I just saw a news-piece about the top passwords that people use to guard their access to their electronic accounts.

The fact that so many use PASSWORD, 123456, 654321, ABC123, not only demonstrates a disturbing  lack of concern for information security, but also a frightening lack of creativity.

While some are born with the “creativity gene,” it isn’t a trait exclusively determined by nature. Creativity, critical and analytical thinking can be encouraged and nurtured. The earlier we start, of course, the better.

Reading to your children and raising them to be readers develops creativity. Every story you share is a creation of a writer and illustrator who wanted to share his or her make-believe world. Over time, your child absorbs the notion that word and pictures are vehicles for creating and communicating.

Intereacting creatively with our children will also feed and seed  creativity, which could help us to not only lead more entertaining lives, but secure ones!

Here’s a primer:

  • Adopt  the Miss Frizzle philosophy: I encourage my college-level writing students to “Take chances and make mistakes.”  Don’t be so quick to “correct” your child’s writing. Put grammar and mechanics on the backburner. Let them get their ideas out, let them develop their ideas, then make grammar a part of the polishing process.
  • Make time: We overschedule ourselves and we overschedule our kids. Schedule in some free time for writng and the thinking that accompanies it. I tell my college students that writing is thinking on paper. I also tell them that learning to communicate well in writing is like learning to ride a bike–no one does it by reading the “how to ride a bike manual.” No one learns from a firm classroom lecture.  We observed, desired, and hopped on…and fell. Bike-riding is one risk that we all took with positive results. With time and practice, we gained confidence–some of us enough to ride  without our hands on the handle-bars, some enough to jump ramps and pop wheelies.
  • Greet all your child’s writing and drawing positively. You don’t have to overdo it–In fact, you needn’t critique or evaluate it at all. Just acknowledge and appreciate what they’ve done, and make any observations you want to share.  Phrases like, “Wow, you really wrote a lot about this,” “I can tell you had your thinking cap on,” or “This is different from anything you’ve written before. What got you thinking about this?”
  • Encourage creative problem solving: Asking your children what they might do in a situation is one way to sharpen this skill. This is a great game to play in the car, but its success hinges on your ability to put on your thinking cap and come up with some interesting scenarios.  Give them mazes–they require you to think “how do I get from HERE to THERE?”   When reading a book together, ask your kids how they might solve a problem the characters are dealing with. “What would you do differently? Why”?
  • Model Creative Behavior: Sit down with your kids when they write, when they read, and when they paint, draw, and build…and participate.
  • Play word games. Wordplay is creative thinking in practice. You can easily make time for a rhyming game with your toddler, and a “What if…” game with your middle-schooler. My kids always enjoyed “What would a day in the life of a __________be like? “
  • Allow some privacy where needed: This is especially important for teen writers. Give them the tools and the time to journal, paint and draw on their own, but don’t push to see their work.