Teaching our children to practice a healthy autonomy, we teach them to define themselves on their own terms. As we help them to interpret—and sometimes discard—the labels that may be arbitrarily placed on them, we help them to see themselves as they are: an original individual. Teaching them social norms, we also teach them how much to conform. As we strive to be available to them without being too available, we help them plant roots as well as grow wings. With a healthy balance of support and independence, we grant them the freedom to be themselves.
As we witness and encourage our children’s emerging self-definition, we may find ourselves having to draw new boundaries as the erratic forward motion promises change every day. Some boundaries are for our children: “It’s okay to sing at the top of your lungs at home in the living room, but if you stand on the table in a restaurant and do the same thing, we’ll all be asked to leave.” Other boundaries are for ourselves: “Bottom line: I will not say anything negative about my child’s creative efforts today. Even if he is making terrible sounds on the trombone, I will only encourage his practice and reward him when the time is up.” We also are asked to set boundaries with others: “Do not label my child. Do not compare my children to each other.”
As identity forms and our children are allowed choice and measures of independence, we must be conscious of labels. Labels can be uttered carelessly, but stick with people for years. Stephanie studied with the same piano teacher from age six through eighteen. The lesson was a significant event in her week every week for the better part of her upbringing. When Stephanie told the teacher that she was going to college to major in theater, her piano teacher said, “Oh, that’s a surprise. I thought it was your brother who always got the leads in the plays.”
“I can’t believe she said that,” she tells me now. “Someone who knew me, too! She was pretty focused on my brother all along—he was her prize student—but it’s amazing how carelessly she would just say something like that. And it did affect me, not enough to stop me from doing what I am doing, but certainly enough to make me remember—and repeat—that story several times since.”
Creativity is born in generosity and flourishes where there is a sense of safety and self-acceptance. Your child is happiest when feeling a sense of security. As your child’s protective parent, you must learn to place your child with safe companions. Toxic influences can poison our children’s artistic growth. Not surprisingly, the most toxic influences are those people whose creativity is still blocked. Threatened by the freedom and emerging creativity in our children, they lash out in a jealous, misguided attempt at self-protection.
I ask my students what the greatest block was to their creativity as a child. Hands shoot into the air.
“Being labeled ‘non-musical.’ Music was my sister’s activity.”
“My parents telling me to do something productive.”
“My father telling me to stop reading and do something useful for once.”
“Being laughed at for wanting to dance.”
“Having an art teacher yell at me for coloring outside the lines.”
“My mom criticizing my drawings.”
“My aunt’s sarcasm about my poetry.”
“My piano teacher telling me to ‘never miss a note’ in performance. It stopped me in my tracks. I quit piano.”
“My mom telling me I was a genius. I thought I had to be perfect. I was embarrassed to ever ask for help.”
The list goes on and on. Offhand, thoughtless comments, tossed out and forgotten by the offender, lodge themselves in our psyches and become a block to our creative identities. Labels—both positive and negative—are dangerous. Telling children they are “lazy” and telling them that they are “brilliant” have similar effects: in both cases, the child is less inclined to do what they might naturally want to do. Called lazy, they feel a sense of shame and “What’s the use?” Called brilliant, they are afraid to make mistakes, lest they not live up to their title. The tragic result of both is that in each case, the child learns that creating is dangerous.
Learning that it is dangerous to create, learning that we will be labeled and judged if we create, we respond by not creating. Not creating, we ignore the largest and most precious part of ourselves.
Our culture has a mythology about artists that runs very deep. Teachers, friends, parents may all unconsciously believe that art is a waste of time and that artists are crazy, unstable, alcoholic. The reverse is actually true: blocked artists often act crazy and unstable. Blocked artists waste lots of time. The Great Creator has gifted us with creativity. Every person is creative. Using our creativity brings us closer to God. Encouraging our children’s creativity brings our children closer to their own higher power. You must be very careful to safeguard your child’s emerging creativity. In protecting them, be gentle but firm, and hang tough. Allow your children the joy of practicing their creativity. Trust that they are on the right track. They are. You need not control their results.
MAKE A COLLAGE
An Exercise 
This is one of my favorite exercises, and one for you to do with your children “separately but together.” Collect old magazines and give each person a pair of scissors, glue, and a piece of posterboard. As each member of the family chooses images that speak to him or her and arranges them as they like, it is astonishing to note the different messages and beautiful insights each poster contains. This exercise promises to surprise. When you are done, allow each member of the family to “present” his or her collage to the rest.
REBELLION VS. CONFORMITY
We are an ambitious society, and one of the things we are ambitious about is our children. We want them to excel, to shine, to have “the best.” We want them to be accepted and we want them to operate successfully in the world. And so, we may find ourselves resisting creative impulses that do not directly serve our children’s career goals, or our ideas about what our children’s career goals should be. We may resist the things they ask to do that might embarrass us or them—or “make us—or them—look bad.” We must be discerning here. There are, of course, accepted norms that we teach our children to conform to in society. And there are other norms that would do well to be challenged a little bit.
It is the paradox of creative recovery—and development—that we must get serious about taking ourselves and our children lightly. We must relearn to play and encourage our children to play. We must protect our children’s impulse to expand.
We can find creative ways to encourage “appropriate rebellion”—that is, a sense of play and mischief that can be fun for the whole family. With a little imagination on our part, we can encourage creativity by encouraging a lighthearted nonconformity.
Valerie, mother to an eight- and a twelve-year-old, had tired of her children’s constant begging in the cereal aisle at the grocery store. “No, you can’t buy cereal if the first ingredient is sugar,” she said for the thousandth time. “That would be like having dessert for breakfast.” Her children continued to beg, pulling every brightly colored box from the shelf and eagerly reading the list, hoping to find something that they could get past the strict rules of the shopping cart.
“Corn syrup?” Brooke, the older one offered.
“No,” Valerie reminded her. “That’s sugar.”
“But I want to eat dessert for breakfast!” her son pleaded. “That would be the best day ever.” And suddenly, Valerie had the flash of an idea.
“Well, if you were going to have dessert for breakfast, would you choose cereal?” she asked pointedly. Brooke and Ryan looked at each other.
“Not sure,” Brooke said uncertainly.
“You mean if we could have any dessert for breakfast?” Ryan asked.
“Right,” Valerie said, and smiled.
“Well, then it would be chocolate cake,” the siblings agreed.
“Okay, then,” Valerie promised. “Let’s go to the baking aisle.”
Her children looked at each other, shocked. Were they going to have chocolate cake for breakfast?
“Tomorrow is a special holiday,” Valerie continued, pretending to check her calendar. “It’s called Backwards Day. That means we start with dessert in the morning, then have dinner. At lunchtime we have lunch, and at dinnertime, we have breakfast.” She laughed at how much fun the whole thing seemed, even to her. “So let’s plan our menu.”
As they raced around the grocery store, deciding on what each meal would be, they anticipated the next day with glee. And as promised, the next morning there was chocolate cake for breakfast. “Now, remember, this only happens once a year,” Valerie said. “But it’s pretty fun, isn’t it?”
From then on, every year, her children looked forward to Backwards Day. This small, creative act of rebellion reminded all of them that they had power in the world, too, that rules weren’t set in stone. “Once a year, I don’t think it’s doing any damage,” Valerie says. I am quite sure it is doing the opposite. Playful nonconformity within the guidelines of safety can bring joy and a sense of expansion that it is our spiritual and creative birthright to experience.
A common thread among people who have been raised to become—and remain—freely creative is a sense that their parents enjoyed their playfulness. Without overly praising or harshly discounting their efforts, these parents tended to have a light touch when it came to creative play.
Alexandra remembers going to a summer arts camp as a child, and the day that the director gave each of the participants a parting gift of a necklace with a wooden star pendant on an orange rope. “It takes a brave person to wear orange,” he said, handing out the necklaces. Alexandra said it was at this moment her love of orange was spawned. Returning home, she tells the story of deciding that she would take this act of courage even further, proudly sporting every color of the rainbow for her first day of fifth grade: purple shoes, green socks, blue pants, yellow T-shirt peeking out of the neckline of a red polo, and of course, her orange necklace.
“My parents didn’t congratulate me on my brilliant outfit when I came downstairs, but they didn’t make me go back and change, either,” she says. “I guess overall, they pretty much let me do my thing.”
Nurturing our children and ourselves, we teach our children to nurture themselves and others. Nurturing themselves and others, they strengthen their connection with the Great Creator. Through this connection, their creativity will unfold. Paths will appear for them. We need not know precisely how. We need to trust that our children are moving in the right direction—and allow them to move out in faith.
BACKWARDS DAY
An Exercise
Taking a cue from Valerie, plan to celebrate a once-a-year festivity: Backwards Day. Allow your children to be involved in the menu. This is a day for exceptions, so don’t allow your nutritional goals to overpower this trip to the grocery store. Allow yourself to have fun as well. This will be a day your whole family will remember.
It is a constant balancing act to determine how available we should be to our children. There are times when we choose to be unavailable, needing to recharge on our own. There are other times when we are committed to work and unable to be at home. And then there are times when we must be cautious not to be too available. On a daily basis, our commitments—to ourselves, our work, and our children—must be juggled thoughtfully. It is our job to determine the necessary family schedules. We must meet work and educational needs, appointments and desires. We must also tune in—and react to—emotional and spiritual needs. These help determine the amount of time we have together and the amount of time we have apart.
Often, our impulse is to commit more time to our children than is really feasible—or advisable. We want to be a “good parent” 24/7. We believe we should always be “on tap.” But this is not realistic. We do our children a disservice if we teach that we will always be available on demand. Better for us to model the real world—a place where we do not always get instant gratification. When I told my daughter, “Not now, Mommy’s writing,” I taught her patience and sensitivity. Our children need to learn both of these qualities. When I talk to my daughter on the phone now, she will routinely ask me, “Is this a good time, or are you in the middle of something?” I then give her my boundaries. “I have to leave the house in twenty minutes. We can talk for fifteen.” There are times, too, when I am in the midst and cannot talk. My daughter has learned to have faith that I will get back to her as soon as I can. “You need to have time to yourself,” my wise friend Julianna McCarthy taught me. “It’s not selfish to take care of yourself. It helps you both.” She insisted that I hire a babysitter and that I take the time and care to have a weekly Artist Date, to do something that enchanted or interested me, alone. Julianna insisted that I consciously and regularly “fill the well.” As a parent, you draw on your well heavily and must make a conscious effort to replenish it.
When we try to go too long without replenishing our inner well, we run the risk of martyrdom and resentment. Our children can tell when we are available happily and when our availability is a forced march. In tune with ourselves, we take care of ourselves. Taking care of ourselves, we are in tune with our children. Our example of self-care teaches them the same.
When we have to spend extended periods of time at work, we may feel guilty or impatient with a schedule that seems to be beyond our control. But as we accept our schedule and value both our work and home lives, both lives can be richer for it. There is always a happy balance available for us to strike. We can always improve the way we deal with the realities of juggling a work and family life.
David, an entrepreneur, travels frequently for business. “It’s part of my reality,” he says. His company has three locations, and although his home base is in Miami, he is frequently in New York or L.A. “I have to go,” he says. “But my three sons know that whenever I travel, I bring them back a little something. It’s really something small—maybe a baseball cap or a book for each of them—but I try to bring a souvenir for each of my kids so that they know I was thinking about them on the road.” Although David’s work and travel schedule is intense, he keeps in regular contact with his sons, no matter where he is. “I’ve learned that a little really does go a long way,” he says. “Taking ten minutes to really listen to my son’s adventures from the day, and tell him I love him, no matter what else is going on, makes us both feel connected. I sometimes wish I could spend all day every day with my kids. But I actually know that it’s really okay for all of us the way it is. I just make sure to make an effort every day, no matter what.”
David’s three sons agree. “Dad knows what we’re up to,” says Mike, the oldest. “I don’t really feel out of touch with him, even though he travels a lot. And he does spend a lot of time with us.” When David asks Mike if he’d rather have him around all the time, Mike grins at him. “We have that when we’re on vacation. And I think that’s enough.”
We cannot ignore or completely control the realities of our lives. But the important thing to remember is that we need not be constantly available to our kids. It is the quality of the time, more than the amount of time, that determines our actual relationship with our children.
Too much time, too, can end up backfiring in the end. If our schedule is such that we are indeed with our children most of the time, we have to be alert to not becoming codependent with our child.
Dannie, a stay-at-home mom who also homeschools her daughter, speaks of the opposite issue to David’s. “I have to be careful not to be too available to my daughter,” she tells me. “We can get enmeshed so easily. Homeschooling is a strong element to add to the already intense mother-daughter relationship. It’s the right choice for our family, but it is a balancing act.”
Dannie has learned from experience. “When we go too long with ‘just the two of us,’ we both seem to regress,” she tells me. “My daughter needs the checks and balances of a peer group, and since she doesn’t have that through school, I have to be very careful to provide it.” As Dannie schedules playdates and outside activities for her daughter, she is conscious to put her daughter into situations where other adults are in charge. “It can’t just be me, always telling her what to do,” Dannie tells me. “She’d resent that very quickly! And I think she’d stop listening.”
As we determine right amount of availability for our own well-being and our children’s, we juggle realities and desires from every corner. One thing that Dannie learned is that in her own home, it was important to draw limits regarding the parents’ bedroom. Although her daughter might have liked to sleep all together, Dannie found this boundary to be especially helpful in a home where enmeshment was a danger. “We let her come into our room at nine a.m. on weekend days to snuggle, but not at other times,” she says. “It’s good for her to have her own room, her own bed, and a space that’s just hers. And the same is good for my husband and me.” Sometimes the amount of time we have available to our children is within our control, and sometimes it is not. Keeping an eye on having “enough” time, we must also be alert to not having too much. Giving everyone breathing room, room to “be,” we create a family that is at once connected and autonomous.
HOUSE RULES
An Exercise
ROOTS AND WINGS
“The thing about becoming a parent,” says Scott, “is that you get to relive your childhood all over again. When my sons experience the thrill of playing in the ocean for the first time, it’s like I’m playing in the ocean for the first time, too. I didn’t see that coming. It’s fun.”
Sharing your past with your child can be a thrilling part of parenting. Opening them up to our favorite experiences, we reexperience them ourselves and bond the past and the future. Carrying on our own traditions, we pave the way for our children to carry them on yet again.
“People don’t play enough games anymore,” says Marcia, a Chicagoland mother of two young boys. “And I’m not talking about video games. I mean games where you have to think. Celebrity, Scattergories, things like that. Parents need to have fun with their kids. And look, going to a sporting event isn’t fun for me. Driving them to swimming lessons isn’t fun. I mean fun like we used to have when I was growing up. I’m amazed that kids don’t know how to play games anymore.”
Visiting Marcia’s warm and busy home, I watch her navigate the huge amounts of energy coming from her boys and their friends while still staying amazingly focused on talking to me.
“Everyone come over to the table,” she calls out. “I’m ordering pizza. And we are going to play a game while we wait for it to arrive.”
There is some grumbling, but after a few moments, the boys are assembled at the table, throwing out ideas for pizza toppings and settling roughly in their chairs.
“Okay, okay,” Marcia calls out. “I heard you. I have your orders. Now, tell me, do any of you have a clue how to play Scattergories?” Her sons do, but none of their friends do. “Good,” Marcia says. “Then you’re going to learn.”
And so, Marcia lays out the rules and, after a chaotic start, the game is well under way. The boys are entertaining themselves and one another with their answers, connecting with each other in a way that I hadn’t seen when they were chasing each other around the house earlier. When the pizza comes, they devour it, but the game doesn’t stop.
“See?” Marcia says to them. “More fun than you thought, wasn’t it?” Marcia turns to me as the boys scatter. “The thing is, if they haven’t tried something, they don’t know there’s another option. If you never show them that stuff, how do you think they’ll learn about it? I happen to believe in games. Car games, games at home—I’ll tell you, movies in the car was such a bad idea. I try to set an example of creativity. That’s the biggest thing. You want them to read? Read. Play games? Play games with or without them.”
Marcia has the right idea, I think, and I tell her this. Her sons are living proof. They are athletes, but they have also both acted in community and school plays. They are learning instruments. They are young boys, and they are moving at the dizzying pace of young boys. But they are being exposed in large and small ways to creative opportunity and to the creativity of the generations that preceded them.
If it is possible to travel to see relatives or to see places where ancestors grew up, it is worth doing. If it is prohibitive to do this, tell stories to your children. Tell them stories of things you remember about growing up. Ask them to tell you a story of their own. If your ancestors are German, go to a German restaurant. Learn to count to ten in German. Open a door—any door—to the rich history of your past, and your child will be enriched.
Sometimes we are able to give roots to our children’s dream, but must look to another family member to help provide the wings. When we are able to share our children’s development with other members of our family, we are given a rare and precious gift, indeed.
Sarah, a young mom to three-year-old Eva, was never interested in the theater. As a child, her parents valued exposure to as much creativity as possible, taking their children to local productions at the children’s theater and area schools. Although Sarah was not tempted to join in the action onstage, she did enjoy spectating, and as much as she might not see herself participating in an activity of the sort, she was entertained.
Sarah’s younger brother Toby, however, was an entirely different story. Only three years old when he sat through his first musical, he was immediately entranced by its spectacle. Now a professional theater director, Toby still speaks of his early theatrical memories with the awe of a child.
“I guess it was at the elementary school, the first show I saw,” Toby remembers. “But for all I knew it was as mind-blowing as seeing a musical on Broadway for the first time. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It felt like real magic to me. In my work, I try to re-create that feeling for my audiences. I always wonder if my former self is sitting in the audience of my shows. I assume he is.”
Because Sarah and Toby were raised with the value that creativity in all forms is worth being exposed to, Sarah is committed to giving the same gift to Eva.
“I don’t really understand the theater, but Eva seems to enjoy it a lot,” Sarah says. “It’s not a passion of mine, but I am happy for anything that excites her, really. Her reactions are as fascinating to me as anything happening onstage. I’ll always bring her to as much theater as I can. And as soon as she wants to participate, I’ll encourage it.”
Toby couldn’t be more thrilled that his niece seems to be sharing some of his own interests. Visiting her regularly, he brings her movie musicals and CDs. He acts out scenes with her and encourages her to act out her own.
“Eva is really becoming quite the actress,” Sarah says, laughing. “I just stay out of the way when she is creating her characters. It’s hilarious to me to watch where she goes with these things—constantly making up stories and ‘performing’ them for me. I’ll always be an enthusiastic audience member—now and if ever she decides to do this on a real stage.”
Sarah’s great gift to Eva is her attention and applause. In giving her this, she does give her roots. Eva has in Toby not only a connection to her extended family but an ally who speaks her language, who offers her gifts a step beyond what she has yet imagined or been exposed to, thus helping her passions take flight. Sarah, in her position from the audience, makes Eva feel safe. Letting her perform her stories in the living room, she gives Eva roots. As an audience, she may seem to perform a non-action, but the gift of attention is perhaps the most important action of all.
As we expose our children to all we can, we give them the possibility of finding not only fun but also connection. Sharing our passions and our histories with our children, we let them know that they are a part of this history and passion. Allowing them to forge connections, we give wings to their dreams.
RETURNING TO GAMES
An Exercise
Play a game. Not a video game. Ideally, you will choose a game you played as a child. Play it with your child today. What memories resurface? How does your child enjoy “playing in your past”?