Everyone knows that having everything in the world does not lead to happiness. There is something more than material things that is needed to make people happy. It's imagination.
Imagination can turn even the most mundane things into something to be celebrated, and is something that every parent should try and instill in their child at an early age. There are many ways to do this, but one of the most important and easiest is to draw out your child's creativity by asking them to fashion roles for themselves. How do you do that? Well, you could always suggest that they do what kids love to do anyway, such as play dress up! Dressing up offers even more benefits than you might think. It promotes the activity of the brain, in requiring your children to think about who they want to be, what that person or thing wears, and how they can make a costume that is something like it. But it also requires a large amount of physical creativity as well.
If, for instance, your child wants to be Shaq, he or she will not be sitting on the couch. They will be bounding around the house or yard, exercising healthily in mind and spirit. Playing dress up also encourages empathy. By taking on the roles of other people and things, your child will have to think like those other people and things. This encourages them to think as if they were not the center of the universe, and promotes an ability that will greatly serve them later in life, the ability to see the world through other people's eyes.
What's more, it will allow children to function a bit better than they might otherwise. By playing a teacher, your child might more properly understand what is required of them in a classroom, or how to better relate to adults. The way that a child plays out roles during dress up can be invaluable for parents.
A parent who pays keen attention to the way his or her child is acting out their dress up character can learn a great deal about how their child understands the world. If, for instance, to use the teacher example above, a child always enacts a teacher who is cruel and unfeeling, it might be the case that the child's teachers are not all too kind to the child, and perhaps a parent's intervention is necessary. Dressing up also provides the necessity of innovation. Since children can become quickly tired of things that become too routine, it will be required of them to invent more and further ways of dress up. This will increase their creative ability and make them more innovative thinkers.
Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Beach, Florida. Find more about this as well as a kid's music CD at http://www.personalizedcds4kids.com
