No, we don't want you to step back so you can see him better, but to leave him at his own pace. That is the secret to educating creative children.
Sometimes we get cases of gifted children, children who with two or four years are able to perform feats that most of us would find most complicated. However, for these little geniuses it comes innate. The problem is that society does not know how to fully treat and develop these capabilities. We just refine what already exists, but we don't bother to take advantage of those talents to discover something new, because to create something like that we need something that is not intelligence or skill, we need imagination, We need a genius. Therefore, If we want to educate our children to be creative people, it is best to step back.
Children who learn to read with two years, touch Bach with four, solve complex calculations at six and speak several languages at eight, envied by their peers, their parents believe they have been blessed but in the words of the T.S. Eliot, your careers tend to end with a groan rather than a bang. How is that possible?
According to the prestigious talent awards of the United States, Westinghouse Science Talent Since its inception they have rewarded the greatest talents in the country, they have selected more than 2000 applicants of which only 1% have won the prized award and of these, only eight have been Nobel prizes. Thus, for every genius who has revolutionized his field there have been dozens that have stayed on the road.
Prodigy children rarely become geniuses, popular belief tells us that it is because they lack sufficient social skills for society, but evidence tells us that only a small part of these gifted people lack such skills, the great Most are like you or me (when it comes to social skills) but movies and television always show us the typical crazy sage.
What really cuts their potential is that They have not learned to be original. And that is not their fault, but ours, of the society in which they live. Children strive to please their parents, their teachers and society and as they progress in their skills we realize that practice makes perfect, but it creates nothing new.
A gifted child can practice until he plays perfectly the music of Mozart or Bach, but he is focusing all his energy on the consumption of current knowledge and not on the creation of new ones, which is just what a genius does, invent, develop new knowledge.
According to the researchers, a creative child is the least likely to become the perfect nerd, the chosen one of the teaching staff and that's why they tend to keep their ideas to themselves.
Many of these gifted children will grow up and become true experts in the field that they have chosen and will really do it very well and surely they will succeed, but only a large minority will become true revolutionaries in their field. The majority will be doctors who will cure their patients without worrying about fixing the medical system, in big lawyers that will defend their clients but that will not improve the judicial system.
So what can we do to make our child grow as a creative child?
According to a study of the families of students who were never especially creative compared to others whose children were, it was discovered that in the former, the average of existing standards was six, compared to a single standard that was normal in families. With creative children.
This indicates that it is more important to educate in values than the norms themselves, says the psychologist at Harvard Teresa Amabile Creativity is difficult to cultivate and very easy to destroy.
The parents of creative children also encourage them to achieve success and their dreams but always looking for that "fun" in what they do. Your children are free to resolve their own values and discover their own interests.
When the psychologist Benjamin Bloom He directed a study on the roots of elite athletes, musicians and artists. He discovered that his parents never dreamed of having a son who was a superstar, they did not take him to whatever classes to see if this was good or not. When his son showed his natural talent and enthusiasm for something, they They simply supported him.
The importance of having fun doing what you want to do
Many of the great pianists did not take lessons before they liked the piano, they took them after showing interest and from teachers who made learning fun.
When Benjamin Bloom He made the study and asked the Top 10 of the world tennis players for its beginnings, most replied that they had teachers who made learning to play fun.
But what brings these men and women to that level? Many times there has been talk about the number of hours an individual needs to be an expert, how many times do you have to repeat something to make it perfect? But from the point of view of creativity two problems arise:
The first is that it has been shown that the more times something is repeated, there is a risk of not knowing how to improve our own technique, of being stunted and not knowing how to learn from our mistakes or looking for new ways to improve ourselves.
Second:What makes a person practice for hours? It is clear that it is the passion that arises through natural curiosity fueled by different experiences.
Evidence shows that creative contributions depend on the breadth and not just the depth of our knowledge and experience.
In the world of fashion, the most original collections are those of those designers who spend more time outside their country. The mind of a Nobel Prize is further from a single field of knowledge than from a variety of interests for different things. These in turn are 22 times more given to work as actors, or poets or musicians than scientists with bright but less creative minds.
The theory of relativity came to me by intuition and music was the driver of that intuition, Albert Einstein
So the next time you see your child play, leave him alone or join the game, because he is learning.
