"Close but not too close" is the motto for our children's development.
This is what I learned after reading Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way for Parents. I bought this book at the Art Gallery of New South Wales last month.
There is hardly a greater gift to us than finding a book with a theme of cultivating a child's creativity.
Now that I look back through my way of upbringing my daughter, I realise that I might have intervened too much, inserting my own buried dreams into her path. I wish I could say I follow the wisdom of Julia Cameron. Stated simply, our job is to clear a path for them to discover their own means of self-expression.
As parents, it falls to us to encourage and praise the child's efforts - and not much else. The child does the rest.
What could be better for Jasmine, we thought, than a "creativity corner" in our home? That's what we did. A corner with assorted items for inspiration - toilet-paper rolls, glue, tapes, beads, boxes, yarn ... And so, she makes her (almost) daily pilgrimage to that corner to begin her projects. As I write this, she has just created a smartphone keyboard out of used cardboard, with the confident smile of Steve Jobs on her face. "Objets d'art," I told her.
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