Special Needs Tips
Read these 4 Special Needs Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Academic tips and hundreds of other topics.
Parents Fostering Creativity
Encourage curiosity, exploration, experimentation, fantasy, questioning, testing, and the development of creative talents.
Provide opportunities for creative expression, creative problem-solving and constructive response to change and stress.
Prepare children for new experiences, and help develop creative ways of coping with them.
Find ways of changing destructive behavior into constructive, productive behavior rather than relying on punitive methods of control.
Find creative ways of resolving conflicts between individual family members' needs and the needs of the other family members.
Make sure that every member of the family receives individual attention and respect and is given opportunities to make significant, creative contributions to the welfare of the family as a whole.
Use what the school provides imaginatively, and supplement the school's efforts.
Give the family purpose, commitment, and courage. (Torrance, 1969, p. 59)
Teachers Fostering Creativity
Teach children to appreciate and be pleased with their own creative efforts.
Be respectful of the unusual questions children ask.
Be respectful of children's unusual ideas and solutions, for children will see many relationships that their parents and teachers miss.
Show children that their ideas have value by listening to their ideas and considering them. We can encourage children to test their ideas by using them and communicating them to others. We must give them credit for their ideas.
Provide opportunities and give credit for self-initiated learning. Overly detailed supervision, too much reliance on prescribed curricula, failure to appraise learning resulting from a child's own initiative, and attempts to cover too much material with no opportunity for reflection interfere seriously with such efforts.
Provide chances for children to learn, think, and discover without threats of immediate evaluation. Constant evaluation, especially during practice and initial learning, makes children afraid to use creative ways to learn. We must accept their honest errors as part of the creative process.
Establish creative relationships with children--encouraging creativity in the classroom while providing adequate guidance for the students.
Diagnostic Criteria for ADHD
1.Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat (in adolescents may be limited to subjective feelings of restlessness).
2.Has difficulty remaining seated when required to.
3.Is easily distracted by extraneous stimuli.
4.Has difficulty waiting turns in games or group situations.
5.Often blurts out answers to questions before they have been completed.
6.Has difficulty following through on instructions from others not due to oppositional behavior or failure of comprehension).
7.Has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities.
8.Often shifts from one uncompleted activity to another.
9.Has difficulty playing quietly.
10.Often talks excessively.
11.Often interrupts or intrudes on others, e.g., butts into other people's games.
12.Often does not seem to listen to what is being said to him or her.
13.Often loses things necessary for tasks or activities at school or at home (e.g., toys, pencils, and books).
14.Often engages in physically dangerous activities without considering possible consequences (not for the purpose of thrill seeking), e.g., runs into street without looking.
Please note that many of these same behaviours are found in gifted children as well. Before you panic, consult your child's teacher and a counselor at school.
Killing Creativity
Insisting that children do things the "right way."
Teaching a child to think that there is just one right way to do things kills the urge to try new ways.
Pressuring children to be realistic, to stop imagining. When we label a child's flights of fantasy as "silly," we bring the child down to earth with a thud, causing the inventive urge to curl up and die.
Making comparisons with other children. This is a subtle pressure on a child to conform; yet the essence of creativity is freedom to conform or not to conform.
Discouraging children's curiosity. One of the surest indicators of creativity is curiosity; yet we often brush questions aside because we are too busy for "silly" questions. Children's questions deserve respect.
| Guru Spotlight |
| Lynne Christen |
