Challenges in Maintaining Creativity in Creative Children and Strategies to Overcome Them

 

Creativity is an essential skill that allows children to think innovatively and express themselves uniquely. However, maintaining creativity in creative children is often challenging due to various internal and external factors. Several problems hinder their creative growth, but with the right strategies, these obstacles can be overcome. Problems in Maintaining Creativity Academic Pressure: Schools often emphasize structured learning, standardized testing, and memorization, leaving little room for creative thinking. The pressure to excel in exams may cause children to focus more on grades than on creative exploration. Lack of Encouragement: Many parents and teachers prioritize traditional career paths over creative pursuits. When children's creative efforts are not appreciated, they may lose motivation and confidence in their abilities. Fear of Failure and Criticism: Creativity involves taking risks and experimenting with new ideas. However, fear of making mistakes or receiving negative feedback can discourage children from expressing themselves freely. Over-Scheduling and Lack of Free Time: Involvement in multiple structured activities, such as tuition classes and competitive sports, can limit the time children have for unstructured play and imagination, which are essential for creativity. Digital Distractions: Excessive screen time, social media, and passive entertainment can reduce deep thinking and hands-on creative activities. Instead of creating, children may become passive consumers of digital content. Limited Exposure to Diverse Experiences: Creativity thrives on new and diverse experiences. A monotonous routine and lack of exposure to different cultures, environments, and artistic expressions can restrict children's imagination. Emotional and Mental Barriers: Stress, anxiety, and societal expectations to conform can prevent children from thinking freely. Low self-esteem may make them hesitant to share their creative ideas. Strategies to Overcome These Challenges Encourage Open-Ended Learning: Schools and parents should provide opportunities for exploration and problem-solving rather than rigid memorization. Create a Supportive Environment: Appreciating children's creative efforts and providing constructive feedback can boost their confidence. Promote Risk-Taking and Mistakes: Teaching children that failure is a part of learning can help them overcome the fear of judgment. Allow Free Play and Unstructured Time: Reducing overscheduling and allowing time for imagination and creative expression is crucial. Limit Digital Distractions: Encouraging hands-on activities like art, music, and storytelling can help children engage actively in creative processes. Expose Children to Diverse Experiences: Traveling, reading, and engaging with different art forms can inspire new ideas and expand their creative thinking. Support Mental Well-being: Encouraging mindfulness, self-expression, and emotional support can help children overcome stress and self-doubt. Maintaining creativity in children requires a balance between academic learning and creative freedom. By providing the right environment and encouragement, parents and educators can ensure that children's creative potential is nurtured and sustained.

COMPONENTS OF CREATIVITY

 

1. Flexibility: creativity often begins with the flexible combination and modification of concepts or strategies to produce new, different types of representations. It is the ability to cross boundaries, resign existing norms, and contemporary ideas, think of new ideas as well as ability to adapt and appreciate new ideas and thoughts.

2. Fluency: this is the ability to come up with many diverse ideas quickly. This is measured by the total number of ideas generated. The ability to think about diverse ideas quickly is an important component of creativity.

3. Originality: this is related to the Novelty of ideas. Creativity involves producing original ideas that are unusual for a novel, and it sometimes involves combining two or more different concepts to create a new, synthesized idea.

4. Elaboration: This measure the amount of detail associated with the idea. Elaboration has more to do with focusing on each solution or Idea and developing it further.

5. Usability: it is another important component of creativity. Those ideas and objects of theories will be called creative which are useful to some extent directly or indirectly.

6. Motivation: it can be thought of as the driving force for creativity. In major cases, intrinsic motivation like passion for purpose and interest fund for doing something is the driving forces for creativity. Sometimes extrinsic motivation like there also played a crucial role in creativity.

7. Expertise: it is technical, procedural, and intellectual knowledge. Spending more time with ideas, acquiring skills, and thus acquiring expertise is other essential component of creativity. If someone has more expertise in his work for example more skilled in handling operators and doing reactions in the laboratory it will enhance and enrich his creativity.

8. Sensitivity: it is the ability to sense problems, to see deficiencies and needs in life, and the challenge to find the solution and feel these needs. it is the ability to be sensitive to our inner life and the pleasure of seeking and discovering ideas.

9. Reflection: it is the ability to consider and reconsider; to evaluate our own ideas as well as the ideas of others; to take time to achieve understanding and insight, to look ahead and plan, to visualize the complete picture.

10. Focus: the focus is an essential component of creativity. Cannot create until he or she is fully engaged in the process and he or she cannot fully engage in the process if she is distracted by other stimuli. It helps someone to work hard, long, consistently, and persistently with extraordinary concentration.