The Capacity for Inventive Thought and Decisive Action

“Children, even when very young, have the capacity for inventive thought and decisive action. They have worthwhile ideas. They make perceptive connections. They’re individuals from the start: a unique bundle of interests, talents, and preferences. They have something to contribute. They want to be a part of things.

It’s up to us to give them the opportunity to express their creativity, explore widely, and connect with their own meaningful work.”

Lori Pickert

A Child's Opportunity to Experience Childhood

"Stretch your child's powers by giving him an opportunity to express himself in a wide variety of activities. You aren't stuffing him into a preconceived mold of what your son or daughter ought to be. You are helping your child know more about himself and his relationship to those close to him and to the whole world to which he must relate. The creative process that you are aware of, the exposure to so many important, vital experiences, must always be a part of play, of fun, for your child. This is his only childhood."

Marlene LeFever, Growing Creative Children
page 14

Cultivating Creativity

"Cultivating creativity requires time and forethought, whether parents choose to experiment in playing word games, molding clay, or writing stories or original songs. Parents must follow with love and understanding the child's attempts to express himself. The child must know that every effort he makes is worth something. In itself the act may have been a mistake, a chance happening. But through each creative self-expression the child will develop initiative, self-control, and imagination."

Marlene LeFever, Growing Creative Children
page 13

Creativity, Not Left to Chance

"Children can't independently discover their own potentials or the possibilities of the world of touch, sight, and sound. How is a child to discover the he would like to preach, or that he can visualize the pattern of a great building, or that mathematics will open a world of excitement and challenge? The child may have the capacity, but it is up to you to make sure his discovery of the world and his creative development are not left to chance."

Marlene LeFever, Growing Creative Children
page 12

All Children are Artists

“All children are artists, and it is an indictment of our culture that so many of them lose their creativity, their unfettered imaginations, as they grow older.”
Madeleine L’Engle