Is your child playing with an imaginary friend? Or does he pick up a wooden block to answer an imaginary phone? If yes, then it’s a good thing. Being an imaginative kid is a good personality trait as it shows their creative side. It’s a companion they will never lose, which helps them be engaged and curious. It also aids them in becoming adults who can solve multiple problems that life throws at them with creativity.
There are multiple benefits of a child having imagination, and we discuss the same below. But moreover, how do you encourage and boost your child’s imagination? That’s the million-dollar question, and we will answer this below too.
Benefits of Using Their Imagination
- It helps them develop emotional-social skills
Imagination is a great tool for developing your child’s emotional-social skills. How? Through imagination, they can learn to effectively navigate emotions and behavior and work on building healthy relationships. It also allows them to communicate well with others.
- It helps them develop motor skills.
Imagination helps them develop motor skills because, during imaginative play, they use their muscles, which helps them develop motor skills aiding overall physical development.
- It helps them develop coping skills.
Imagination helps a child not only solve a problem but also cope with multiple situations to the best of their abilities.
- It aids in developing their communication skills.
During imaginative play, they play with imaginary friends, dolls, and more. In addition, they talk to them, which helps them develop good communication skills.
Tips for boosting your child’s imagination
Read to them and with them
Books are a wonderful way to boost your child’s imagination. In fact, storybooks are actually one of the best ways as they are interactive and fun and also help develop their communication skills. Moreover, reading to your kids will help them become avid readers, which will only help them in the future.
Start young! When they are infants, get them books with pictures while also reading them fairy tales or books of your choice to sleep. Then, you can get the books where they can experiment with color. This way, they will learn to read books, making them more creative.
Get the right toys for them.
Providing the right toys is another simple way to boost your child’s imagination. Make sure you get toys and games for your children that require and encourage them be more creative, while avoiding excessive use of electronics. The dependency on TV and electrical gadgets harms young kids’ minds and makes them passive and lethargic.
Therefore, you need to get them toys that can keep them engaged. For instance, you can get building blocks, puzzles, and Legos. All of these require concentration, imagination, and creativity. Therefore, helping boost their imagination.
Even outdoor toys like slides, cubby houses, or trampolines can help develop their imagination as they keep finding new ways to play in them. A cubby house is an extremely versatile game, which your kids can play with, and if you are interested in one, look for the best cubby houses online and have your pick.
Play with them
Another simple way to boost your child’s imagination is to play with them on a regular basis. Time is the enemy, isn’t it? Parents juggle kids, work, and other responsibilities that don’t leave much time to play with their kids. And that is bad because when you play with your kids, you help boost their imagination skills.
Therefore, you need to find ways to make time to play with your kids. For example, play any game when in the car. For example, play 21 Questions and ask them what they will name a pet if they have. Another idea is to ask them to create a character and have them describe that how that character looks and acts.
You can even get creative with them during mealtimes them by taking out toys and asking them to name them, feed them, and more.
Let them make art
Give them multiple art supplies and let them create anything they can think of. Let their creativity take hold! You can even give them play dough to let them make different shapes or animals. All of these things help boost their imagination levels.
Tell them stories
Another way to boost their imagination is to tell them stories. Anything that you can craft yourself is perfect for them. Try incorporating messages in the stories to ensure they learn something while having fun.
Never let your child lose their imagination. Instead, work on increasing their imagination using these tips on how to boost your child’s imagination.