Nurturing your creative child

Written by Kerri Williams

Nurturing your creative child

by Kerri Williams

As creatives, we often seem to neglect our creative child. It can be the worst of parenting when it should be the best.

This is the child we should love and adore. This is the child we should hug and whisper words of love to. This is the child for which we should kiss away owies and wipe away tears. But instead, our creative child often becomes the bastard child, the one we criticize, the one we expect too much from, the one we put on a pedestal and turn in disgust when it falls.

And because of our attitude toward this child, it constantly seeks validation from us, which we sparingly give, not because we dislike this child, but because we fear this child.

Why do we fear our creative child? Because it is so deeply connected to us, to what we love and hate, to what we celebrate and dread, to what we expect of ourselves and can’t always deliver. The delivery, sadly, has more to do with us as a parent to this child than it does with the child itself.

The key is to mend this relationship between the parent and our creative child. Nurture instead of neglect.

• Begin this nurturing by accepting your creative child as part of your being. Love it no matter how disappointed you are with your own creative work. This child is doing everything it can to please you. Don’t condemn what it brings to your life. Accept it and nurture what your creative child gives.
• You child’s childhood is your childhood. Sometimes it’s based on joy, sometimes on fear. Fear envelopes your child and these fears must be comforted. Talk with your creative child. Help it overcome the fears you’ve instilled. Once you confront those fears, you can work with your creative child to help it find the lesson within.
• As a child, friends were chosen on a simple level. As an adult, you’re more particular about the friends you choose. Your creative child must also befriend your friends, so make sure you’re developing relationships that mesh with those of your creative child. If your friends don’t love that child as you do, that child will hide in fear of your friends’ opinions.
• Pay attention to how much time you allow your creative child to play. Play is an important part of your creative life and without it, your creative child will die a slow, sad death. Where you breathe the air around you to live, your child breathes play for the same reason.
• Share with your child the things you love. It’s probably the deepest connection you can claim with your creative child. Chances are your child loves exactly the same things. Embrace the joy of that shared love and your child will pay you back threefold with creative ideas.
• Give your child a place and time to play. Don’t lock up the creative child in a dark, dank room and expect it to nourish you with creative brilliance. Your child needs space and light in order to explore the surroundings of life to spark the ideas it passes on.

When you give yourself the time to nurture your creative child, you become one with that child. You become the child and you live the creative dream your child lives.

Peace on your journey – Kerri

What is your relationship to your ‘creative child’; are you giving it the attention it needs? Feel free to leave your thoughts below, and – of course – visit Kerri’s homepage for more articles, great photography (which you can buy), and even creativity coaching. And don’t forget to follow us on Google+, Twitter, or via RSS feed, or simply subscribe to our newsletter at the end of this page! Thanks for being with us.

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