The very act of creation might be defined as inventing something new, making something from nothing. Mining the daily realities of our lives for creative opportunities, we teach our children to do the same. We can find fun in unlikely places as we approach seemingly humdrum activities with joy and imagination. Dealing with boredom and menial tasks, we can actively choose to bring a sense of play. Exposing our children, in bite-sized increments, to the adult realities of running a household, we can pique their interest and help them to value—and enjoy—money earned and goals accomplished. Consciously digging deeper and setting an example of innovation, we learn—and teach—that within every activity, however simple, can lie inspiration.
“I’m bored,” our children complain, and the look in their eye completes the unspoken end of their sentence: “Fix it.”
The idea that “boredom” is a stagnant state in and of itself is a myth. Boredom has nothing to do with stasis. It is, in fact, the opposite. Boredom is a call to action, a prompt to change direction. Boredom does not mean we are “out of ideas.” It means we are ready to move on to the next one. Because creativity is an in-dwelling force infusing all of life, it is a constant supply that is available to us at every moment.
As a child, I lived in a home richly endowed with playthings and pastimes. In my after-school playtime, I had ample choices of things that would engage my attention. And yet I would sometimes announce to my mother, “I’m bored.” My mother had a quick comeback: “If you’re bored, it’s because you lack inner resources.” My mother was not about to be bullied. She knew she had placed multiple toys at my disposal. I remember being angry that I couldn’t guilt-trip her into providing still more pastimes. After all, I could draw, build with blocks, play with clay, do dress-up, or herd my toy animals. Far from bored, my only real difficulty lay in choosing the day’s delight. Multiple toys encourage multiple interests. There is no place for boredom in a well-stocked playroom.
Claire, a comedienne, tells me of her stepmother’s quick comeback to her complaints of boredom. “Oh, good!” she would say. “Because I have a list of chores for you to do!”
“My brothers and I quickly learned to never say we were bored,” Claire says, and chuckles. “Otherwise, we’d be stuck doing the most boring chores of all! My stepmother always had a list ready to go—polishing the silverware, raking the lawn, dusting the baseboards. By learning not to say ‘I’m bored,’ we learned to change focus.”
Growing up in rural France, Claire found many of her pastimes were outdoors. Picking flowers or exploring the edges of her parents’ property, she would make up stories of elves living in the trees and the journey a bird had taken before deciding where to settle and build her nest.
“There wasn’t a lot of artificial stimulus in my childhood,” Claire remembers. “TV was strictly limited, as was mindless computer time. So we used our imaginations a lot.”
“Using” imagination is a more literal expression than we may realize at first glance. Imagination is a part of all of us, as available to us as thought itself. Using it, we exercise an important muscle. Strengthening that muscle, we develop the empowering habit of exercising the part of our brain that is the most original and most individual to us.
It is easy to fall into negative habits of complaining, of looking through a pessimistic lens at the world, of nitpicking, of seeing ourselves as victims. When we consciously push ourselves to look for imaginative solutions, we are granted optimism and inspiration. When we leave our children to their own devices, allowing them to rely “only” on their imaginations, we offer them the same reward. Engaging the world imaginatively, in large and small ways, we are at a distinct advantage. While boredom asks us to dally, we must instead stubbornly take this boredom as a cue to change direction. Imagination urges us on toward our own True North.
In a time of overabundant stimulation and distraction available to us and our children at every moment, we have to be even more vigilant. Giving our children the time and space to come to their own conclusions and new ideas, we help them. Hovering and directing their every move, we hinder them. How will they learn to pick up a pen or a set of paints or a musical instrument and be self-starting if we do it for them? We must be careful that we are not teaching them not to think—or, worse, to be afraid to be alone with their thoughts, that vast emptiness of “what’s next,” which, paradoxically, is the source of true inspiration. By handing them every idea, we are teaching them that by complaining of boredom, they are granted a new idea in return. And this will never work, because the idea they are looking for is their own, not ours.
Feeling bored is inconvenient. It says, “Move on now. Look deeper. Push harder.” We would rather not feel bored. The same is true of our children. The good news about a call to action is that it initiates progress in us. The bad news is that it requires that we make a change. It requires getting up and searching for new ideas when we may not be in the mood to search. We may wish to be numbed by television, the Internet, a slice of cake. Our children are no different. But ignoring the promptings of boredom and indulging in a mind-numbing activity only puts off the inevitable. Once we have been called to action, that call will not go away until we indeed act on it. We may try to bury it, avoid it, douse it with cold water, but it will not go away. The embers will not go out, and the stirring of our soul will not stop. This is the calling of our own creative spirit, a spirit that exists in every person. When we feel that we are bored, it is because we have something to say.
The next time your child complains of boredom, try to resist the temptation to “solve” it by offering another activity. Try, instead, to hear what they are really saying. What exactly are they bored by? What exactly are they done with? What change of direction is required?
BLASTING THROUGH BOREDOM
An Exercise 
As quickly as you can, fill in the following sentence five times. If your child is old enough to tell you that he is bored, he is old enough to do this exercise as well. It may be done verbally or on paper. We are going for speed and the free-form variety of ideas that comes to us when we work quickly enough to outsmart the part of us that might try to second-guess our first impulses.
I could __________________________________________.
I could __________________________________________.
I could __________________________________________.
I could __________________________________________.
I could __________________________________________.
DEALING WITH THE DREADED
“In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun,” caroled Mary Poppins. In dealing with the dreaded, it is time to look to our own creativity to help our children participate in and accept some of the more humdrum daily routines and responsibilities of life. When we do, we show them that fun can be made anywhere and everywhere. Experiencing this will go a long way toward cultivating their enjoyment of small things, and as a result, their overall productivity and effectiveness. In learning to deal with the dreaded in a positive way, we eliminate roadblocks to success before they even exist.
Not every day can be a play day. Inevitably, there will arise those days when work demands our attention. Perhaps we have laundry left to fold or a trip to the grocery store. It falls to us to engage our children’s imagination, to make a game out of the tasks at hand. For laundry, we can have our children identify the owner of each piece we fold. “That’s mine!” “That’s Daddy’s!” “That’s yours!” As stacks build up, so will the desire to sort even more. Grocery shopping also calls on your child’s powers of concentration. Begin at the outer edge and work in concentric circles. Start off with fruits and vegetables; finish with baking supplies. Engage your child in choosing. “We love to play the alphabet game,” Sara says, encouraging her son to look for the letters on the labels. Talking to your children about where different foods come from can be an educational and interesting way to pass the necessary time in the grocery store.
Everyday tasks such as picking up toys, taking a bath, and getting ready for bed can also be livened up. “Seventy-two Pickup” is a good way to turn cleanup time into a game. For the bath, try an extra squirt of bubbles, yielding festive froth. At bedtime, allow your child to choose the evening’s reading. All of these playful stratagems work to transform drudgery to fun.
Larger endeavors arise as well, and, planning ahead, we can ensure that these yield pleasant memories, too.
Ginger tells the story of growing up in New Hampshire and visiting her grandmother and cousins every summer. She, her parents, and her brother would pack up the car and take the twenty-hour cross-country drive to Illinois to go to Granny’s house.
“In hindsight, it was quite an undertaking,” Ginger tells me now. “Twenty hours in the car with two little kids?” But the family had their rituals, and in the end, every element of the trip was anticipated with excitement.
On the day the trip began, they would leave at four a.m., “to get a good head start.” It was an adventure to be awoken at three-thirty, when it was still dark and sleep hung in the cool outdoor air. “The car was packed the night before,” Ginger explained, “so that we could get right in and start driving.” The back of the car was set up with sleeping bags and pillows, and the kids looked forward to nestling deep into their cozy spots and watching out the window as the sun rose on the day.
“Going to Granny’s house was a huge highlight,” Ginger said. “She baked special cookies for her grandkids, which she stored high on a shelf in a white cookie jar. She lived on Lake Michigan, and we would swim in the lake and play in the sand. Her garden was filled with flowers, and we loved exploring our mom’s old childhood toys in the house. There was a lot to look forward to, and we could hardly sleep as we imagined the visit to come.”
Ginger’s health-conscious parents made an exception on the way to Granny’s house: the family would go to a fast-food restaurant for breakfast on the first day of driving, and all of them could order anything they wanted. “I always got pancakes,” Ginger tells me. “It was a huge treat!” As the trip went on, stops along the way in foreign towns captured their imagination. They pulled into a campground and set up a tent at night, dragging sleeping bags from the car and reading with flashlights in the dark. In the morning, the shower in the main cabin was cool and exotic in the wooden-walled structure. “Everything about the trip was different from being at home,” she remembers.
Although they drove two long days, the trip always seemed to pass quickly. With something new around every corner, and the promise of Granny in a matter of hours, they enjoyed their journey. To break up the monotony, their mother would have “present time” along the way, pulling a new game or a book from her bag and delivering it to the backseat, where Ginger and her brother would excitedly explore the new gift.
After their week with Granny, when the time came to begin the long drive back home, Granny would present “Granny Bags” to each grandchild. Gift bags adorned with Miss Piggy and Kermit signaled the girls’ and boys’ stashes. For each hour that each child would be in the car, there was a small gift. “One an hour,” Granny would say, handing them the bag.
“It was like magic,” Ginger says. “Once every hour in the car, we got to pull an item from the Granny Bag. There might be a small jar of M&M’s, or a toy or a game. There might be a special pen or a set of stickers. It made the hours fly by. The mystery of what we would pull out next consumed us, and the magic of Granny was with us there in the car.”
As much as we can, we must teach our children that even the most mundane jobs can be turned to fun. Children love to turn everyday events into games. Setting a timer for cleanup, sorting laundry into “whose’s whose” piles, being in charge of drying dishes or putting away silverware—if we can make the job fun, our children will willingly join in.
AN ELEMENT OF FUN
An Exercise
List your five most dreaded activities.
1.__________________________________________
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2.__________________________________________
__________________________________________
3.__________________________________________
__________________________________________
4.__________________________________________
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5.__________________________________________
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Now, next to each one, see if you can think of a way to insert a little fun. For example, if one of your dreaded activities is “grocery shopping, because my son begs for candy,” perhaps you can agree to choose a small treat together, such as a new magnet or other small non-food item available in the grocery store, so long as your child holds up his end of the behavioral deal (no begging for candy). Succeeding, you will both be rewarded with a sense of pride, a successful trip to the store to build on for next time, and an anticipated treat.
Few tasks are more satisfying—or essential—than teaching our children the value of money. When you take a creative approach, it can also be great fun. A weekly allowance and a piggy bank are the places to start. A quarter, a dime, a nickel, a penny. Each coin has its value. Assigning tasks that allow your children to earn money helps them to understand the idea that money is an exchange of energy. Not all tasks should involve a monetary payoff; children need to learn to pitch in as working members of the household. But cash can be a valuable incentive when the tasks at hand are above and beyond the call of duty. Cleaning their bedrooms and helping with groceries may be expected responsibilities, but other tasks, such as weeding the garden, might pay a small fee. Monies earned can be monies saved as the piggy bank begins to have some heft. Once a month, the piggy bank can be emptied and coins counted. “You see? You have enough money to buy yourself a treat.” Saving for two months might yield enough cash to buy a coveted toy, or your child can choose to save it instead.
When she wasn’t buying us flowers, Domenica’s money went toward toy horses. Her friend Simone bought doll clothes. Learning to pay cash on the barrelhead, children learn to value every cent. Having their own money gives them a sense of power and helps them to appreciate when parental money is spent on their behalf. Money in, money out, children learn to appreciate a bargain. They learn, too, when something is overpriced and they cannot afford it. It is important that parents set the allowance or the job fee at the right amount. Too much money for too little work is as damaging as too little money for too much work. It is important to find stores where your child’s allowance has real buying power. A grocery store or a five-and-dime do nicely. “What do you want to buy today?” you may ask your children. Don’t be too discouraged if the answer is “M&M’s.”
Many children who were raised to be creative speak of growing up with very little money. A composer friend of mine practiced piano on a toy keyboard until his parents could afford to buy a used piano for him to play on. “It’s an old piano, but it works,” he says of the instrument, which is still in his parents’ living room. “It’s usually out of tune, and there’s plenty wrong with it. But I cherished it when they got it, and I cherish it today. I wrote my first fifty songs on that piano. I practiced for hours, determined to learn every chord in the jazz vocabulary, to be able to play them in every key and identify them by ear, on cue. I reached these goals.” My friend grew up in a small town, studying piano with “a crazy old guy who taught lessons at the piano store for seven dollars an hour.” But my friend was passionate, and so was his teacher. He didn’t need a pristine ballroom with a Steinway piano to learn chords and write songs. He didn’t need to go to a conservatory to gain knowledge of music during high school. He simply needed to chase his passions. Today, my friend has written several hit pop songs. And now, he does indeed own a beautiful piano.
“Once I started making money, I bought myself a grand piano,” he tells me. For him, money is no longer an issue. “It feels like a huge splurge, and I do love it. What a luxury to walk into my Manhattan apartment and see this dramatic instrument that is my very own. But that’s really what it is—a luxury. It’s not a necessity for me. Songs can be written in the back of a cab or on the subway. I sing them into my phone and go home and write them down. It often seems that my best ideas come to me when I’m in the most mundane places.”
My composer friend tells me that he later met colleagues who grew up in more privileged circumstances than he. To his eye, he is the one with the advantage. “I learned from my parents that if you worked hard, you could achieve your dream. I also learned that I could write songs on a keyboard as well as writing on a piano. I even learned to write in my head. It’s more about wanting to write a song than the beauty of the room in which you do it. As I met friends in college who came from wealthy backgrounds, I noticed that they seemed less joyful about their activities, and less childlike overall. It’s like they had seen it all already, and there wasn’t a lot of magic left for them.”
Regardless of a parent’s level of financial resources, they can encourage artistry in their children. Making art rarely costs us much, if anything. There are expensive and inexpensive ways to pursue artistic education, and if a parent is willing to research and budget their options for supporting the true interests of their child, they are bound to succeed, whether they are in a world-class urban training environment or choosing the right piano teacher for their particular child at the local piano shop. As parents spend money wisely, encouraging clear artistic values rather than the accoutrements of an artistic lifestyle, children learn to do the same.
Giving our children the example of how to spend money consciously, and giving them the opportunity to earn money—be it pocket change through chores or larger rewards for larger jobs—we empower our children to understand that they have earning power and choice. Learning to save money and to spend it, they are learning to assign value to items they desire. “Is this one worth the money?” they must ask themselves when they have only enough cash to choose one item. Making the wrong choice is good for them, too. Coming home only to wish they had bought the toy their brother bought, or chosen the doll that they had left behind, they can decide to do things differently next time. Learning to spend along our true values, be it spending hard-earned allowance money or spending money toward our children’s education, is a skill we must all hone by trial and error. It is good to begin young; beginning young, we ingrain a prosperity consciousness—the art of right spending—that will carry our children far and help protect their finances in the future.
EARNING MONEY
An Exercise
To experience the joys of long-term planning, see if you can create a large creative goal for your child. As the child accomplishes a baby step (for example, practicing the violin for one hour), allow him to “earn” a quarter, a dollar, or whatever you determine to be fair. Let him know he can “cash in” only at certain landmarks (fifty hours practiced, for instance). This playful motivator has worked wonders for many a project. Allow your child to decorate the chart, and proudly display it with the goal and his progress clearly marked.
Food is a major part of family time and larger family gatherings, and allowing your children to participate in the “family-style” activity of meal preparation is a gesture of trust, confidence, and interest that is likely to be not only appreciated but also enjoyed by your children. Being a part of the process, children see where the meal came from on its way to their plate. They may recognize ingredients they helped you shop for or choose vegetables from the garden that perhaps they themselves have planted. Children become empowered as they learn to cook for themselves and others.
When they are as young as age two, we can allow our toddlers to tear up lettuce for salad. We can invite our young children to set the table, allowing them to labor over one utensil at a time as they carefully prepare each place. We can encourage their efforts, and let them become invested in the meal that is to come. “I made that,” they proudly announce as the salad is passed. “I folded those napkins.” As they feel a sense of ownership over what is being served and how, they learn to care about food and what goes into creating it.
Katherine is an inspiring aunt to more than a dozen nieces and nephews. Her home, with its sprawling kitchen, is a natural gathering place. Her relatives are as drawn to her loving, open-door attitude as they are to her spectacular cooking. Harvesting a large garden, she often grows the foods that wind up on her dinner table.
“I let the kids help me as young as age three,” she says. “They can help as a salad chef, a sous-chef, or a dessert chef. I let them choose how they are going to participate and then show them the ropes within the area they’ve picked.” I watch Katherine coach the youngest, a delicate, brown-eyed beauty, as she places blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries into bowls filled with fluffy slices of angel food cake.
“I’m a dessert chef,” her niece announces to me.
“I see,” I agree.
Katherine guides her niece’s small hand as she ladles raspberry compote into each dish.
“Looks delicious,” I observe.
Katherine has several of the older children chopping vegetables. I’m impressed with their technique, and I tell her as much.
“Practice.” Katherine grins at me.
Before my eyes, her small army produces a large and festive meal. The table is set, salad and crudités are prepared, bread is sliced, olive oil is drizzled. Fresh herbs from Katherine’s garden garnish the salad and chicken that her husband carries in from the outdoor grill. I can see why Katherine’s house is a destination. There is a freedom in her kitchen. Spills are matter-of-factly cleaned up. Collisions among sous chefs are laughed off. And in the end, the pride in the group effort fills the air as much as the aromatic dishes.
Over dinner, her oldest nephew talks about the Italian olive oil on Katherine’s table with such passion that I ask him if he might want to go to culinary school or study cooking in some way. “I would,” he confirms. “And I have to go to Italy. That’s my first goal. I want to know where the best olive oil in the world comes from, and I need to go and test them all to find out. I’d like to find the olive oil that I consider perfect, and bring it to the U.S. Maybe I can even start some kind of business when I get out of school.” I study him as he speaks, believing he may well do just that.
Katherine is a truly gifted chef, but her gift of generosity is perhaps even more impressive. There is a sense of safety and experimentation in her kitchen. “I want them to be invested in the meal,” she says. “It encourages creativity and good table manners to have them participate.” She glances around her countertops at the open containers and remnants of the cooking endeavor. “However, this process can cause extreme messiness,” she says, smiling, “so adults have to know going in that they’ll need to leave the critical parent in them behind.”
I agree with her, thinking that she has just summed up, in one sentence, the reason I wanted to write this book.
Inviting your child to cook with you as part of his after-school playtime expands his creativity. Simple recipes are best. My mother taught each of her seven children the rudiments of cooking. She explained as she went. “Tonight we’re going to make a tuna casserole. The ingredients are tuna fish, potato chips, mushroom soup, and peas.” She showed us how to crush the potato chips, lay down a layer, spread the tuna fish, spread the mushroom soup, and add canned baby peas. Next, another layer, and she repeated the ingredients. Finally, she added a last layer of chips and drizzled the casserole with milk. While the casserole was baking at 350 degrees, it would be time to set the table. This, too, could be fun. Placing the silverware on the correct side of the plate, getting the glassware and setting it to the right, putting out the salt and pepper, the bread and butter, the jam. These were all simple tasks that would be rewarded with the exclamation “Good job!” When the dinner was served, my mother always made a point of complimenting her co-chefs.
Dorothy taught her children to make comfort food. I, in turn, taught Domenica. It was with great pride that she prepared a large pot of chili to feed her film crew. “They loved it, Mommy!” she reported gleefully. Tuna casserole was next up, with homemade cherry pie for dessert. The pie featured a crisscross lattice top that made it look fancy. Domenica learned the intricacies of pie making at my elbow. Including your child in your cooking accomplishes two valuable things: it provides a sense of pride in the present, and it promises autonomy in the future.
COOK SOMETHING
An Exercise
Whether you consider yourself a gourmet chef or a total beginner in the kitchen, there is a recipe that you can make with your child. Choose something appropriate for both of you, then create your dish together, from shopping to cleanup. Allow your child to participate and be “in charge” of appropriate steps. Notice the ownership you both feel when you are enjoying the meal or snack together, and congratulate yourselves on a job well done.