A recent episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast focused on educational success with learning differences. This is an emerging name for what we still refer to as learning disabilities, but in her book, YES! Your Child Can. Victoria Waller shares her preferences for this name because it acknowledges the challenges and strengths of a child.

Victoria reminds us all to acknowledge – yes, your child can!

Throughout my life, I’ve been reluctant to say I suffer/suffered from learning differences, mostly because I feel that their impact on my life was minimal and not as bad as other children I knew who shared a similar diagnosis. My Mom would retell the story a little differently. She would speak about my challenges with reading and my inability to retain information as a young child, even after it had been taught to me numerous times. She would remind me how often I would cry in frustration because I couldn’t comprehend the learning prompt and my envy of others who seemed to blitz through assignments like they were nothing.

Also Read: Education Gifted Children: Three Tips for Parents

The issue for me was that I did “ok” on tests, so teachers weren’t always aware of the struggles behind the scenes. My mother eventually had me tested privately, where I received a diagnosis of dyslexia and problems with short-term memory. Rather than getting any more in the weeds, I’ll say the following:

I did ok at school and now have a doctorate in education and work at a University. I love learning, but I find it extremely hard. Some refer to me as intelligent, and I am frustrated because I feel it undermines the struggles I still experience behind the scenes. I also still feel intellectually to others in the room. I continue to make silly spelling errors. I still seem to process information differently from others, and I still have sweaty hands when writing in front of others or having to introduce someone in public for fear of forgetting the simplest of names.

Yes! Your Child Can

What prompted this article? I recently had the opportunity to interview Victoria Waller about her new book, YES! Your Child Can. My discussions with her brought back memories of my mother and her interventions. As a result of her actions, I received support during school and a better understanding of how I approach learning. I know how to apply specific strategies to different tasks, and I even feel I leverage things like my capacity to become hyper-focused to my advantage.

In her book, Victoria offers a step-by-step guide for any parent who has a gut feeling that their child might have a difference in their approach to learning. She takes you through the gut feeling and denial phase, pushing hard on the concept that your child “won’t snap out of it” and why engaging in proper testing and diagnosis is essential at an early age. Most importantly, Victoria’s belief in your child’s success is evident. It was something that both Cyndi and I cherished during her interview on the Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast and something Victoria reminds us all to acknowledge – yes, your child can!

Check out her book here or listen to the interview below!

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The great outdoors served as humanity’s first classroom. That’s why connecting childhood creativity with nature is a great starting point for any parent wanting to promote creativity at home. Consider the many innovations and discoveries made by our ancestors as they interacted with nature.

connecting childhood creativity with nature is a great starting point for any parent wanting to promote creativity at home

This article represents the beginning of a series of posts about our family interactions with the Great Outdoors. I’m prioritizing this connection for three reasons; first – I have long been a proponent of nature walks to promote curiosity in young children. Similarly, one of my favorite activities shared on this website is our experience finding a bunch of caterpillars one summer afternoon and watching them transition into beautiful butterflies the following spring.

Also Read: Five Tips for Raising Wild Butterflies

The second reason – my boys are at the point where they can’t stay indoors. They are jumping off furniture, arguing with each other, and driving us crazy. Camping and fishing trips have offered an opportunity to disrupt this pattern and force a disconnect with electronics. However, as I take up these activities, I have made many mistakes that have led to discoveries that I hope can serve others in the future.

Finally, like so many other adults, I suffer from anxiety – serve at times. In public, I can function, but sometimes I am burning on all cylinders to keep my mental health in check. After a crazy 2020 (Covid excluded), it all became too much to handle, and the one activity I felt got me through this challenging time was my weekly walks through nature. I plan to share more of this story in the coming series.

In conclusion, connecting childhood creativity with nature can ignite curiosity, help generate questions about our world, and address what Richard Louv calls Nature Deficit Disorder. Furthermore, as some research suggests, interacting with nature can quieten the mind and make us more receptive to new ideas and discoveries in our personal and professional lives.

The Great Out Doors – coming soon!

• Five tips for first-time camping with the family
• How to teach young children to fish
• Three Nature Walk Activities to Promote Creativity
• Setting up an outdoor classroom at home
• Next level family camping

I love being a Father, and DadsforCreativity.com has offered an outlet to express that passion.

This article offers a Fathers Day reflection about my parent blog, Dads for Creativity. In the episode, Cyndi asked me what I had observed about my parenting while writing this blog. I responded on the topic of parental bias and how it influences the type of Creativity I notice in my children, and of course, this impacts the stories I share on DadsforCreativity.com. Consider my middle son, who is packed full of explosive energy. Yes, he likes to build Lego box sets, but he doesn’t play games or create lego worlds from scratch; he’s not into it. He was never into nature walks and is sporadic in most sit-down activities. At this very moment, he is to the right of me, arranging the sofa cushions, moving the beanbags, and setting up other objects in the room for his Ultimate Beast Master obstacle course. As a scholar-practitioner of Creativity studies, I recognize the Creativity in how he has utilized the space and engaged his imagination to offer running commentary on his progress on the course. There is a crowd behind the TV chanting his name, and although they are silent, the whole setup is annoying and looks an absolute mess. This behavior is not the type of childhood creativity I have written about on this blog. You can read a little more about this topic in another Dads for Creativity article titled, Checking Parental Bias.

Read my first blog article: Checking Parental Bias

Another discussion in the interview is the overall blog’s evolution and how it relates to my creative growth; it started as a parenting website with me blogging about the many dad and child activities I organized at the weekend with my firstborn. I loved (and still love) being a Father, and DadsforCreativity.com offered an outlet to express that passion.

Read my first blog article: Bike Ride Turns into an Adventure

Eight years later, I think my writing has improved a little, I know a bit more about the field of Creativity, and I have a Doctorate in Education. However, the feelings I have when writing content for the website are as intense and blissful as ever before. Naturally, the articles have changed over the years and with more children I write less, but I hope they still capture my joy of being a Dad to three incredibly creative young boys. They are my greatest accomplishment in life, and this blog offers an archive to so many wonderful memories over the years.

I finish my Fathers Day reflection with one of the first ever parent blog articles; it’s like 95% on father and son, and 5% on Creativity. I think that summarizes what we celebrate on Mother’s and Father’s Day, a devotion and love of parenting.

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Is your child talented, gifted, or excellent at something? I want to think that every child exhibits these tendencies somehow. However, there are some children that are recognized as significantly advanced when compared to their peers. This short article offers three tips for parents of gifted children, but also any child who is excelling in an area of interest.

If your child is expressing an interest in something, embrace it with both hands and run with it.

Gifted Education

When children are at an early age, we compare them to other children or make comparisons to ourselves at their age – which is hilarious as I doubt few of us can accurately recall enough information to make that comparison. However, there are situations where our children are more advanced, and we must identify these areas if we are to nurture their potential effectively. 

Also Read: Checking Parental Bias

This situation is where Gifted education becomes relevant; the National Association for Gifted Children considers giftedness as a student’s “ability to perform —or have the capability to perform—at higher levels compared to others of the same age, experience, and environment in one or more domains.” There are different ways to identify a child as gifted – in fact, it’s a debate in education. Furthermore, we should highlight that the environment is influential when nurturing and identifying talent. A parent who is also a reading specialist will be much better than me at determining an advanced reading level for their child. Likewise, they will likely know how to support this child by organizing appropriate reading material and advocating on their behalf in the school system. Finally, a question arises on whether the child is gifted in reading or was simply fortunate enough to receive specialized education at such an early age.

Those formally identified as gifted might have scored in the 90th percentile on a test. Alternatively, a child’s teacher might recommend them for assessment. In theory, those identified in this group receive extra support to further their potential, which is why a parent might value their child obtaining this label at an appropriate age. However, we will not successfully identify every gifted child, and even those identified do not necessarily receive adequate support from the system. For parents, this can make educating gifted children challenging, and it can prove a significant loss in talent for society. Consider the Big-C creativity outcomes that might come from a child scientist who is interested in curing cancer or a young climate activist interested in geoengineering—nurturing this potential – no matter who, when, or how it manifests – is of benefit to us all.

Three Tips for Educating Gifted Children

For the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, we interviewed three prominent scholars on this topic (the third will be published soon). I invite you to check out these interviews to learn more about gifted children and what we can do to support these children at home and school. 

Below are three tips offered in summary of these episodes:

• Support Creative Behavior: Creative behavior takes the form of creating and making; designing and developing solutions. If your child is gifted in writing, provide them with the resources to write. If they like to make video games, find online resources to help them code and design games.

• Nurture Interests: If your child is expressing an interest in something, help them embrace it with both hands and run with it.

• Pursue Academic Enrichment: Work with your school to identify opportunities for differentiated instruction. If your child is finishing the worksheet ten minutes before everyone else, encourage your child’s teacher to perceive this time as a chance for academic enrichment

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I have a confession. I have aspirations for my children’s future. I want them to be successful in career and family. I want them to have financial stability; and I want them to be happy. This article considers checking parental bias and considers if it’s our aspirations or their interests that drive the conversations.

 To what extent does my innate bias influence the interests or talents my children pursue? 

We want the best for those we love, and we typically have preconceived view of what that entails. Those views represent a parental bias that might exist even if we’re don’t know it exists.

Consider my middle son, who is packed full of explosive energy. Yes, he likes to build Lego box sets, but he doesn’t play games or create lego worlds from scratch; he’s not into it. He was never into nature walks and is sporadic in most sit-down activities. Instead he likes to setup obstacle courses all around the house and enact The Floor is Lava or Ultimate Beast Master. As a scholar-practitioner of Creativity studies, I recognize the Creativity in how he has utilized the space and engaged his imagination to offer running commentary on his progress on each course. There is a crowd behind the TV chanting his name, and although they are silent, the whole setup is annoying and looks an absolute mess. This behavior is not the type of childhood creativity I have written about on this blog – parental bias!

Read Also: Education Gifted Children: Three Tips for Parents

I shared another story of parental bias during a debrief episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. It centered on a short conversation with my youngest about his future. When putting him to bed, he said “Daddy, when I grow older I’m going to be an Art Man.” I’m his parent, so I think he’s brilliant; his Math is impressive, his problem-solving and intuition are incredible, and he likes to make physical objects during games. 

“Daddy, I want to be an Art Man”

When he shared his desire to be an artist, I wasn’t upset about his interest in the arts but instead was taken back by my feelings in response to his innocent comment. It was weird, I don’t recall ever thinking much about his future career, but his expressed interest seemed to clash with how I had perceived his skills and potential in the world. The idea of him drawing and painting – his two favorite activities – wasn’t something that seemed to fit with an unknown silent narrative I had obviously developed about his future.

Why? I don’t know because I hadn’t imagined a career for him, but at the same time, my feelings suggested a preference existed somewhere deep in my subconscious. It was a knee jerk reaction, a feeling that something wasn’t right with his expressed interest to be an art man.

Was I concerned about a starving artist stereotype – I work in a School of Fine Arts?

Did I think it was too early for him to express an interest – I recognize the value of knowing your skills and interests early.

So what provoked these feelings? Although I might not have a specific profession, my observation of my son’s skills and talents must contribute to a collection of aspirations I have about his future. Checking my parental bias is important because I influence his learning environment. Consider summer camps; should I send him to Art Camp or Sports Camp? I will make the decision. What about toys for the holidays, the museums we visit; all of these decisions can influence what interests are explored and supported during childhood.

As I conclude this article I consider the following question: to what extent does my innate bias influence the interests or talents my children pursue? Only time will tell, but it’s something I plan on monitoring as I work on checking parental bias in the future. I hope you will as well!

Fueling Creativity in Education

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It’s that time of the year again. A joyous time for our little ones. Celebrations, excitement, and good holiday cheer.

In our special holiday episode of the Fueling Creativity podcast, my co-host Cyndi Burnett asked me to share a holiday tradition that promotes quality time with the family and creativity at home. I spoke about our routine of making a festive picture for our family holiday card. It’s not super original, and I’m not the first, but it’s fun, productive, and has become one of our family traditions that kickoff the festive season.

Creativity is about doing new things with old stuff – you probably already send out holiday cards, so making the picture instead of taking the picture isn’t too different.

Below is the three pictures that will be appearing on our family Christmas card this holiday season.

My youngest stole the show with his Gingerbread House. He produced this picture with a combination of paints and color crayons. My middle guy kept is simple. I think he was inspired by the short film “The Snowman”, which we had watched the night before. Finally, my eldest is getting more and more into story making. There was an image from a scene in an emerging Christmas story he is putting together.

If you want to hear a little more about this activity and other holiday family traditions that promote quality time together, check out our 2021 holiday special for the Fueling Creativity Podcast.

My 5 tips that help Parenting for Beautiful Questions started – ironically – with a question: How can we facilitate beautiful questions at home? I’ve pondered this question for the past few weeks after recording an episode of the Fueling Creativity podcast. This post articulates my current thinking about this topic and offers a few suggestions on parenting for beautiful questions.

To conclude our first season, Cyndi Burnett and I recently recorded our debrief episode. We tasked each other with sharing three big takeaways from the show. The relationship between questioning and creativity is apparent; a what or why question can engage children on a journey of curiosity and wonder. This relationship came up in multiple episodes, including shows with renowned Creativity researcher Ron Beghetto and founder of Figure 8 Thinking, Natalie Nixon. The latter mentioned Warren Berger’s book, A Beautiful Question. I purchased this book immediately after the show and read it from the perspective of parenting my three boys. Much of this post articulates my thoughts about this topic and how we may parent in a way that helps facilitate beautiful questions.

I’ve always known about the importance of asking questions; I provide additional time in my Design Thinking course at UConn for students to incubate and explore questions. However, I haven’t given too much thought to the type of questions young children ask and how we can better promote beautiful questions as parents. Warren Berger presents a beautiful question as an open-ended what or why question that ignites wonder and curiosity. My youngest (who’s four) is at this questioning stage; it’s an absolute joy each day when he says, “Daddy, I have a question.” When he says these words, I honestly don’t know what’s going to come out of his mouth, but some of the most recent questions include:

My middle boy is asking the following questions:

And my eldest is at… PAUSE…. “the age.” (and with his scientific mindset, not all of the questions satisfy the “too procreate” response). 

As I think about ways we influence these questions, I consider the role of the school curriculum, which exposes children to predetermined topics and content. As I reflect on my eldest two boys, there was a change in how questions emerged during this time. They felt a little less sporadic, less original, and questions that felt more applicable to a traditional classroom. This reflection made me think about how the curriculum initiates questions and to what extent we consider how this predetermined content influences our creative paths later in life.

I then considered how peers in my eldest’s class had influenced questions he has about sex. I then thought about how his knowledge of this topic will affect the questions that emerge from his siblings a few years from now. 

I then considered the role of technology and my eldest’s interaction with YouTube at an early age. I explored this platform as a tool for addressing questions in another blog post last year. The clip below is from my film Schooling for a Digital Culture. It provides an example of this in action. However, I don’t know if I considered how YouTube influences questions. 

Ultimately, this track of thinking focuses on the experiences our children receive inside their home and school environment, which returns me (and you) back to my initial question: How can we facilitate beautiful questions at home? I think it comes down to the experiences we offer and the information we provide, so here are some suggestions on how to better parent for beautiful questions:

5 Tips for Parenting Beautiful Questions

• Read. Read. Read. And read some more. We know it. We hear about its importance regularly from teachers, academics, and even our parents when we were young. The research is clear about the importance of reading. However, what we read will influence the questions generated by children about the world. I’ll skip advocating for regular trips to the library and say that variety is the key to this tail. Make sure you expose your children to different worlds, topics, and challenges in the books you read. Likewise, maintain a mix of fiction and non-fiction books. 

• Take nature walks. I’ve written about my love of nature walks with my boys, but it’s more than love; my experience taking my boys on nature walks has made me recognize its impact on their curiosity and wonder for the world. Nature walks are simple, free, and produce endless questions about bugs, insects, and other life forms. Grab a bug box, fishing net, and picnic to take this experience to the next level.

• Regularly visit cultural institutions like libraries and museums. These institutions serve society by recording world knowledge and making it easily accessible to the community. These visits don’t have to be at renowned, large-scale institutions; find a museum in your local area and exposure your children to this new experience. Zoos are also an essential part of this group.

• Digital Media, including documentaries on Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime, also serve as a tool for exposing children to new things. My eldest has watched all of the Cosmos, One Strange Rock, and Horrid Histories episodes. This experience has generated a whole bunch of questions, some of which only a physicist could answer. I’ll add interactive apps to the list as well. I suspect that VR and AR experiences will also be on this list very soon.

• Encourage wonder in the family. Sit back and think, ponder, wonder. Who has a new and different question they want to ask about our world? What new and exciting questions do you have from school? And more recently, my eldest has started to ask questions about alternative histories; he’s asked things like, what if the US was still a colony of Britain? What if Neoploian had won the war against the British? And, what will our world look like in ten years?

Throughout these experiences, remember to keep the door open to questioning; be sure to let them know how much you value those questions, and also avoid answering the questions directly. Instead, respond with, “let’s find out” or “where do you think the sun goes at night – wow, what a fun way to end this post.

When is creativity appropriate? This is a question we explored with Ron Beghetto during a recent episode on the Fueling Creativity podcast. During the show, Ron shared a conversation he had with his daughter on their way back from school. It was a reflective story on when she was a Kindergartener. There had been a situation where she had generated a new expression to describe an incidence of fluctuance. From her perspective, she had done nothing wrong, she had followed the class rules. No potty words! And, if you listen to the podcast episode, you’ll note that if you were to create a list of old and potentially new potty words for a Kindergarten classroom, it is unlikely it would contain this particular expression for farting, passing wind, or smelly gas; so, had she broken the rules? Probably (from an adult perspective). However, she had also expressed a wonderful act of childhood creativity. Knowing potty words were banned from her classroom, she formulated a new way to express this moment without going against the teacher.

SEE ALSO: Creativity is about making connections

As parents I suspect we can all relate to this type of childhood creativity; we experience it daily. Our children want cookies from the top shelf and come up with a creative way to get up there; they generate uncomfortable ways to ask about the birds and the bees; they find ways to manipulate others to get their own way; and they do the most creative (and messy things) with objects they find around the house (including food at the dinner table). All these examples represent the many ways children interact creatively inside their environment. As parents, part of our role is facilitating and allowing these ongoing interactions to continue safely and appropriately. Children need to understand that their actions have consequences; a joke can offend, a fall can lead to a serious injury, and safety will always be a parents primary concern.

 

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The context and environment will ultimately dictate many of these experiences. As children grow, we need to help them see their actions and the various outcomes of these actions from multiple perspectives. Yes, stacking up boxes on the chair to reach the cookie jar may get you the cookie, and we should praise the impressive engineering skills, but at the same time we must alert children to the real danger of falling and hurting themselves. Likewise, we want children to respect the views and needs of others who share that space; therefore, we must highlight times when their actions have (or may) cause offence. What’s interesting is raising awareness of these outcomes and situations without making our children feel they must conform every step of the way. I think this comes from generating questions about our environment and envisioning outcomes before we engage in certain actions. In our episode with Ron Beghetto, we discuss this a little more inside the context of formal education. Including the idea of when to be creative inside the box, and when there’s an opportunity to be creative outside the box. You can listen to this episode now on Spotify, Audible, or Apple Podcasts. Until then… I’ll leave you with a simple summary of a conversation with my youngest last night:

 

Daddy. Ok, it’s time to go to bed.

Youngest. But Daddy, I’m so excited to go to Sammy’s birthday party tomorrow.

Daddy. I know, and if you close your eyes and go to sleep, the party will arrive more quickly.

Youngest. Daddy, I’m scared.

Daddy. No, you’re not. You’re trying to keep me in this room for longer.

Daddy gets up to leave. 

Youngest. Wait! I have an important question.

Daddy turns around and looks at his son for a few seconds.

Daddy. No, you don’t.

Youngest. Yes, I do. I have so many questions I want to ask you. You know you like me asking questions.

Daddy. I do, but now isn’t an appropriate time to ask questions. Now is bedtime. Good night.