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i woke up with a thought banging around my head like a stone in a tin can.

how do parents set their kids on their creative journeys?

as a 7-year old, I remember watching my brother who was 10 pick up make his first wood carving at a class. by 13 he had a table saw and a subscription to a woodworking magazine. his shop grew to a include a router for the rounded table corners, a lathe for making wooden bowls.

my parents didn't seem to push him in that direction at all. it just took the first wood carving class.

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Discussion

Laeserin 5mo ago

Just expose them to stuff and they grab onto whatever they have a talent for.

Laeserin 5mo ago

Mostly, we have a large extended family and are active in the local community and in church, so we just know lots of people with all sorts of jobs and hobbies, so the kids naturally sort of wandered around and stumbled upon stuff, and we helped them do more of whatever they were wanting to do.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 5mo ago

my mother taught me knitting and crochet and drawing and painting, my father taught me electronics and computers.

i lean a bit more towards science but i do a bit of art now and then. probably my favourite form of art is typography, and then writing, i love me a good polemic

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 5mo ago

oh, my father also introduced me to chemistry and physics. haha... i can't really say which of the sciences i like more, i'm just better at CS than anything else.

gojiberra 5mo ago

funny, my mom also taught me how to crotchet. i crotchet'd a little oval rug for the cat. you could switch out yarn colors halfway through to make concentric patterns.

i don't care much for painting or drawing. i always liked making boats, planes that actually float or fly. there's an element of randomness to where they end up.

the neighbor gave me their old hummingbird feeder and that started a years-long fascination with hummingbirds. i would read a book beside the feeder. the hummingbirds prob just thought i was crazy

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 5mo ago

hummingbirds are awesome. i'm a big fan of birds in general... i love crows and rooks and jackdaws and magpies, and then i discovered blackbirds, and now here in madeira there is thousands of canaries as well as the blackbirds singing up a storm on and off throughout the day, the blackbirds are the best tho, second after the roosters and the most varied songs all through the day... so i guess probably mainly i like talkative birds. jackdaws especially i love the sound of a flock of them flying past, and when they sit on the edge of a wall and "caw caw caw" flexing their wings.

i could never get tired of listening to the sounds of birds. this is also one reason why i can't ever live in a city again, with the traffic and construction noises drowning out their songs.

Aldin 5mo ago

They have a natural tendency to emulate what they see. If there is a respectable example around them, they will want to emulate. Maybe that carving class teacher was a realy cool dude.

Most important is to not stifle the passions that the children have naturally. My parent were this type. Constant nagging. "You spend too much time at your computer! You should be more like this other kid that plays sport!" or "Isn't that book too smart for you?" So I learned to hide my interests from them.

gojiberra 5mo ago

Ok, so maybe I don't need to worry about MineCraft. Sounds like the method should be more about introducing more stuff.

You remind me of someone I know who used to put a book inside of his textbooks because he was bored in class.

Aldin 5mo ago

I think so. Maybe you could even play with them and they will like you more for it. Then after an hour be like: "damn, too much time sitting for me!" Idea being that it models the behavior. That would be kinda my style. Maybe also depends on their age.

Trying to think back about my school years, the coolest teachers were those who let us play and they were a respectable person. They could even be strict, but reasonable. The worst were those with a witch personality.

Admitedly, I do not have much experience with children, so you should not probably listen to me.

gojiberra 5mo ago

it's good advice. i feel a sense of resolution

Dave🐸 5mo ago

My 3 kids under 10 like to play football, Lego, drawing and Netflix.

Thinking about the console intro… 😬😂

Dissident Sound 5mo ago

tell them what their ancestors ( the past 2 or 3 generations ) were good at and encourage them to try those things

in my case my parents were Architects but my grandfather was an Engineer and he's the one i spent time with while my parents were busy partying

Bill Cypher 5mo ago

No need to encourage anything really. Just pay attention to what they are interested in and find ways to give them more of that in a way that is fun for them.

Kayne 5mo ago

My brother learnt to play guitar because of a video game called Rocksmith and the fact our father bought him an electric guitar to play it.

I think the creative drive is either already there or it just developes independent of skills and abilities.

I never learnt an instrument beyond being able to maintain a simple drum beat.

I enjoy making memes and telling stories however most of my creative drive goes into gardening more than anything else.