Color outside the lines
Cookbooks are one of my daughter’s favorite presents. She especially likes dessert books featuring cupcakes, macaroons, and Pavlovas which are among her favorites. She is lured by the professionally taken featured photograph and dives into the recipes. Each time, the results are slightly different. Her outcomes range from presentably delicious to disastrously inedible. She used to be disappointed. Then I told her that her first attempt should never be compared to the picture perfect versions. Whoever made that cake had dozens, maybe even hundreds of attempts. So don’t expect perfection in the first attempt!
This is a lesson for us parents too, since many of us are dictating our children’s learning and correcting any deviations. Directives like these leave little room for creativity and serendipitous discoveries. We should actually encourage our children to use basic instructions as a starting point and go from there. Experiment. Customize. Personalize. Offend the obsessive-compulsive persona and color way outside the lines! Here are a few ways to push your child outside their comfort zones.
Serendipity isn’t just a pretty word. When a child is encouraged to think freely in an unhurried fashion, her imagination might truly turn a richly imagined future into reality.
Don’t be attached to outcomes. There are infinite pathways to get to an infinite number of outcomes. Serendipity isn’t just a pretty word. In fact, some of the most common things were invented accidentally: Teflon and Post-In notes. But did you also know that Penicillin was discovered accidentally? Microwave ovens wouldn’t have come into existence if the magnetrons didn’t accidentally cook something nearby! Adhering to process is only half of it; examining deviations and errors is the other half. Ponder this the next time you snack on another accidental invention: the potato chip.
Don’t be punitive when failure happens. Shit does happens and the worst thing for a child to experience isn’t the mishap, but your reaction to it. When a child is reprimanded for mistakes, they can’t learn from that. What they do learn is not to take chances for fear of upsetting you. If a child starts to second guess herself, she arrests the entire inquisitive process.
Leave plenty of free time. Creativity isn’t a scheduled event. Some of my best ideas come when I’m not at my desk. I’ve been fortunate enough to work for many managers who understands that 9-to-5 shouldn’t be filled with back to back, double-booked meetings. Such is a work environment that is suffocating and contributes greatly to a toxic environment. The same is true for children who are over-scheduled with little or no unstructured free time.
Autonomy. This is probably most effective with children old enough to fully take advantage of alone time. When a child is encouraged to think freely in an unhurried fashion, she will have the opportunity to ask herself ‘what-if’ questions. What-if’s are the springboards for her imagination which might truly turn a richly imagined future into reality. Many workplaces have empowered their employees to allocate 10 or 20% of their time for personal projects. It’s also no wonder that these companies continue to be the best places to work attracting people who have supported avenues for creativity and innovation.
While it is always an opportunity to stand on the shoulders of giants, equally great is the opportunity to greenfield something that has rarely or never been done before. So go ahead and encourage your child to make friends that are not like them; eat foods that come from other cultures; and shove them (gently) out of their comfort zones. The real creativity is what happens when they color outside the lines; and not be a compliant child coloring within them. Einstein best summed up this approach: we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. And it’s the next generation that will solve this generation’s problems.
