The Importance of Fostering Children's Imagination, Creativity and Auditory Literacy

Children today are often over scheduled.

Between school time, various adult directed "enrichment," activities, and the demands of homework even those in the early grades of kindergarten through third, have very little free time left for day dreaming and independent play.

As important as school is for the learning of reading, writing and arithmetic as well as social skills, because most children's main interaction with adults involves an adult telling them what to do, they are growing up with a diminished ability to deal with undirected time.
This inability to be self-directing leaves them unsure of what to do when they have to entertain themselves.
Thus after their child has spent a very short time playing alone, mothers and fathers often hear the complaint, "I'm bored." The busy parent, who is also often over scheduled, will at this point, offer the suggestion that their child watch a little television or a children's movie. All this adult direction, coupled with the visual images supplied by television and/or movies, results in the loss or delayed development, of a child's independence, auditory literacy, imagination and creativity. If the pictures a child might create in his or her imagination, by listening to a short fairy tale or story are usurped by adult generated images, the child's ability to visualize is either not able to develop fully, or is lost through lack of use. When my children were young they spent hours listening to short fairy tales on cassette tapes created by their father and myself.
As a result they both were far ahead of their peers in terms of vocabulary development, comprehension and musical ability.

There have been numerous studies, which suggest that promoting auditory literacy increases a child's ability to learn foreign languages and also play musical instruments.

This was certainly the case with my own children, and those of my friends and acquaintances who were also raised either without, or with a severely limited amount time spent in front of the television or watching movies.
Just as children need to develop their auditory literacy, and visualizing ability through listening to short fairy tales, they also need to be allowed more unstructured self-directed time, so that they may learn to exercise their imaginations through, free play and even daydreaming. Providing a child with blank books (not coloring books) and papers of various colors and sizes to paint and draw on, gives them tools with which to create.
Items such as cardboard boxes, duct tape, glue, wood scraps, and whatever other imagination stimulating objects we can collect, are vitally important for the development of a child's independence and imaginative abilities.
These abilities form the core of all leadership and inventions. The development of these skills may not be very important if you want your children to be able to be one in an army of workers.
However, these skills are necessary if our children are to be fully prepared to meet the requirements of the twenty first century.

If we want our children to thrive, they must have the ability to communicate with people of other cultures and backgrounds, and they must know how to make their way in a world where self-direction, resilience, creative thinking, and resourcefulness are paramount.