The light of Spring Break is upon us. The routine of school days shifts gears to the upcoming substantial chunk of holidays. Parents coordinate calendars, juggle child care, plan trips, play-dates and events. “What to do? What to do?…”
My brainstorming takes in to consideration the awareness of what a creative, community-oriented school our daughter goes to. I am fortunate to have time to volunteer here and there within the school and the things I see our daughter experience really excites and inspires me as well - movement & expression through dance, music, creative writing, colourful visual arts and even practices in mindfulness, and the encouragement of peers to hold a safe place for vulnerability and creativity for one another. I came across an article recently, “Make More Art: The Health Benefits of Creativity” by James Clear. Hundreds of studies reviewed, the article notes the benefits to health and wellness that music, visual arts therapy, movement-based creative expression, and expressive writing all offer. It notes another study by the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine that concludes emotional writing leads to improvements at a cellular level (CD4+ lymphocyte count in HIV-infected patients). The studies and article deepens our understanding of the importance of the Arts and what this school directly offers the students.
What this offers our daughter is priceless, enriching and palpable. She is within a community of artists. Teachers, peers, parents, classroom support and administration - all of which infuse the study of art in to their daily lives. When I recall my own schooling at her age, given, we are individuals, I do see the contrast in the breadth and reach she has, as well as how she engages openly with and moves within the flow of life and her community. Part of it is being my husband’s child, and part of it is her life meeting her.
Now here comes Spring Break… and I feel that I am, in many ways, an artistic dud. I’m a killjoy, I wear black, I am all about being on time, planning, and doing things right. Sometimes I arrange my garden vegetables in to a mandala, but I call it eccentric just to offset my predictable veneer, and leave it at that (and am pretty dismissive - is that art?). Do I even want to be with me over Spring Break?… yikes.
When we begin to learn how beneficial it is to be creative, it becomes a paradox that our culture deems overworking ourselves as success. We seem to value exhaustion. We schedule and over-schedule, stuffing our days with the most checked boxes we can fit in, and often times leave ourselves exhausted, frazzled and forgetting to even question what it is we are doing it all for. How could art and creativity serve us then? An uneducated guess, but I will throw it out there nonetheless: when we are in a creative space, we are not in that heightened state of fight-or-flight with stress hormones flooding our body. When we shift out of fight-or-flight mode and circulation/energy returns from the survival muscles and adrenaline goes down, we down shift in to parasympathetic mode. Digestive, reproductive organs shift back in to play. We heal, we grow, we create, we maintain, we flourish.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like go-mode, trust me, I do. But! I do not believe it is meant to be the body of our day, because we are then taking from our time of regeneration and rejuvenation. We are not just doing this detriment to our own wellness and lack of fulfillment as parents, but we are insidiously teaching our children that this is what life is; this is what it is to be grown up. Where then, do we cultivate our connectedness to one another, our own quiet moments of flow, the fundamental, life-lesson of nurturing life and craft versus anxiously spinning on a hamster-wheel of never feeling/having/doing enough? What are those practices of solid work-ethic worth, if it is not for the growth and refinement of ourselves as soulful individuals a midst our tribe?
Brene Brown, Ph.D., L.M.S.W., courage, vulnerability, shame and worthiness researcher, and three-time New York Times Best Selling Author offers 10 Guideposts to Wholehearted living:
#1 Cultivating Authenticity -
Letting go of what people think
#2 Cultivating Self-Compassion -
Letting Go of Perfectionism
#3 Cultivating a Resilient Spirit
- Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness
#4 Cultivating Gratitude and Joy
- Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark
#5 Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith
- Letting Go of the Need for Certainty
#6 Cultivating Creativity -
Letting Go of Comparison
#7 Cultivating Play and Rest
- Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth
#8 Cultivating Calm and Stillness -
Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle
#9 Cultivating Meaningful Work -
Letting Go of Self-Doubt and “Supposed To”
#10 Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance
- Letting Go of Being Cool and “Always in Control”
Creativity, the arts, being within the flow and social connectivity of creation, involve all of these 10 pillars. Wellness, wholeheartedness, and connectedness are three things I hope to set the example for and make the norm for our daughter; not anxiety, busyness, status. "I was always on the go, stressed out, and anxious." no centenarian ever said.
(But Wait! I heard a Left-Brained parent snort…) For those of us parents who have a logical, well-tuned, linear plan, let's unbraid and look at the the threads of loose, artsy, creativity, and brain function & development. Looking at our childrens’ development & executive skills (referring to the brain-based skills that are required for humans to execute, or perform tasks), creativity & play have the potential of exercising each of the 11 executive skills: Response Inhibition, Working Memory, Emotional Control, Sustained Attention, Task Initiation, Planning/Prioritization, Organization, Time Management, Goal-Directed Persistence, Flexibility & Metacognition. In free-play, or directed play/creativity (play/creativity partaken with us parents, in social groups etc.), we offer a chance for our youth to practice those skills in a way that is meaningful to them, and therefor a positive, deeper-reaching means of practice for these executive skills. Play and creativity are not the opposite of hard work and success. They are flow of which, when we are fortunate enough to love what we are doing, we learn hard work and success - and so too do children in their day-to-day lives.
I come from a family who valued the sciences. Sure, there were piano lessons and ballet classes, but they were not my forte. All other arts, were relegated to the end of the list of schoolwork, chores, dinner prep, sports, brushing the dog and watching Brady Bunch. Within all of that, the conditioning that there are things that are of substance in our lives, and the arts are not high on that list, pervaded my life until I found my own 17-year career in the performing arts - that threw my family for a loop! Now, I am a parent of a 7-year old child who’s little apple falls far from my family of origins’ scientific, left-brained tree. As the ‘apple in the middle’ (generationally), I still sometimes struggle with my upbringing, and the right to, and the joy of, leading an artistic life. Such is evolution- a slow process.
For ourselves as parents, our connection to our children is the force that keeps them in alignment with our values, keeps communication open and our relationships growing, rather than shutting down. In “Discipline Without Damage” Dr. Vanessa Lapointe, R.Psych states, “There is something about sharing playful, joyful experiences with another human being that contributes to a sense of shared unity and common ground. In thinking through what it takes to nurture a relationship, think about the simplicity of finding even fifteen minutes a day to enter into the world of play with your children. A world in which anything goes. A world full of spontaneous laughter. A world in which imagination and silliness reign supreme - and inhibitions, rules, and schedules are forgoten. As the dopamine flows in your happy brain, the connectivity of your relationship also flows.” I think me and my munchkin could do with a healthy dose more of this in our time over Spring Break.
I look at myself running here and there, I look at the blank boxes on the calendar over the upcoming holidays and I wonder what to put in those spots. I know enough to know that at the end of the holidays, I will walk past our calendar and question how the break passed in such a flash.
Perhaps, some of us parents have it backwards. Perhaps Spring Break is a time where we, as parents, give ourselves a break as well, to pick up a water-colour pencil, teach ourselves to play a song on the piano, to have a family draw night, strike up a dance party, make a silly movie produced by the kiddos, to go see “The Little Prince” movie, check out the symphony, colour side-by-side to the soundtrack of whatever slow and easy thoughts might a r i s e..., or to plan a creative writing retreat day without counting spelling mistakes and grammar, just to get lost in the flow. Perhaps creating a garden or a veggie mandala together, muddy hands and all, will help us connect to our own source of wellness, and to one another in all that is nourishing and sound. Perhaps when we meet our children in the realm of creativity, we too will grow and flourish.
We as parents have the opportunity to hold the space for our children to learn that art & creativity is everywhere, always, even when you grow up.
