Children’s Thought

One of the biggest setbacks facing any child today is a lack of imagination. As they grow older, this shows itself in many subtle ways–constant boredom, lack of descriptive capacity, problems with empathy, struggle with creative thinking and other conditions. There is no doubt that imagination is a hard thing to place in the developmental cycle, but this doesn’t mean that there aren’t concrete decisions you can make to strengthen one of the most important assets we possess as human beings.

• Imagination helps school-age children solve problems by helping them think through different outcomes to various situations and role playing ways to cope with difficult or new circumstances.
• Imagination allows children to practice real-life skills. From shopping at a pretend grocery store to assigning roles and dialogue to dolls or puppets, children’s pretend play helps them practice and apply new learning and better understand how those skills are used in the real world.
• Imagination encourages a rich vocabulary. Telling and hearing real or made-up stories, reading books and pretend play help children learn and retain new words.
• Imagination helps children grow up to be adults who are creative thinkers. Adults who were imaginative children often become problem solvers, innovators and creative thinkers