Collaborate with the children
…and find new dimensions of creativity
Watch your children or children around you at work, but sometimes try to collaborate with them as well—it is very rewarding for both sides. Take the paper, let the child draw the basic contours of the picture and intervene only when they ask you to or when you feel that it would benefit the idea.
However, working together means, first of all, respecting children's rules and helping them reach the desired result (if there is one—kids mostly create spontaneously, without pre-selected goals. That's the beauty of their work, they're more interested in the process, what is created, than the result.) Under no circumstances tell them how you think the work should look or what you would modify in it. This is simply not what cooperation with the kids looks like.
One of my most favourite paintings to this day is Reggae man, which our daughter drew when she was four or five. Actually, we collaborated on it together. But what's most beautiful about it is that the only things I've added to the painting are the closed eyes and mouth. Nothing more. Initially, the picture was supposed to be a rainbow with who knows what else, but with our cooperation, the perspective changed subtly and something new and beautiful was created, which would never have been done without such a procedure and without following predetermined rules.
Of course, many times I found myself saying to my daughter while she was painting: “What if we did it this way?” Fortunately, she is so stubborn that she doesn't let it get in the way and whether she draws alone or we draw together, amazing pieces are created.
However, it is possible to collaborate on any work. Many times we have already written a book together, when my daughter dictated and I wrote by hand or on a typewriter (if necessary, I edited the sentences for better comprehensibility) and so on.
You can also work together when playing instruments, when dancing, when creating a theatre performance, in fact, in anything that you can also do alone. But don't forget that collaboration means creating together and looking for the best or at least the most beautiful result, which doesn't necessarily have to come from your head. If I had intervened too soon, Reggae man would never have been created and not even half of our stories would have been born. And I really wouldn't want to wake up with this feeling!
“I like the cellar, as if everything was silent, everything was dumb.”
—our daughter, when she was five