The Grand Imaginations of Children
Children are well known for their flights of fantasy and for their creativity. While they might not have the math skills or the social skills of adults, they tend to vastly outperform us when it comes to sheer imagination. Whether they’re talking to imaginary friends, pretending to fire lasers at aliens, or just drawing completely abstractly, they always seem to be inventing and creating rather than responding and following the rules.
So, where does this childlike creativity come from? And, more importantly, where does it go?
Development and Imagination
There is no single answer to this question and no definitive explanation that psychologists agree upon. However, there are a number of possible reasons children may be more prone to imagination than adults.
Limited Life Experiences
One of the first and most simple is that they have to imagine. With far less experience of the world, children are often required to ‘fill in the blanks’. How are babies made? Where does the food come from on the table? Where does Daddy go for 8 hours every day? Almost every aspect of the world is a mystery for children, and as such, they’re forced to fill in the blanks and to get imaginative.
What’s more, imagination may play a very important role in development. It’s by visualizing and imagining that we are able to run ‘simulations’ of our environment and to try things out in the safety of our mind. Children can, this way, practice fighting, speaking in public, or fighting aliens and then compare this with their reality and results to form their picture of reality and to accurately understand their limitations and boundaries. Thus, a child’s imagination may be ‘overactive’ simply to help them adapt to the world around them.
Learning and Conditioning
Other theories claim that all of us would still have the innate creativity of a child, were it not for our education system that encourages more linear thinking and problem solving. What’s more, as we get older and have more interactions with others, we become more self-conscious and more aware of the rules, which, to some degree, may force us to think within the confines of our reality.
While this might be true to an extent, there’s nothing to stop you from exercising your imagination in your own time. If you’d like to recapture some of your child-like imagination, then take the time out to read, to play, and to think. When you combine childish wonder and imagination with adult knowledge and understanding, amazing things can happen.
