Creative Activities: Building Imagination and Connection
You don’t need to be artistic to do creative activities with your kids. You need to be willing to make something, anything, alongside them without worrying about whether it’s good.
That’s really the whole thing. Your kid doesn’t care if your drawing looks like a drawing. They care that you’re sitting next to them, making something, paying attention to what they’re making. Research shows creative activities activate multiple brain networks simultaneously, imagination, attention, and evaluation working together, and kids who engage in them regularly develop stronger divergent thinking and better problem-solving. But the reason it matters for your relationship is simpler: it creates shared focus in a low-stakes environment where neither of you has to be right.
Creative doesn’t just mean art
Building and making things, storytelling, music, cooking, photography, designing, all of it counts. If you’re not a painter, don’t force painting. Find the creative domain that actually interests you and bring your kid into it.
With little kids (ages 2-5)
Young children’s creative development is entirely about process, not product. A 3-year-old finger painting isn’t trying to make something beautiful. They’re exploring what happens when they move their hands through paint. The exploration is the point.
Do finger painting, play dough, clay, anything tactile. Draw together, taking turns adding to each other’s drawings. Build with blocks or cardboard boxes. Make up stories with toys and let them direct the narrative. Don’t correct their work or suggest it should look different. “Tell me about what you made” is better than “what is that?”
With school-age kids (ages 6-12)
School-age kids can handle more complex projects and benefit from learning real skills. Woodworking teaches real skills and produces something tangible. Writing a story together, taking turns adding sentences, is genuinely fun. Give them a camera and a theme, “photograph everything red” or “photograph things that are old.” Let them choose a recipe and make it mostly themselves.
Music is worth trying even if neither of you is good at it. Learning an instrument together, you don’t have to be skilled. You have to be willing, is one of the more memorable things you can do with a kid this age.
With teenagers (ages 13-18)
Teenagers often have strong creative interests of their own. The best thing you can do is take those interests seriously. If your teenager makes music, ask to hear it. If they draw, ask about their process. Don’t perform interest, actually engage.
What works: collaborative projects in domains they care about, teaching them skills you actually have, making things together that have real use. What doesn’t work: suggesting their creative interests aren’t serious, or making the activity about your preferences rather than theirs.
What you actually bring to this
The most important thing you bring to creative activities isn’t skill. It’s genuine engagement. Kids can tell when you’re going through the motions. They can also tell when you’re actually interested, when you’re curious about what they’re making, when you’re absorbed in your own making, when you’re present rather than waiting for it to be over.
That presence is what makes creative time with you different from creative time alone.
References
- Beaty, R. E., et al. (2016). Creativity and the default network: A functional connectivity analysis of the creative mind at rest. Neuropsychologia, 64, 92-98.