Encouraging Kid’s Self-Expression Through Creative Writing

Do you know kids develop self- awareness through self-expression? Self-expression is the expression of one’s personality, feelings, or opinions.

Kids who are being self-expressive can be an observer of their own life and who they are being.  Creative writing is one of the effective artistic activities that make children self-expressive. It has a magical quality of clarifying thoughts and feelings. Encouraging kids to express their thoughts through writing is an excellent skill to teach.

Why Creative Writing Is Vital To Encourage :

Kids love hearing stories and let’s take advantage of this fact and help them make their own. By doing so,

• You teach them to think outside the box.
•  Kids learn to widen their imagination.
• They learn to THINK through writing which can be very useful in bringing clarity to their thoughts.
• You teach them to deal their emotions such as fear and anxiety in a more therapeutic way “Writing”.
• Kids get skilled in their language but in a fun way.

Listed below are some of the key points on how to teach creative writing to children.

The Desire To Write Grows with Reading:

• Start by reading books together. Creating a reading habit is crucial before you wish to start teaching your kids to write. After finishing up a story talk a little bit about each story. Take some time to discuss the author who wrote the story. If there is information about the author on the outer cover of the book, you might read it together.  Doing this, helps your kid understand that the story you read was created by a person.  Kids have to understand that author is the one that decided on the characters, beginning, end and the flow of the story.
• While reading you could ask your kid to predict what’s going to happen next and why she thinks so. This way children could understand how stories work and how a single imagination could change the whole story.
• Encourage your kid to talk about the story you read. Ask him whether he liked the way the story ended? Or did he expected a different ending?

Find Or Create Inspirations To Write:

• Pick any one of your kid’s favorite book and ask him to write a story similar to the story line of the book you chose. For instance, if the book was about a kid’s zoo trip ask your kid to write about his own zoo trip with a beginning, middle and ending part that sounds like a story. Help him with the process to make it more fun.
• Writing prompts are one of the effective ways to widen your kid’s imagination. You can give some funny prompts or story starters and then your kid could write about what might happen next. For instance, “One day I woke up and discovered the tree in the backyard could talk”.
• Instead of prompts you can give three unrelated words and encourage your kid to cook up a story involving all three words. For example, T.V, Robot, Spider. The story might sound funnier than you expected.

Respect The Little Author’s Work and Appreciate It:

• When your kid feels confident enough creating his own stories encourage him to write a whole new story but this time without any prompts. Remember this is a story written by a kid, so try not to quibble. You both talk about the story and the characters he created. Ask him why the story has to be ended in this way? Talk with your kid as he is the author of the book and not your child. Give him a chance to read the story aloud and make some changes to it. Create the final version of your kid’s story.
• If your kid loves painting or drawing help him creating the illustrations for his story. Or you could find an illustrator for your kid’s storybook.  Help your kid give a title to his story.
• As an extra encouragement tip, you could print your kid’s story with the illustrations, title,  cover page, and author name added. Gift your kid with his own storybook and place it on the bookshelf and read it along with his other storybooks. This not only excites your kid but also reinforces your kid’s creative writing habit.

To raise a kid who can live his life to the fullest, make the choices that honor his wants and desires, they need to be taught to self-express. Motivating kids to explore the world of creative writing make them thrive and blossom to their full potential.

Do you have any other interesting tips on how to get children’s creative thoughts flowing? Share with me in the comment section below.

Sindhuja Kumar is a proud mom and a lifestyle blogger living in Connecticut, USA and origin from Tamilnadu, India. She is happily married and nothing excites her more than being a mom. She blogs to keep herself sane, more or less writing about positive parenting adventures, DIY Craft tutorials & scrumptious recipes that empowers every mom and woman to stay inspired and living an elegant life in a creative way. Check her work @ PassionateMoms.