Creativity is a skill
Don Dansereau teaches a class in the Mini-University offered to parents by TCU. He has summarized his main points for the Thinkerer:
http://thinkerer.org/Parenting/ParNewLight.htm
I elaborated on some his points in earlier blogs (one in my Cognitive Engineering blog). Here I take up a fourth.
Creativity is enhanced by incubation (time away from the problem or task) and by shifting perspective (thinking about how someone else would view the problem). Children’s impulsiveness resulting from immature frontal lobes may keep them from using these techniques.
Or perhaps they don’t know about incubation or shifting perspective. Or maybe they just don’t know how to do it. In any case, using these techniques is a skill that people learn. To help your child learn these skills, watch for homework that calls for creativity. A typical example is a writing assignment. Then use one of these methods.
Incubation. Use the Startalittle maneuver. The trick is to spend a few minutes getting started. (Example: write down words that remind you of ideas you want to put in.) Then set the whole thing aside for a while.
You might model this maneuver yourself, in front of the child, while solving a problem the child wants solved. The child will probably come up with ideas that contribute to the solution. Be sure to point out that the ideas took a while to develop.
Encourage the child to use the Startalittle maneuver on creative homework jobs. If the child does not want to do job immediately, make a bargain: “Spend five or ten minutes on it. Tell me how you are going to finish it. Then go play.” Do that a few times and the child will probably come home with that “finish it” plan already worked out.
Shifting perspective. It is a kind of pretend. Daydreaming. What would Superman do? How would your (father, mother, older sibling, other relative, classmate, teacher, etc.) do it? Encourage the child to pretend to be one of these and talk about how to do it.
You may want to join in the pretend. Pretend, for example, to be the child. If you get it wrong, the child will tell you. If you imitate something you don’t want the child to do, the child may notice. If you imitate something that has bad consequences, the child may anticipate the consequences.
Creativity. Incubation. Shifting perspective. Not particularly homework skills. Also adult skills. Parents who practice them with their children may even benefit from the refresher course.
http://thinkerer.org/Parenting/ParNewLight.htm
I elaborated on some his points in earlier blogs (one in my Cognitive Engineering blog). Here I take up a fourth.
Creativity is enhanced by incubation (time away from the problem or task) and by shifting perspective (thinking about how someone else would view the problem). Children’s impulsiveness resulting from immature frontal lobes may keep them from using these techniques.
Or perhaps they don’t know about incubation or shifting perspective. Or maybe they just don’t know how to do it. In any case, using these techniques is a skill that people learn. To help your child learn these skills, watch for homework that calls for creativity. A typical example is a writing assignment. Then use one of these methods.
Incubation. Use the Startalittle maneuver. The trick is to spend a few minutes getting started. (Example: write down words that remind you of ideas you want to put in.) Then set the whole thing aside for a while.
You might model this maneuver yourself, in front of the child, while solving a problem the child wants solved. The child will probably come up with ideas that contribute to the solution. Be sure to point out that the ideas took a while to develop.
Encourage the child to use the Startalittle maneuver on creative homework jobs. If the child does not want to do job immediately, make a bargain: “Spend five or ten minutes on it. Tell me how you are going to finish it. Then go play.” Do that a few times and the child will probably come home with that “finish it” plan already worked out.
Shifting perspective. It is a kind of pretend. Daydreaming. What would Superman do? How would your (father, mother, older sibling, other relative, classmate, teacher, etc.) do it? Encourage the child to pretend to be one of these and talk about how to do it.
You may want to join in the pretend. Pretend, for example, to be the child. If you get it wrong, the child will tell you. If you imitate something you don’t want the child to do, the child may notice. If you imitate something that has bad consequences, the child may anticipate the consequences.
Creativity. Incubation. Shifting perspective. Not particularly homework skills. Also adult skills. Parents who practice them with their children may even benefit from the refresher course.
posted by Selby Evans at 12:22 PM
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