When it comes to imagination, there are no right or wrong answers for the most part. Encouraging imagination in children is a vital component to their development and parents play an important role in determining that imagination by encouraging it. When parents do not encourage imagination in their children, they run the risk of hampering the development of many important mental capacities that children develop through the experience of play.

Allowing children to have adventures in their own minds using creative tools, such as dollhouses or other miniature worlds, is an important piece of the child raising puzzle. It is important to encourage children to use their minds in play situations, as this encourages the emergence of rules, regulations, creative thinking, and problem solving. Far too often, children lack those skills upon entering the most basic of life situations because of the parent’s desire to have their children become in touch with “reality” as early as possible. This is often referred to as “tough love” and is certainly not suitable for young children.

There are many practices that discourage the use of children’s imagination and abstract skills.

Television and Computers
Too often in the modern world, it is common to have passive parenting skills take charge. Parents often park their children in front of the television or computer for hours on end as a result of the busy lifestyle they lead. As a result, the children become engaged in what is largely an inactive medium. This hampers creativity immeasurably.

This passive action takes its place in the form that the children do not need to act in order for there to be action. Instead, action occurs as a result of the simple click of a button. This diminishes children’s learning capacity to view the world as an interactive place and can place unrealistic demands on the life experience of children. The passive nature of television or computer games often leads to a lack of physical play in children as well.

Teaching Techniques
Believe it or not, some teaching techniques can stifle the ability of children to imagine and work with their creativity. Rigid teaching systems that teach conceptual skills are often the culprit here, as children learn endlessly from passive workbooks and are not taught critical interaction and imagination skills. This form of learning is common in early-age schoolchildren and commonly teaches children principles through verbal instruction rather than allowing children to learn principles through active participation.

A big part of the problem with this is that nothing is actually actively learned in a physical sense. Children learn from experience, by and large, and rely on life experiences to teach them what they need to know. The universal example of the child touching the stove several times to figure out that it is hot is a clear example of this type of learning style. Children that do not learn by doing often do not learn as successfully as those that learn through experience.

So the next time children are interacting with a dollhouse and playing with dolls in an imaginary sense, sit down and interact with them. Adults in these frenzied modern times have a lot to learn from children who have the ability to learn creatively and intelligently.

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