How to Develop Creativity in Children

Creativity is not a trait some children have. It needs three things, and in most modern childhoods at least one of them is missing.

The three

Raw material. Nobody creates from nothing. Ideas are made from other ideas, which means a child with a large stock of stories, images, experiences and knowledge has more to combine. This is why reading widely and going places is creative work rather than a distraction from it.

Permission to be bad at things. Every creative act produces mostly poor results. A child who cannot tolerate producing something bad will not produce anything, and this is the most commonly missing ingredient in high-achieving children.

Unstructured time. Ideas arrive in gaps. A schedule with no gaps produces no ideas, however enriching each activity is.

Where each usually goes missing

Raw material goes missing when a childhood is narrow: same places, same content, algorithmically similar recommendations.

Permission goes missing when work is evaluated. A child whose drawings are graded, praised or corrected learns that making things is an assessment.

Time goes missing to scheduling, which is usually well intentioned.

What to do

Process, not product. Ask about how they made it and what was difficult, rather than saying it is lovely. "Tell me about this" is the single most useful sentence, because it treats the child as the authority on their own work.

Do not fix it. Not the proportions, not the colour, not the fact that the sky does not reach the ground. Adult correction is the fastest route to a child who stops.

Provide material, not templates. Blank paper beats a colouring book. Loose parts beat a kit.

Make things badly in front of them. The most underrated intervention. A child who has seen an adult draw something poor, laugh, and continue has learned that this is allowed.

Let them repeat themselves. Twenty drawings of the same aeroplane is not a lack of imagination; it is practice, and the twentieth is much better than the first.

Protect the boredom. The gap before invention is not wasted time.

What does not work

Creativity programmes and exercises, which have thin evidence behind them. Rewarding creative output, which shifts attention to the reward. Praising a child for being creative, which is a category they then have to defend. And structured activities where the outcome is predetermined, which is craft.

The uncomfortable one

Creativity requires tolerating uncertainty, and households vary a great deal in how much uncertainty they can bear. A home where things must go according to plan produces children who are uncomfortable when things do not.

Which means some of this work is not about the child at all.