Nurturing curiosity will promote creativity in your child.

You have probably watched a couple of funny videos on YouTube where children do amazing stuff unknowingly and it ends up being a social media meme. If you haven’t, then I would recommend you do so that you get a better understanding of our topic today.

Children just like adults are in born learners. Right from the start when a child is born, learning is a natural part of it.  Ask yourself this, who teaches a child to suckle? Nobody! As a matter of fact, there is hardly a thing that an infant can be taught at its early stages. Every kind of mental progress in a child is out of curiosity and discovery. A child becomes curious of its mother’s breast once it’s placed on its mouth and eventually learns how to suckle. Breastfeeding is the simplest illustration of children learning out of curiosity.

However, as a child develops, more and more inputs of inquisitiveness are needed so as to arouse another important part of the child’s brain. This part is the creative element in the child. Please note that, if creativity isn’t fostered as early as now, sooner or later that child will lack in inventiveness in future. Unfortunately, most parents aren’t aware of the need to let their kids discover the world for themselves. Instead, such kinds of parents want to raise some kind of “perfect child” which is obviously impossible by all means.

Come to think of it, if child ‘A’ plays innocently with a matchbox and in the process burns his finger, will he/she possibly try that again? No, he won’t because he has learned from his own experience. How about child B, whose parent has always kept the matches away from the kid till he is 9 years old? What will happen to such a child? Well, believe it or not, you can’t protect your child forever (Read: Be an Old School Dad – It’s Good for your Kids!). Sooner or later, that curious part of him will drive him to light up even a bigger fire harder to control.

Remember, if a child has never tried out something at the opportune stage to do that, even when he/she grows old he/she will still feel the urge to try it out and this time the results might be more fatal. Why? Because he has more energy to do it, plus he can now combine the activity with other elements he/she has learnt from other avenues over the years.

Even so, parents should not be careless in the name of promoting curiosity. In as much as you are promoting curiosity in your child, some objects are by no means applicable in this important process. The matchbox instance in this piece was just for the sake of illustrating the idea, but it doesn’t mean that you should give your child matches to play with. Always know that learning and satisfaction of a child’s curiosity always come by chance. Curiosity should never be induced. Instead, you should follow your kid’s lead. If he shows interest in something, help him out. But don’t try to make him interested in that something forcefully.

As Zero to Three puts it, “It is a child’s internal desire to learn (their curiosity) and not external pressure that motivates a child to seek out new experiences.” So you should never worry yourself trying to trigger curiosity in your child. That part just comes naturally. If nurtured properly, your child’s curiosity will build him into a creative lad right from a very tender age till he/she is a grown up.

Read more tips to nurturing your child’s curiosity here

Comments