Raising creative kids requires a little parental inspiration | THE MOM STOP

Before I had children, long before I was married or really even an adult, I had dreams that I’d one day become a crafty, artsy mother who spent time instilling a love of art in my kids.

Perhaps that was because of my dad.

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Not long after my parents separated and my sister and I visited our dad every other weekend, he made the decision that he would not be one of those “Chuck E. Cheese” dads, he later told me. That meant he did not want to be a dad who only took us to arcades or sat us in front of the TV all weekend.

Instead, he wanted to spend quality time with us, creating. We’d often go to Walmart, which was the only “craft store” in Athens, Alabama, at the time. We’d walk the aisles of the craft section trying to come up with ideas of what to make.

One weekend, we made puff-paint T-shirts. Another weekend, we made a doll-size wooden rocking horse. For holidays, we’d design and cut yard decorations out of plywood and paint them. We put pumpkins in the yard for Halloween, giant candy-canes for Christmas and an Easter bunny for the spring. It helped that our dad, who was a contractor and built homes, seemingly had an endless supply of tools and plywood scraps in his garage.

As kids, we relished in the creativity.

It’s something my dad continued to do, as a grandparent. During his annual visits from California, he’d gather around the dining room table with my children and they would create a project, whether it was painting hats or painting birdhouses.

During his last visit with us in 2019, only months before he died, he let the kids draw pumpkin shapes on plywood, and cut them out to paint, much the same way he did with us as kids. To this day, every Halloween, the plywood pumpkins go up in our yard, including the ones my kids made with him, as well as the ones I made as a child.

When I imagined myself as a mother, I thought we’d do “crafty Fridays” where I’d pull out my tackle box of paints to find something artsy to do together. But it’s funny how life gets in the way. Schedules are busy, and perhaps maybe out of a fear of dripping paint on the furniture or collecting too much “stuff,” my dreams of instilling creativity in my children didn’t happen quite like I thought it would.

My kids still see me creating and working with my hands, whether it’s woodworking and installing board and batten trim in our foyer, sewing curtains for our home, or making Christmas ornaments for our tree. We do projects together sometimes, like decorating a picture frame with shells we picked up at the beach or making gifts for the grandparents.

But then I ask myself, is that enough? Shouldn’t I do more? The “mom guilt” is real, in so many ways.

Last week, as I was preparing end-of-year teacher gifts, I went to find the “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” books by Dr. Seuss that I have for each of my kids. Every year, we ask our kids’ teachers to write a note to them in the book at the end of the school year. As I flipped through my kids’ books, reading the messages written by their teachers, I started to notice a trend. The word “creative” was used often. Teachers urged them to continue their love of art, of drawing and ofimagining.

And in the next room, my 9-year-old sat in the office making dragon puppets with markers and paper. Upstairs, my teenage daughter worked, creating animation on the computer, while my son practiced playing his trumpet in another room. It made me realize that even though my dad isn’t here anymore to do craft projects with my kids, and even though I haven’t made the effort as much as I’d like to instill a love of art ― perhaps the creativity has been there all along.

Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News. Reach her at momstopcolumn@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Parental ingenuity helps to raise creative kids | THE MOM STOP