By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

Imagination in child development plays a vital role, influencing a range of outcomes. Even as an adult, you can spot the role ingenuity plays in your life. Coming up with a new way to double your income, design home decorations with dried flowers or implementing a way to build confidence in your children. Each of these developments requires ingenuity.

So Much to Gain – Imagination in Child Development

Take away imagination and with it go creativity, inspiration, innovation and progress. It’s so important that Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “Logic will get you from A to Z. Imagination will get you everywhere.”

Scholars and scientists have studied imagination in child development for years, some leaders thinking that imagination or creativity are naturally given. In fact, Yale Insights shares that, “The idea of humans as uniquely creative animals goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks.” Others, like Aristotle, were under the impression that imagination or creativity was a gift from the gods.¹

Defining Imagination in Children

But just what is imagination?

Merriam-Webster dictionary says that it is, “the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality,” From a creative stance, it is defined as the “ability to confront and deal with a problem.”

Above all, the ability to “confront and deal with a problem” is crucial. If children don’t know how to face and deal with challenges in healthy ways, they could experience inner turmoil. For example, they could feel hopeless and a lack of confidence.

How Imagination in Child Development Proves Critical

Without the ability to confront and deal with problems, children could also give up or resort to fighting to try to resolve a conflict. Here are more ways that imagination in child development proves critical:

• Language development relies on imagination. Also, the more languages children speak, the stronger their creative thinking may be.²
• Play is a primary way that children develop friendships and learn to make sense of the world. Critical thinking, social development and physical abilities are discovered and developed during play. Additionally, play helps regulate emotions and mental health. If you’ve ever seen a child become happier, more engaged and more energized after healthy playing, you saw firsthand the impact of play on a child’s development.
• Creative writing, especially fictional writing, needs strong imagination. Develop Good Habits says that “Creative writing strengthens language arts skills and improves children’s grades in all areas of coursework.It helps them understand and develop good grammar habits, sentence structure, vocabulary, and dialogue.”³
• Emotional functioning is at work when a child relates to others. Active listening, the ability to actually hear and respect what another person is saying and skills to manage their own feelings are parts of emotional functioning.
• Artistic expression can surface during play or while reading, an activity that encourages the use of imagination.

At first glance, imagination in child development might appear less important than logical and practical skills. However, logical skills like math, biology and geography don’t touch on as many life components as imagination does.

Ways to Strengthen Child’s Imagination

Yet, simply knowing how important imagination is in child development is not enough. You have to find effective ways to encourage children to exercise their imagination or creativity. Here are several actions you could take to encourage your children to strengthen their imagination:

• Invest time to actually play with your children. Don’t stop when your children start school. Continue to play with your children as they age. Doing so can strengthen your and your children’s imaginations.
• Bring in art. Let your children have fun creating pictures and splash drawings, getting their hands colorful in washable paint.
• Ask your children questions, aiming to get them into problem solving mode. Help them learn to use critical thinking and emotional functioning as they ponder your questions and potential answers.
• In healthy loving ways, motivate your children to “try again” when they encounter failure. For instance, you could ask your children to list or talk about ways that they could approach a challenge or overcome a failure. Make it fun.
• Encourage independence and free thinking. This means that you don’t demand that your children see life the way that you do. Who knows? Your children might come up with a way to solve a decades-long problem when they grow up.
• Travel, allowing your children to explore different cultures, physical landscapes and environments.
• Dance with your children, celebrating their unique moves and rhythm.
• Allow your children to help you complete daily tasks like cooking. In fact, if you add toys and your children’s favorite songs to a meal preparation, your children might not only love to cook, they might appreciate finding creative ways to decorate food.

Let Your Child’s Creativity Bloom

Perhaps more importantly, let your children see you using your imagination. You can do this by reading books to your children. And you can let your children see you reading books by yourself that you love. Benefits of reading extend beyond imagination.

Reading aids in learning. The more your children read, the quicker they can pick up details. When you consider the wealth of information inside books, reading is a shortcut to a broader and deeper education, the type of learning that last a lifetime.

Pay attention to what blooms from your child’s imagination. You could be the parent or guardian of a gifted artist. That, or your child could be a medical, scientific or technological innovator.

So, curl up with your children and a good book. Make it a regular, special event. If you make reading books fun, your children might start asking you to read to them. It could become a fun, bonding experience that exercises your children’s imagination and yours.

Resources:

1. What Is Creativity? | Yale Insights
2. Bilingual Kids Better at Creative Thinking (medicaldaily.com)
3. 9 Benefits of Creative Writing to Help Your Children (developgoodhabits.com)