Creativity makes life fulfilling. Creative people are happier, more confident, and solve problems better than non-creative people. In child development, creativity plays an important role by helping children cope with and express their feelings as well as growing critical thinking skills and fostering cognitive and social development. 

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As parents, we can help our children develop routines and habits that will boost their creativity. Below are 4 such routines to incorporate into your child’s daily life that will make him more imaginative, expressive, creative, and fulfilled. 

Moving meditation. 

Most kids can’t sit still long enough to meditate. Here’s the good news: They don’t have to! Teach your child how to make moving meditation a part of their daily routines, preferably first thing in the morning. Research1 shows that open monitoring meditation is best for improving creative thinking. To teach open monitoring meditation to your child, simply instruct them to bring awareness to their senses. Talk about the sensation of the carpet beneath their feet or the smell of breakfast cooking. Ask them to pay attention to the way the toothbrush feels and the tart taste of their orange juice. Bringing awareness to thoughts and feelings is also a type of open monitoring meditation. This is simply observing one’s thoughts without judgement and noticing the feelings that arise. This is a good practice for older children to add into their daily routines and has been shown to boost cognitive thinking and creative skills.

Read

Neuroscientists at Emory University2 found that reading fiction enhances connectivity in the brain and improves brain function. In fact, they detected changes in brain days after reading a novel, so the benefits linger well past when your child closes the book! Regular reading improves brain function and boosts imagination because as we read, we literally create a new world in our minds. When your child uses their imagination like this, it engages their right brain - their creative mind. The key is that they need to be engrossed in the book, so help your child find a genre or author they love. Reading aloud to your child has many benefits as well, such as stronger emotional connection, improved listening skills, improved vocabulary and comprehension, as well as boosting information processing skills. Therefore, make sure reading together is part of your daily routine!