Raising Creative Children
To Be Successsful, Kids Have to Be Allowed to Use Their Imaginations
Aug 31, 2008
Consider some of the classic toys designed to entertain and teach children. For example, the multi-colored donuts that fit over a pole from largest to smallest. Now, think about what that toy is really teaching and picture a generation of factory line workers correctly lining up a washer and nut over and over again until the 10:30 a.m. coffee break. Not only is that not an appealing future for most children, but most of those jobs have left the United States for China, India or some other country where labor costs are a tenth of what they are in America.
Children are Over Protected
A lot is written about protectionism and the desire by some in America to limit immigration (illegal and legal) and imports that compete with American-made products (as if it's possible to determine where anything is made anymore -- but that's another article). What American children are suffering from, though, is over-protectionism. Don't play with that. That's not how that works. Careful, you'll break it. The colored donuts do largest to smallest, not the other way around. Parents mean well and if the rest of the world was sitting idly by and allowing the United States to remain the sole global economic leader, there would be little to worry about. That is, however, not the world we live in.
A Global Labor Pool
Companies, especially global companies, are looking for the best employees they can find and if they can pay them less in China than in America, all the better for the bottom line. But companies also realize that the employees who are successful and who make the company successful are creative and willing to question the status-quo. According to the Council on Competitiveness in their 2006 report, "Where America Stands," while China may produce three times as many engineers as the United States, Americans will still have the edge. They will, at least, if they keep their creativity intact and don't have it beaten down by a generation of overly protective parents.
Creative Learning Requires Creative Toys
Look around the house or at the local store at the toy options children have: models with detailed instructions to follow; blocks that are supposed to be arranged in certain ways; kits that include only the pieces necessary to build a certain thing, a certain way. Listen to how children are talked to about their play. That's a stick, not a gun. Rocks don't belong in the dollhouse. Doors don't go on the second floor. The colored donuts go from largest to smallest; or, do they?
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