Losing your childhood creativity

As a child therapist I spend a lot of time finding ways to help impulsive and distracted children improve what is called "executive functioning." This functioning allows us to just say "no" to our inappropriate impulses in favor of more appropriate social decisions. Children who do not have this ability can get into some serious trouble, hence, the parents call to me for an appointment.

The unfortunately side effect of executive function may be a reduction in childish creativity. We all know how spontaneous and free a child can be when it comes to crayons, paper and craft materials. According to the researchers in the study below, the more we think like adults, the more we lose touch with our creative output due to the use of logic and not imagination. The flip side is that it can be accessed at any time in our lives if we allow ourselves to engage in childish play and curiosity.
It may mean we need to inhibit our inhibitions - at least for a specific time.

How do you regain

clipped from scienceblogs.com Pablo Picasso once declared that "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." The solution to Picasso's problem is startlingly simple, at least according to the psychologists Darya Zabelina and Michael Robinson of North Dakota State University: We just need to think like a little kid. In their recent paper, "Child's play: Facilitating the originality of creative output by a priming manipulation," the scientists took a large group of undergraduates and randomly assigned them to two different groups. The first group was given the following instructions: "You are 7 years old. School is canceled, and you have the entire day to yourself. What would you do? Where would you go? Who would you see?" The second group was given the exact same instructions, except the first sentence was deleted. As a result, these students didn't imagine themselves as 7 year olds. the students who imagined themselves as little kids scored far higher on the creative tasks