Cultivating creativity

[Blueowlnight]

I’m being targeted by reels that make me feel inferior for not leaving creativity space for my kids 🤦‍♀️

I have an almost 3yo and she’s not super arty. I’m not either, it doesn’t come naturally, so I’ve had to make a real effort to get out the paints, the colours, stickers etc. and then when I do, she’s just not that bothered. It’s often just me colouring on my own 😂

For those where this comes more naturally, how do you cultivate creativity in your little ones? Asking because I’m hoping it might also give us something new to connect over.

Art and crafts is only one aspect of creativity. What you’re really trying to cultivate is self expression, innovative problem solving etc. This can be accomplished in so many ways, depending on what you and your child enjoy. Talking about situations and ways of doing things differently, using things in nteresting ways - kitchen tools as musical instruments, teddies as bean bags, and so on. I honestly don’t think you have to set up artificial activities, it’s more about your attitude to day to day things.

I've got one who loves doing crafts and drawing and one who doesn't. I think it's just personality! We've got a cart that's available all the time so anytime they want to draw, colour or do stickers they can do, it's all there for them. My youngest (who isn't interested at home) still does lots of arts and crafts at nursery, she just doesn't want to do it at home. We play together with toys or by doing other activities, I think it's nice to do crafts but it's never like people show on Instagram!

Goodness. Firstly, @Blueowlnight , you need to get off the Internet.

Reels?

Really??

Do you read to your child? Lots. Every single day. Not just books for three year olds. Poetry. Dickens. The Times.

Do you bake with her, encouraging her to find recipes or just pictures of cakes in your cookery books?

Fo you spend time with her in museums and galleries - not just in the dedicated children’s space?

Do you take her to orchestral concerts and feed curiosity about instruments / sounds / performance?

Do you play music loudly and dance together?

Do you let her loose with less precious clothes and encourage her to dress up and play act?

Do you travel on every possible form of transport?

Do you encourage her to try new foods?

Do you talk to her?

Reels? Pah!

If she's not interested why push it? Sure it's fun for some but not others. I'm sure there's plenty of other activities that fall under creative. Cooking? Building blocks? Imaginative play id also say nothing to try. Puppets? Dresssing up?

Wot?

This is jokes, right?

how do you cultivate creativity in your little ones?

As a poster above has pointed out, creativity isn’t limited to ‘colouring in’. (This is where your instagram feed or whatever is misleading you.)

How do you like to spend your time, @Blueowlnight? Are you a film buff? Do you keep chickens or grow roses? Do you sing in a choir, upcycle clothes or furniture, watch the stars? Maybe you’re the listener in your wider family, or the one people turn to for style advice. Maybe you’re brilliant with investments. Just show her your world; share your enthusiasms; let her see through your engagement with life that the world is an intriguing and exciting place. From that she’ll grow into her own creativity - whether that be cheese making, architecture or a passion for social justice.

As others have said creativity isn't just crafting. Playing pretend is being creative, have a teddy bear tea party, or building a house with megablocks, building a train track, squishing playdoh into shapes, cutting a door and window in a side of a large cardboard box and using it as a space rocket to visit the moon, playing 'the floor is lava', knocking out a tune on a saucepan with a wooden spoon, dancing to music, that's all being creative.

For what it's worth @AndYesTheWeeDonkeys, I do agree with you in essence. I'm just cracking up at "Poetry. Dickens. The Times."

OP colouring in is the antithesis of creativity, so don't worry about that.

My 3 year old isn't interested either. Creativity for him is making track patterns in the mud and sand with his vehicles. At the beach he helped me gather lots of shells and we made a road map with them to drive his cars on. We do junk modelling and he likes to make car ramps and garages. He creates funny little pretend recipes in his toy kitchen. We bake. He loves building things. We listen to music and make up our own nonsense songs. We read a lot and I hear him making up his own little stories and narrations with his toys and teddies.

All of this is worth more than colouring in and stickers.

Ah, @givemushypeasachance - you’ve reminded me of the den years …

When I was moving house a couple of years ago I came across a store of cardboard tubes from kitchen paper rolls. Realised I’d been holding on to them in case a child needed them for more TARDIS creation. The ‘child’ had already graduated and started their first job …

Well, I did, @Spudthespanner! It was fun. (And the small listener is now at the start of a highly creative career!)

Don't put yourself under so much pressure- what is she interested in? Follow her lead. Maybe she loves trucks, or slime, or dressing her dolls. Or jigsaws, or stacking things or pouring water. They're all different and perfectly valid expressions of creativity. Kids find creativity in different ways. Honestly my daughter loves going to the supermarket and bleeping the shopping with the scan and go thing and helping me go through the shopping list. Then she goes home and digs holes in the back garden lol, fills a bucket with mud, tips it out and starts over. She once spent weeks meticulously poking ear buds through a tiny hole in a box. She's happy, well-adjusted and loving so I'm happy with her progress.

I'd love her to be into dressing up etc. but she's not interested so there's no point in forcing it. They are learning all the time, in their own way, and creativity means different things to different people. As a pp said it's more about problem solving and learning than painting and colouring. Is there anything you have noticed that she seems particularly engrossed in? Stacking / sorting / colour matching etc.? From there you can come up with different activities, that don't need to be complicated or expensive. Look up play schemas, you might recognise something in your daughter in one of the play schemas.

I wouldn't have expressed it so bluntly but that was my first thought too. Reels? Put the phone down and engage with the child 😁

I'm all for it. Just, written down like that made me proper laugh out loud.

What are you modelling for your child, other than watching reels, though? You say you’re not ‘creative’…? I’m not sure I ever got out the art materials for DS, but he’s been going to art galleries and concerts since babyhood, because those are a key part of my life. I still read to him at 12 because he likes it, and he grew up in a house full of books. He’s had music lessons and didn’t really take to it, has had a couple of parts in school plays that he enjoyed, and did a big art project at primary that was professionally hung in a gallery, but I think it’s more important that he’s got adults in his life who are artists and musicians or work in arts admin, or are architects or curators or run festivals, or do community art projects or street art, so he sees that these things exist and enrich lives, even if he doesn’t want to pursue them himself.

Everyone needs to calm down about the reels. OP is a grown adult who likes a mooch about on Instagram of an evening. She's not laying out colouring books and then watching reels 24/7 instead of interacting with her child. Christ almighty people are so black and white on Mumsnet.

Jeez, it was a tongue in cheek comment. I said I’m not a naturally creative person, not that I spend all my time on my phone, not engaging with my child 🥴 not that I need to defend myself, but I’m on mat leave and sometimes go on my phone while my baby is asleep on me. we do a lot of these things together, I was just conscious not to stifle her creativity.

Thanks so much to the helpful posters who have given me some inspo to get us out of a rut. To others, you should remember there are real people behind these usernames, usually posting from a place of vulnerability not because they’re feeling full of confidence!

You're doing a great job and reaching out for help or advice where you thought you might need it. Turns out you probably don't need it, just a reminder (like all of us need from time to time) to not get caught up in what Instagram tells us is reality.

The irony of it all is that they're probably all accessing MumsNet from their phones 😂

Yes, but I’m not mistaking reels of some dimwit influencer frolicking with her toddler and posterpaints for some kind of standard of attunement to my offspring’s creativity, just as I don’t think I’m damned for possessing that Mn bugbear, a toilet brush. I mean, it’s like doing something because a random at a bus stop told you to.

For those asking about my interest, I think this is why I’m so conscious. I’m academic, it’s all I was ever encouraged to do. So I read, and I like to learn about things through podcasts. I cook, but I always follow recipes. I love structure and following instructions. And so I do a lot of these things with mine, but didn’t want her to just be “a reader” because that’s what we do, IYKWIM. I don’t think my strengths are enough for a well rounded child. Some lovely ideas here to help broaden our horizons, though ☺️

My 3yo is totally uninterested in arts and crafts. He'll colour in for 5 mins before losing interest, but will happily play with his cars for hours on end.

However, he will make up song lyrics and sing them eg, the current favourite is "the tractor on the bus goes swish swish swish". This is also creativity.

Encourage your child to follow their interests. When they start nursery/school they'll have enough crafting time