Children and youth benefit immensely from art projects. In too many homes and schools, Art is perceived as either an impractical waste of time or a place to put kids who have trouble with standard subjects__ to “keep their hands busy”. Often, however, children who haven’t done well in regular classes can succeed at art; a dominant right brain may be their one true gift. Nobody “fails” doing art work, because whatever is produced __ unless an outright copy__ is an honest expression of a unique personality. It enhances communication skills and fosters expectations of success in other fields.
But how can we instill creative habits in the minds of growing children? One way is by paying attention to children's daily interests and participating in those interests with them. If we want our child to play fair, share and be a good loser or winner, rather than preach about it, we play the games with them, setting the example by lovingly encouraging good social habits in group creative activities. Both creative adults and children spend much of their time connected with the Force while engaged in artistic projects.
Expose the child to Nature, as often as possible. Encourage and reinforce their sense of wonder and imagination. Listen fully to their stories, no matter how strange, and accept what they say without judgment. Honor and respect that old, old spirit residing within that young body. Share dreams. Meditate or use therapy techniques to reveal suppressed feelings.
Regularly meet with small groups of children, providing safe spaces for unusual self-revelations; spaces where failures are never penalized and successes are positively reinforced. Try brainstorming. Maintain regular sacred rituals at home: perhaps candle-lighting, spiritually-oriented meditations, food blessing, evening prayers, inspirational music and poetry. These methods need to be meaningful expressions of our own spirituality, offering a heightened awareness of the transcendence surrounding all things.
Introduce youths to a variety of cultures, including the indigenous, whether through actual trips, computers, DVDs and TV, or visits from foreign travelers. Regularly expose them to uplifting fantasy, science fiction or writings which portray the possibilities of other realities. Openly reveal and discuss peak experiences, including Near-Death and Out-Of-Body Experiences (Chapter 4), or encounters with altered states of consciousness and seldom-seen beings such as fairies or elves. Many New Children also regularly communicate with animals. Above all, encourage the activities of sports, healthy computer technology and the practice of creative arts and crafts.
Children who’ve had music or art training excel at learning language and social skills. They cooperate with teachers and are friendlier with classmates. We have to listen to each other when we’re singing or playing music together, working on a class mural or a sandpainting. Competition gives way to Cooperation when creating art as a group.
Music lessons teach children to translate coded images (musical notes) into physical actions (playing or singing); the brain’s neural pathways related to intellectual growth are thereby encouraged to connect and develop. Certain inherent patterns in the brain are jump-started by musical training. They facilitate communication with brain areas responsible for spatial-temporal reasoning. Computer games, although encouraging faster neural connections between images, seldom require the child to imagine or visualize solutions that are all their own.
Simply listening to certain types of music can raise our intelligence, at least temporarily. CD’s of Mozart’s work aid children and adults to raise their IQs. In an experiment at the University of California, Irvine, college students listened to a tape of Mozart’s “Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major”, then underwent standard psychological tests. Their IQs rose by an average of 8 points and the music particularly increased their math skills. (6)
Recent research on the creative potentials of children and youth revealed that art usually happens if we are smart. At the Universities of Wisconsin and California, three and four-year-olds who had piano lessons for six months, actually out-performed on IQ tests by 34% when compared with another group their age who had computer lessons instead. (6) We are not downgrading computers__ they’re wonderful learning and communication tools. But there is another important side to intelligence, too. It is the ability to find new ways to resolve never-before-encountered challenges or difficulties, and this comes directly from our connection with the Inspirational Mode of the Creative Process.
Artists are often psychically gifted. In 1988, a group of Juilliard School of Music students were chosen to explore the correlation of artistic ability with psychic performance. The result was one of the highest ESP "hits" ever reported: 50% accuracy. Six out of the eight music students (75%) were most successful, correctly identifying their targets. It may be that such exceptional psychic accuracy in creatively-minded persons is due to their ability to recognize patterns and an openness to unfamiliar images or symbols. They may be better able to rise above their logical mind’s input of information and be more varied in their thinking__ a factor known to be exhibited by those with very intuitive or inspirationally receptive brains. (6)
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(6) Wakefield, Dan: Creating From the Spirit: Living Each Day as a Creative Act. 1996. Ballantine Books, Random House,
New York, NY