How Can You Tell if a Child is Creative? 

22nd December 2022

Some of the early signs your child is creative are: 

  • Your child has invented an imaginary world (result of a lot of daydreaming) 
  • Your child loves Legos, building blocks and other ways for spatial play 
  • Your child is always active and busy 
  • Your child uses toys and other objects in new ways (using a box as a cart or vehicle, not just as a container) 

Those can be signs that your child will become a highly creative adult. To make that happen though, it requires constant nurturing and support for years to come. It also helps to give your child an amazing start so that your child will have a solid foundation and confidence in pursuing various activities and opportunities. 

How to encourage creative thinking 

To help your child become more creative, one way is to facilitate a lot of unstructured playtime. This way, your child will have more than enough time and freedom to explore and experiment. Your child will be free to try a variety of activities and experiment on several different objects (and come up with new uses for them). 

Another way is to provide structured playtime. Here, the playtime is guided and constraints are present. For example, there are only two or three objects that children can play with. Or, children have to focus on just one activity for 30 minutes. This is in contrast with unstructured playtime (lots of freedom) where usually there are a lot of toys and objects and lots of different activities to do. 

Both structured and unstructured playtime actually stimulate creative thinking. In unstructured playtime, children are often free to wander and pursue what interests them the most. On the other hand, structured playtime has constraints and children have to focus. As a result, they will come up with ways to work with what they already have (another way to demonstrate creative thinking). 

Whether at home or early learning centre, there should always be enough structured and unstructured playtime. This way, children can learn to explore and work through both freedom and constraints.