Creativity and imagination are areas our kids need to build to maintain healthy brains, become problem solvers, divergent thinkers and be capable of learning the skills necessary for future employment. Yes, that’s right; your child’s future employment opportunities could be directly affected by their creativity skills.

According to Kyung Hee Kim, Ph.D., an educational psychologist at the College of William & Mary, “Creativity scores have significantly decreased since 1990,” she says. Moreover, “Creativity scores for kindergartners through third-graders decreased the most, and those from the fourth through sixth grades decreased by the next largest amount.”

People often think of creativity as a predetermined set of skills: either you’re creative or your not. But really, creativity is a skill set that can be developed and applied to almost all areas of your life. 

People also often falsely claim that creativity is a right-brain function. I’m sure you’ve heard people describing themselves as ‘right brain’ or ‘left brain’ thinkers. Creativity is a whole-brain function - a weaver of information and skill-building throughout the entire brain, even parts of our brains that don’t typically work together. When we get involved in our creative endeavors, we can also transition into a more relaxing brain-wave state that can decrease stress and increase happiness. This “flow” state can even reach the same brain-wave as meditation.

We want all of these things for our kids! So what’s the best time to boost creativity? When you’ve got bored kids, of course!

5 Ways to Increase Creativity and Decrease Boredom in Your Home or Classroom:

Don’t solve boredom.

When you have a bored kid on your hands, you’re looking at great opportunity, even if it may not feel like it. What lies on the other side of boredom is creativity! But we often cut kids off from getting there by trying to solve their boredom for them. Boredom can induce a feeling of discomfort in kids, and in today’s world of constant entertainment, kids can actually feel stress in not knowing what to do next. If we let them ride that wave of discomfort and don’t try to solve it, or worse, subvert it by inserting a screen, kids will ride that wave straight to creativity. The key is not to look at your bored kids as a problem to solve, but seeing it as a holding space before creativity kicks in.

Model brainstorming.

If you have a struggle or challenge, do you let your kids see you brainstorm solutions? Do you ask your child to brainstorm some ways to solve their problems? Even brainstorming a list of creative things to do when they get bored will help build those problems-solving skills, we all want our kids to have. Even if your kiddo simply brainstorms the dinner menu for the next week, brainstorming strengthens the skill of divergent thinking.

Ask open-ended questions.

Have you ever noticed how many open-ended questions you ask your child? Probably not as many as you think. Open-ended questioning leads to greater prefrontal cortex activation in our brains. It asks our brains to research and respond, using a variety of brain functions. This is a great thing to do when your child is struggling to find something to do. Even if it is something as silly as, “If you woke up and could be any animal you wanted, which would you choose to be?” will lend itself to rich thinking and active response.

Support don’t squash.

Support creative endeavors, don’t squash them with your fixed mindset. Ask yourself, even if their creative idea or attempt isn’t feasible, would my child learn more by attempting it anyway or by me squashing their creativity before it even started? Even if you know that domino tower is never going to stretch down the stairs, their ability to learn from trying is a greater lesson then you telling them it can’t be done. If your child brainstorms a creative answer, don’t respond by telling them that’s not going to work. Find a way to support the fact that they tried, whether it worked or not.

Celebrate the struggle.

Creativity and resiliency go hand in hand. What one may call creativity, another might call innovation. Either way, to be creative, you have to try, likely make a mistake or two and then try again. Creativity is an open invitation to learn the resilience skills that help you bounce back in life. Creative tasks can sometimes be frustrating to children because things don’t always turn out the way they think they should have, so celebrating the process over the product is important for building the growth mindset skills they need to continue trying. This celebration also spurs your child to look for more creative tasks instead of sinking back to “I’m bored.”