While creativity comes naturally in children, it is also something that can be - and should be - fostered.

According to Mitch Resnick, a professor of learning research at the MIT Media Lab, a common misconception is that it’s best to encourage children’s creativity by getting out of their way and letting them be creative.

“Although it’s certainly true that children are naturally curious and inquisitive, they need support to develop their creative capacities and reach their full creative potential,” he says.

Resnick says supporting children’s development is a balancing act.

Creative thinking is also essential in helping children look at something from different perspectives and explore their ideas and imaginative powers, according to Twin (www.TwinScience.com), an online resource for educators and parents about technology with an emphasis on collaboration and empathy.

Twin says creative thinking exercises boost children’s curiosity and let creative ideas flow, leading to new ideas.

This can be done by:

  • Getting your child to adopt reading habits

  • Giving your child time to solve problems on their own

  • Encouraging questions

  • Giving your child responsibility

  • And more

Activities move the creative process, too, such as putting together models or sculpting, playing instruments or singing, playing memory games and puzzles, pretend play, drawing and more, says Twin.

But all of this comes down to having an open, non-judgmental approach by parents, including projecting any of their biases on their children.

That may mean that a parent with a musical background allows a child with an interest in visual arts to be free to do so.

Or that a child is permitted time to be free and create, even if the parent was raised in a more structured home themselves.

It also means having a broad view of what creativity means.

“There are so many types of creativity. It could be the way your child lines up their stuffed animals in the bed to create comfort or how they match their clothing, says Wendy Firestone, a school psychologist who brings some 35 years of experience working with K-12 students.

James C. Kaufman, an educational psychologist, professor at the University of Connecticut Near School of Education, and author of more than 50 books, including Creativity 101, agrees.

“We have certain fixed ideas about creativity,” says Kaufman. “But there are all these gradations and levels of creativity. Creativity is not just about the arts; it applies to everything that involves the process of problem-solving.”

MIT’s Resnick shares that there are not just levels of creativity but also levels to approaching it, whether in the classroom or in the home.

“The key challenge is not how to ‘teach’ creativity to children, but rather how to create a fertile environment in which their creativity will take root, grow and flourish.”

That includes considering how much structure, how much freedom, when to step in, when to step back, when to show up, when to tell, when to ask and when to listen.

“Imagine the children in your life as creative thinking apprentices; you’re helping them learn to become creative thinkers by demonstrating and discussing how you do it,” Resnick says.