How To Tap Your Child's Creative Potential

Your toddler has untapped creativity that needs to be honed. It is up to you as parent to awaken her creative imagination, help her make it bloom and enjoy this fun time.

- Raell Padamsee

Toddlers are a delight as they begin flexing muscles and testing boundaries. At around six months, they become curious about their surroundings, and this is the time that parents need to hone their creativity and imagination. One effective way to stimulate your child’s creativity is to fill her world with colours and shapes. The possibilities are endless.

Use colours: You can paint the nursery bright, vibrant colours, maybe with shapes, animals, even fun pictures! Have child-friendly rattles or squeakies lying around her room, different shapes and sizes that make different sounds. Colourful mobiles above their beds, bright, interesting bed covers, night clothes, soft music or nursery rhymes played in the background, are all great stimulants.

Provide paints: Finger painting, vegetable painting, general fun with paints is great for kids too, but remember to use non-toxic paints. A suitable environment should be created by playing soft music, spreading out a plastic sheet, bowls, sponges, thick brushes, paints, wet wipes, aprons etc should all be kept ready in advance. The seating should be in a circle to enable the child to be as close to you or your spouse as well as the material. There’s a variety of creative activities with paints that you can organise... like comb painting, wax painting, magic painting or even newspaper painting with sponges for the very young who wish to dab into paint. It would be safer to do the painting activity under supervision of an adult, making it a family activity. Use of crayons after the age of three is also beneficial. Crayoning on a big surface helps with making large strokes, which later can be controlled by colouring in a smaller area which will help in controlling fine motor skills.