Is there a war on creativity? Some days I feel like there is. And we are waging it against the youngest members of our society. These are some things that I witnessed with kids under the age of 5 recently:
- A mom running errands, with a movie running in the back seat of the car
- A grandmother bragging about how well her toddler grandson uses the drawing app on her tablet
- A two year old in a shopping cart was playing a game on the mom’s phone while she shopped (no conversation going on there)
- A family walking into a restaurant and the 3 and 5 year olds were each carrying a tablet
Yes, I know I sound judgmental. I also hope that the “snapshot” that I saw was not representative of the “whole album.” But gosh, I think it’s sad. Here are countless missed opportunities for kids to be engaged in real life, but they are absorbed in an electronic experience instead.
Think about how important engagement is to the young human brain. Conversation, observation and reflection are the activities that foster interconnectivity of the different areas of the brain. Albert Einstein’s brain was actually smaller than the average brain, but the “connection center” between his two hemispheres was larger than average. The preschool years are a critical time for all this interconnectivity to develop.
It’s so ironic! At the same time that adults are flocking to bookstores to buy “adult coloring books” we are handing a phone or tablet to a three year old instead of a coloring book and crayons. We let our kids build with Minecraft instead of with real blocks.
Are we too often allowing our kids to live an “electronic version” of life rather than the REAL version? Why not get rid of the jigsaw puzzle app and buy a real jigsaw puzzle to leave out on a coffee table?
The young human mind needs richness of experience. If too many experiences are “virtual” instead of real, then we are not fertilizing the soil. Think of the mind as a vast farm field that has been set aside for growing creativity. Are you planting and tending a crop or just letting the weeds move in?
What is one small change you can make for the kids in your life (or yourself) to help fertilize the soil?
