INNER STRENGTH â—½ YOU
Freedom in Creativity
by Michelle Wyatt
Have you ever heard the phrase “a helicopter parent?” I know most of us are familiar with the phrase “under child supervision.” So what is the right balance between giving a child freedom and protecting his/her safety?
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I’ve come to accept that there is no textbook answer. I can suggest the following though. Trust your instincts, observe how your kids handle certain levels of freedom from a close distance and either increase or decrease accordingly, and ask questions of people whom you trust to be non-judgmental.
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I’ll give you an example of how I did this with my 10 year old. This past month we have done a lot of arts and crafts and he has seen me use the hot glue gun lots of times. Matthew learns best by observing and then when he is allowed to take charge of creating something, he will ask questions and listen to instructions. For example, he picked up a fidget toy and looked around at different surfaces. My intuition was correct. I informed him that he could not glue anything to the wall or flooring. So, together we found a safe surface where he could glue. He then turned the toy into a contraption.
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I wish I could explain what the contraption is used for, but I’m still figuring that out. Now in this particular case, I stayed in the same room with him.
I wanted to make sure he was safe and followed the proper way to use such a tool. (He’s a smart kid and picks things up quickly.) I merely added some tips to help him be most successful, like we glued the objects together quickly after applying the glue and held them together for at least 15 seconds.
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By giving him this freedom, I witnessed Matthew thinking outside of the box and his imagination soaring. I have lots of craft items and I left out those bends on purpose. That way he knew what he had permission to use. So, he chose to decorate his remote control car with small ornaments, shiny fake snow, a plastic ring box, and a miniature frosty figurine. The ring box is for the purpose of holding a note that he gave to his brother by way of the car. There’s no way I would have thought to decorate the car like he did. I am blown away and so proud of him every time I see it!
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Going back to the tip I shared with either adding or subtracting the level of supervision needed based on observation, I scaled back my level of supervision after he successfully glued the fidget item to the unique surface without burning himself. By doing so, he surprised me with his decorated car, and my reaction meant a lot to him!
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This process was not as easy on me as I may make it sound. Trust me, I had plenty of anxiety for a while. It takes a lot of strength to trust ourselves and kids.
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But if I can do it, so can you!