After reading the editors of this page for years while my children grew up… it turns out that they have decided to write with them. I do not know how it will look like you, I am delighted and with a small knot in the stomach, there are so many eyes on the other side and I hope to live up to it! So I start telling you things about this parenting that I want from the heart to help you, to interest you and sometimes to have fun and make you smile, that a smile in time helps a lot after several sleepless nights.
I premiere talking about creativity, imagination, the infinite ability of children to see magic in the world and how art is an effective tool for that magic not to be destroyed when they grow up, but only to transform as that is, an energy that will surely be very useful for you during your adult life. How to bring children closer to art, so in general? I have prepared a list with seven recommendations, seven infallible keys Are you ready?
Frequently expose them to all kinds of art
What has been that we do not expose children to the art of Easter to bouquets. It is not so difficult to leave home and find an exhibition in which many children can enjoy without much effort. There are museums, there are foundations, there are cultural centers of neighborhood, district, municipal character. The offer is very wide and we as fathers and mothers are the catalysts of this offer, it is worth a try, after all it can become a good and healthy habit to do as a family, to be together, to be part of their stimuli and their memories.
Give them time to feel
We are already in the room, let's take our time and let our children do the same. The rush has remained outside the building, we have planned this activity without clock, without hurry and without pressure. This art is what you have to know when it starts but can not set when you should finish enjoying. There will be children who take longer to do it and for others to be more immediate, it will also depend on the previous point, the frequency with which our children move through the exhibition halls. This like everything is almost a workout, in this case for your brain.
Respect your freedom to choose
I like big pictures but maybe my oldest son likes small sculptures and he wants to be in front of one of them for longer than me or maybe my little son likes photographs or montages and I I stood on tiptoe but without stopping before them. Freedom to decide what catches them. And once in front of the work, freedom to feel what provokes them and to express it even to verbalize it or not ... what can happen!
Clap your imagination in front of art
Contemporary art gives them more foot to use it, at least a priori, however I remember a walk through some of the canvases of the Prado Museum in which my children saw pirates, bathers who were lost on the horizon and especially created stories seeing them , love, heartbreak, sea monsters ... The imagination is the magic wand that children have, we have to let them take it out and put it to work and for that art is a perfect field in which to sow.
Build all the confidence they need
And why can't that piano full of lights be a night ship or that lady frying eggs the great grandmother of the school cafeteria cook? Yes, they are ideas that cross their heads and have to have enough confidence to comment, their imagination leads them to these conclusions but the confidence they have in themselves will lead them to defend them, these and many more ideas that they create as they grow Perhaps now they tell them only to us, in our hand it is that this confidence is strengthened, consolidated and helps them grow.
Feed your curiosity
They carry it as standard in their heads, sometimes it plays bad times, that is true but in this case to enhance their curiosity can be a game that brings them closer to art and makes them maintain a relationship that accompanies them throughout their lives. Many times the painting, the sculpture, the work in general, is better understood by knowing a little more about the author's context, his personal circumstances. I do not know at what age my son was absorbed with the brutality of "Zeus devouring his son" of Goya, when he learned that at that time the painter had just suffered a very hard disease that left him even sequels, he understood it even more and better . Your curiosity is like a key to learning while enjoying, art in this sense is a precious vehicle and we can contribute knowledge that will satisfy that curiosity and that does not stop growing.
Always look for fun in the experience
Not because the last one is the least important but on the contrary, the previous six will only work if the seventh is fulfilled. If the children do not have fun with this, there is nothing to do, we will be sowing in wasteland. If the method has not worked for us, we can always retrace the path and try to find another way in which art is fun for our children, in which it is part of their life as something as normal as brushing their teeth. A play, a concert, an exhibition, a good book ... the options are almost endless as long as they are related to fun, how little we differentiate ourselves in that from children and adults! Or are you very much willing to do activities that are not fun for you?
