Make Believe

A child’s imagination is powerful. We adults can manipulate that power. Like all power, it can be used for good or not so good. Do we wonder why imagination takes a beating as we grow older?

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

It reshapes itself into something more tangible or frightening, like, ‘What will happen if I don’t make the rent this month?’ Children can imagine anything. Adult constraints do not hold them.

Harnessing a child’s imagination is as easy as asking open-ended questions. Missed that post? Catch it here.

Actually, ‘harnessing’ isn’t the right word. Harnessing something, like harnessing a horse, puts boundaries on it. Let’s set it free. Allow it to blossom. Research has found that children who take active imaginations into adulthood perform better. Perform better? At what? Name it–your list is only limited by your … imagination.

We adults call it visualising–dream, dream big, you know the stuff. The thing is, it begins in childhood. My favourite teachers were the creative ones. They weren’t limited to the arts. I had a math teacher in high school who used storytelling to explain algebra.

My understanding of it increased more than if I’d used a textbook to rehearse and remember equations.

Sadly, I’ve forgotten the stories (and the equations), but his approach resonated. I used it in my teaching of elementary school math.