = less conflict.

That Same Story Again and Again

As I have mentioned before, I love books. I want children to grow up loving books too. If you want your children to become members of the world of readers, they need to see you reading, both to them and reading for your own pleasure and learning. Young children learn by imitating. 

Books are an essential part of life and starting in early childhood there needs to be plenty of experience of books and reading. This can nurture a love of books that can last throughout life. Every bedtime deserves a story to help send the child off to dreamland. Everyday is the right day for a story.

You may have noticed your three- or four-year-old saying, immediately upon completion of a story, “Tell it again.” Or when you sit down together for a storybook, she asks for the same one as yesterday. And again.....

“How boring,” you think to yourself. “Not that one again.”

You have a developed intellect. Your intellect always wants more and different experiences. The young child has an undeveloped intellect and therefore cannot get bored. Instinctively she is asking for something supportive of her developing neurology which is repetition. Repetition supports developing neural pathways and the myelination process. So put aside your boredom and learn to enjoy the same story again. And again...

All of the techniques of child rearing, helpful as they may be with respect to particular problems, cannot offer an adequate substitute for this necessary food [stories] of the child’s soul. J. E. Heuscher,

(A Psychiatric Study of Myths and Fairy Tales)

Reading to a child is a wonderful sharing experience. Telling a story without the book is a profound gift we can offer to our children, and to each other. A told story is given from the heart of the teller (we know a story by heart) to the heart of the listener. There is nothing like this gift and this activity is becoming rare. The oral tradition seems to be disappearing.

By telling a story to a child, rather than reading a story from a picture book, the child must create all of her own images, her own internal pictures, for the story. This inner activity is the basis for reading comprehension - the ability to create inner pictures from the words spoken.

Tell stories! Your young child is the most forgiving audience, and the most grateful. Give it a try. 

SIlver Boxes

This is a story I wrote in response to an exercise at a Nancy Mellon workshop. The exercise was to write about parents who have essentially fallen into the computer and how the children can rescue them. In my story, nature teamed up with the children. Let me know what you think about this.

A boy and a girl lived with their mother and father in a house  near a lake at the edge of the forest. They worked together cooking, cleaning, and gardening. They took care of all the things that needed doing around their house. They worked until the work was done. Then there was plenty of time for the children to play. The family ate their meals together, and Mother and Father told stories. The children loved the stories.

Everyday the children put out seeds and breadcrumbs for the birds. They loved to listen to the birdsong and watch the birds fly about. They especially loved the little finches who came everyday from their nests in the trees near their house.

One day, just as Mother and Father were finishing their busy day’s work a large, beautiful snake came into their yard, and then slithered into the house. His scales were of every color, and when he moved, his scales changed colors.

Father grabbed a broom to chase the snake away but the snake spoke; “Do not be afraid of me. I am here to help”

Mother said, “How can you help?” 

“I have something for you that can make your life easier. It can help in all that you have to do and you will have more time to be with your children.”

Mother and Father were excited when the snake gave of them thin, silver boxes. They each picked one up and opened the lid. A pale blue light shone from inside and the parents stared.

The snake smiled and went away.

The children went outside to play. When they returned, they found their parents still staring at the boxes as if they were asleep with their eyes open. The children couldn't wake them up.

This went on for some time. The parents did less and less around the house and barely had any time for the children.

The children wanted to help their parents but didn’t know how. Their parents didn’t listen.

“Wake up,” the children said. “Wake up.” The children tugged at their parents’ sleeves. They parents just stared at the silver boxes. “Wake up,” the children shouted and they shook their parents.

The snake heard and came back to their house. "Leave them be or I will eat you all up," he said. “We want our mother and father back. We will wake them somehow." 

"Then I will eat you both," said the snake.

The children took hold of their parents’ hands and dragged the parents out of the house. The silver boxes fell to the floor. The snake chased after them, and they ran and ran into the woods, the snake getting closer and closer.

The boy and girl each picked up a stick while they were running. They let the snake get even closer. At last, as the snake opened it’s jaws to devour them, the boy and girl wedged their sticks into the snake's mouth so its mouth would not close and the snake could not speak. The sticks were stuck tightly and the snake couldn't dislodge them. Then snake shook its head and tried and tried but the sticks were well lodged. Then the snake slithered away into the forest and they never saw him again. 

When the snake went away, the parents came to their senses again. Their eyes were awake and they smiled and hugged the children and each other. But they were in the middle of the dark forest, and none knew the way home. They were lost.

Just then seven finches flitted around the family. Two of the small birds had the silver boxes in their beaks. The other finches were singing and Mother and Father and the two children watched them and smiled. The finches then flew away along a narrow path. They knew they could trust the finches and they followed.

They followed the finches through the forest for a long time. Occasionally they could see a star sparkling in the sky through the canopy of tree branches.

Finally they came to the edge of the forest and the finches landed in the branches. They could see the whole night sky. It was filled with twinkling stars. They were on the shore of a lake and the lights of the stars twinkled and reflected on the water.

They watched for some time until, starting in the east, the sky lightened, and then turned rosy and golden as the first rays of dawn appeared. The finches flew over the water and the two who were carrying the silver boxes dropped them into the lake. The boxes fell into the depths of the water, and the finches circled around the family and then flew away.

Across the lake was the house where the family lived. They could see the path around the edge of the lake that led to their house, and they began the short walk home as the new day began.

The enchantment of technology can be an obstacle to connection. Real connection is a human need. Perhaps nature can help break the spell and we can use those silver boxes as tools at our pleasure rather than be under their spell 24/7.

What do you think about this?

What's the Big Deal About Imitation?

For the young child, imitation is the primary learning modality. So many elements of our human-ness are developed in the early years and they are developed through a process of imitation. Among these learned skills are walking, speaking, and methods for dealing with stress and challenges. Humans only learn to walk and speak by copying other human beings! And we develop our habits of dealing with challenging situations and our communication habits, by copying. These habits are firmly entrenched by age three or earlier.

A key neurological element involved in imitation is mirror neurons These neurons 'fire' both when an child acts and when the child observes an action performed by another. It is the same with any age - mirror neurons are engaged when we receive through our senses information (sights, sounds, etc.) about what someone else is doing. They stimulate ‘motor’ neurons as if we were doing the moving or speaking. Mirror neurons are important for understanding the actions of other people, and for learning new skills by imitation.

With human beings, imitation is of much greater significance than other creatures of the earth. A newborn horse will stand up within the first hour after its birth, can trot and canter within hours, and most can gallop by the next day, even if you remove all other horses from the foal’s environment. The foal will also “speak” like a horse without other horses around to imitate.

A human being will never learn to stand, walk or speak like a human unless there are human walkers and speakers to imitate. These three human capacities of walking, speaking and thinking are developed by imitation and are founded on each other.

At first, the baby makes random movements. Repeating and repeating these random movements develops the neural pathways that allow the control of the baby’s own movement to gradually arise. By copying the human walkers around her, the baby learns to walk. Speaking becomes possible because fine motor skill is developing to control the various fine muscle activity involved in creating speech sounds, from jaw movement, air, tongue and lips, to the vocal cords in the larynx. The sounds are copied from the human speakers around her. Speaking is a foundation for thinking because most human beings think in words. First we have to develop vocabulary, syntax and grammar, and then we can think.

Let me repeat; When human babies are born, they cannot walk or talk. How they learn to walk and speak is by copying the other human beings in their environment. If they were not around other human beings they would not learn how to walk and speak like a human. (For example the ‘wolf child of Aveyron’). The children also learn many other things from parents through imitation, notably their strategies to deal with frustration and stress.

Mirror neurons are active when we are learning to walk and to speak. The child’s motor nerves are stimulated when seeing someone else walk, perhaps as preparation for their own walking. The same with the vocal system. When watching and hearing someone speak, the larynx and related organs are stimulated to move in a similar fashion as the speaker’s. This continues our whole life.

It is crucial to understand the role of imitation in learning for the young child. When we grasp the implications of this fact, we have to look at ourselves to see if we say and do what we want the children to imitate. Since the primary learning modality for the young child is imitation, what we do and say, and who we are as adults standing before them is of the utmost importance. 

This is an except from my just finished new book, Conscious Parenting: A Guide to Living With Young Children