To my amazement, her finished egg was indescribably beautiful. The luminous green-brown hue was unlike any I’d ever seen – glorious – beyond classification by any Benjamin Moore chart. And (to think!) my pedestrian Easter egg vision could have easily discouraged its existence.   

The question – which came first, the chicken or the egg? — will always be a puzzle. But I feel certain that if the ‘egg’ represents a child’s creative endeavors, a parent’s trust must precede the egg. Trust in a child’s instincts is the key to encouraging free access to her creative power. 

Creativity is in all of us. It cannot be taught. It doesn’t come in a craft kit, a toddler dance class, or in a parent’s slew of brilliant ideas. Creative sparks happen, seemingly out of nowhere sometimes, and often when we least expect them. They flow freer when undirected, certainly when un-judged.

Creative ideas come to me after a few minutes of running when my mind can wander. Sometimes they come to me in the shower, or in the semi-dream state I bask in when I first wake up before self-judgment has the opportunity to barge in with rights, wrongs, and self-doubt.

When we are babies, the lines of connectivity to our creative power are clear.  We encourage our children to keep those lines open by being patient, accepting, providing lots of open-ended time for free play and choice, and most importantly, refraining from directing, judging either positively or negatively (both are perceived as judgment by a child) or otherwise interfering with our well-intentioned help.

Early Childhood educator and popular lecturer Bev Bos urged adults, “Never draw for a child.” Her advice extends to include painting, sculpting, crafting, block tower and sand castle building, story creating, or anything artistic or creative.  When we show a child how to do those things, we intend to encourage creativity, but we interfere with it instead, by demonstrating for our child the ‘right’ way. We create doubt for our child in her abilities, and encourage our child’s dependency on others to affirm for her what is ‘right’, or good. The artistic genius of a budding Picasso will persevere and overcome our influence, but we don’t want to discourage any child from experimentation and the therapeutic benefits of the wide variety of creative outlets at her disposal.

Creativity comes to us naturally, but it takes courage to follow our intuition and express it. Whenever I write and post something new, it feels like a leap from an airplane. Creative courage is shining a light in the darkness of boredom by dreaming up a new activity, or daring to fill blank space with our words or images. It is drawing a picture of a girl in bed “dreaming she is riding an elephant,” as a 3 year-old I know did, even if no one else understood it (but if you looked closely, it was all there).

Einstein once said, “I believe in intuition and inspiration…. At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.” Children are born with that conviction, but they are easily swayed by our doubt in their judgment and abilities. We must be vigilantly aware of our children’s powerful instinct to please us if we want them to keep trusting that voice inside. Some of us have to learn to shut up (as I did) so our children can continue to listen.

For more about children and creativity, please read Blue Sky Thinking and Creative Spirits.

Photo by Frolic! (My egg girl)

When given a choice between an easy or more difficult test the second time around, the children who had been told they were smart wimped-out, picking the easier test. The children praised for trying were up to the challenge of something harder. 

Then, in a difficult third round of tests, all the children failed. The ‘effort’ children felt they could do better; they enjoyed the challenge and wanted to try again. They continued to show tenacity, perseverance, and improvement.  The ‘smart’ kids seemed totally defeated and threw in the towel. 

If a stranger’s praise has such power to influence a child, imagine the effects of a parent’s daily validation! 

The article also examines children like Thomas, a boy with an IQ in the top 1% and no self-confidence. He balks when asked to try new skills like fractions or cursive, and even refuses to attempt them.  He gives up if he doesn’t master a skill immediately. All his life he has been praised for his intelligence, but he has no courage or initiative. He is filled with self-doubt in his abilities. He won’t risk failure. 

What intrigues me about this New York article is that by confirming the negative effects of praise, it also confirms the effect of ‘nurture.’ But where it falls short for me, like most of what I read about parenting (and I’ve been reading a lot lately), is that it does not address the critical first years of life, the time when dysfunctional (or highly functional) parent/child patterns of interaction are created.    

Self-confidence begins in infancy. Yes, children are resilient and adaptable, and it is never too late to make adjustments in the way we parent.  But we have a window of opportunity in the first years to help our child grow healthy emotional roots strong enough to endure the rollercoaster of life. 

We use praise believing it bolsters our baby, makes him feel happy, capable, self-confident and loved. Those same good intentions also lead us to rush in to rescue our child from any perceived suffering, including possible disappointments, struggles, frustration, mistakes and especially failure. 

But, our “keep ‘em happy”, “feel good” parenting backfires, because our children really need to experience all those “negatives” in order to learn to take them in stride.  They need to know that struggle, frustration, and failure are not to be feared, but just a part of life. In fact, healthy learning, growth and success are impossible without them. 

Believing in our child is not telling him, “You’re great. I believe in you”, and then fixing his fallen block tower. It is believing in him enough to let him risk making mistakes, to flounder, and fail as he experiments with his developing skills. Tenacity and perseverance are not traits a child grows into. They are traits babies are born with. We condition our children to quit trusting themselves by helping too much or too soon. 

Praising our children is a knee-jerk reaction that takes constant self-reminders to control. I still find myself starting to say “Great job” to my children, and switching gears into, “You must be really proud of yourself!” It’s a fine distinction, but an important one.  I feel lucky to have learned from infant expert Magda Gerber that the ability to persevere through frustration and struggle, and to then be acknowledged for one’s efforts is the real route to happiness and self-confidence. Continuous praise becomes empty, and there is never enough. 

 “Learning to fall, getting up again, and moving on, is the best preparation for life.” -Magda Gerber

Learning programs for infants and toddlers like “Your Baby Can Read” are aggressively marketed to new parents and appeal to our most sincere instincts – to do what is best for our children and give them every advantage in life. The children in the promotional videos look so happy to be reading words (words that some cannot even speak yet!), and their parents are so proud. We naturally wonder, “Those people are teaching their toddlers to read? Am I failing my child? Will she fall behind before she even starts kindergarten?”

Parents can relax. Early learning gimmicks have been recycled for years, yet not one has ever been scientifically proven to enhance a child’s learning abilities (or increase intelligence, for that matter.) The reality is that we harm our children when we control and push forward their development, rather than facilitating and letting it happen. Infants and toddlers need time to follow their natural curiosity and interests, which can only happen when they are engaged in uninterrupted, self-directed play. So, when we give a baby reading lessons — or any kind of instruction — that child pays a steep price. She is deprived of the vastly more important, age-appropriate activities that prepare a foundation for true reading comprehension and for the higher levels of brain function in the future.

We all are born with an innate desire to explore, experiment and discover. Babies will find cognitive learning opportunities in the simplest environments as they work to make sense of the world. They are eager to spend time imagining, reasoning, developing formulas and testing them. Why does the ball roll more quickly on the wooden floor than it does on the rug? What makes the clouds move? Does the plastic ring fit around this bottle top? These kinds of early experiences ignite the neural pathways that lead to a strong and active mind.

So, why are we so ready to interrupt and squander this time — this precious window of accelerated development in our child’s life — by showing him a flash card that directs him to clap like a performing seal? We are certainly not helping him to develop his intellectual potential, and the ‘head start’ we imagine will quickly disappear by second or third grade.

We need dreamers, big-picture thinkers and creative problem-solvers to inherit our world, not machines programmed to memorize and mimic.

Furthermore, while a program like “Your Baby Can Read“ may train a baby to recognize words, it cannot teach him to comprehend more than the most basic ones. A child is not ready to learn letters, numbers or words when he has not had the opportunity to build a sensory foundation for what these symbols represent. “Reading comprehension is built on mental networks formed throughout childhood from real experiences with the world,” writes educator and brain researcher Jane Healey, PH.D., in her book, Your Child’s Growing Mind.

The mechanics of reading are not difficult for the average child to learn when he is ready to do so. Reading comes easily, but only when the timing is right, and children who are naturally interested in reading at an early age will teach themselves. One of my three children became a self-taught reader when she was four years old. Her desire to read was a wildfire that could not be contained. She still loves books, creative writing and the literature camp she has chosen to attend the last three summers. Reading is one of her personal passions, not something she does because it pleases her parents.

And our babies are driven to please their caregivers. Their basic survival depends upon our acceptance of them. We should use this power wisely and not abuse it. When we teach a baby something he is not choosing to learn on his own, we put him on course to ignore intrinsic motivation in favor of performing for others — namely us. The child distances himself further and further from his unique goals and passions. We must give our child unconditional acceptance and respond with the same amount of approval for all her accomplishments, big and small, to encourage her continued authenticity.

“When we instruct children in academic subjects at too early an age, we miseducate them; we put them at risk for short-term stress and long-term personality damage for no useful purpose. There is no evidence that such early instruction has lasting benefits, and considerable evidence that it can do lasting harm,” warns Dr. David Elkind in Miseducation.

As I sadly watched the testimonials from parents on the “Your Baby Can Read” site, I couldn’t help but wonder about the videos I wasn’t seeing: the ones where the children suddenly wake up years later and realize that their entire lives have been motivated by the need to please loved ones.

Then there are the children who do not succeed with the “Your Baby Can Read” program. They have disappointed their parents and find no joy in learning. Instead of learning naturally and joyously through play, they equate education with tension and failure…and they are only 3 years old.

Lastly, and most tragically, a baby who reads because it makes his parents happy is receiving the message — in his most important, intimate relationships — that his value is based on performance and accomplishments. The children I observed in the “Your Baby Can Read” videos were ecstatically soaking up the positive attention they were getting for being precocious readers. They seemed thrilled by the pride their parents exhibited. Do these parents respond enthusiastically when the child paints with water on the driveway? Do they show pride when the child buries his feet in the sand? Do they enjoy him when he picks up a ladybug or splashes in a mud puddle? The child can only wonder if he would be as appreciated and loved if he did not perform for his parents. His mud pies and skinned knees might not be enough.

The infants and toddlers I spend time with in my parenting classes are just beginning to learn accepted social behavior and graces. In the meantime, I enjoy their unbridled authenticity.

Asa is an active, agile one-year-old. He almost never stops moving and has a wry sense of humor that is more evident each week. In a recent class we had the pleasure of a grandmother’s visit. Grandma Anne was attending for the first time. She sat with us as we observed her granddaughter and the other children interacting and thoroughly exploring the room. Suddenly, towards the end of the 90-minute class, Asa turned to Anne, extended his arm in the air and waved a big “Hi!” The spontaneous greeting took us all by surprise, since Asa had been focused solely on activity until that moment and had not acknowledged Anne’s presence earlier.

A few minutes later, the parents and I compared the value of Asa’s exuberant salute to the more dutiful greeting a child might give in response to a parent’s prompting. We all agreed that Asa’s honest gesture was preferable to a thousand adult-initiated toddler ‘hellos.’

I understand a parent’s wish to raise a child with good manners, and we all want our children to know the basics: “Hi,” “Bye” and “Thank you.” Our children’s public behaviors feel like a giant reflection on us, both as people and as parents. When someone greets our baby, we worry that the person might feel rebuffed if the baby does not respond in kind. Even though this fear is usually unfounded, most of us believe our child’s social emotional development is more important than the possible ruffled feathers of others. How do we best teach children to be polite and caring, while also encouraging their authentic responses?

The answer is to trust and model.

Trusting the child means appreciating his or her simple, honest reaction to a situation, rather than wishing for more. It is common for parents entering my class to say to their baby, “Say ‘Hi’ to Janet, or “Say, ‘Bye-bye’!” when the class is over. More often than not, the baby is looking me in the eye and telling me those things in his own age appropriate way. The look of acknowledgement communicated through a child’s eyes is infinitely more valuable to me than a parent waving a child’s hand, or telling the child to wave his hand. When a baby does have the impulse to wave on his own, or when an older baby spontaneously says “Hi” or “Bye” to me, it’s icing on the cake.

A child imitates the adults in his life, so parents teach best by modeling the manners they want the child to learn, then trusting the child to incorporate those responses into his social repertoire when he is ready. When a baby first waves, he will often wave towards himself, since that is what he sees. This backwards wave represents a brief moment of time in a baby’s life, before he learns the ‘right’ way. Now that my children are older I truly appreciate the charm of a baby’s early efforts to socialize through imitation.

In our attempts to be good models for our children, we may find ourselves using the words ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ a bit more often. Wait, who’s teaching whom manners here?

It’s especially valuable to model “Thank you,” instead of the commonly used, “Good job,” when a child is cooperative or helpful. “Good job” is a reflexive response for parents, but it is the kind of praise that feels more like an authoritative (and slightly demeaning) stamp-of-approval than a response of appreciation. We help our child to grow authentically when we describe an accomplishment rather than praise it. “You put your foot through the pant leg yourself. Thank you for helping to put on your clothes.” A gracious acknowledgement helps to keep a child in touch with the intrinsic reward of his accomplishments, rather than training him to perform for praise and approval. (When our arms are full of groceries and someone holds the door for us, we don’t say ‘good job.’)

Even when we have modeled graciousness for a child, we must still find the patience to wait for him to find his own motivation to show gratitude. If we force him to mimic good manners, the child may begin to perform for approval only and not as an expression of his genuine feelings. Ultimately, we want our children to understand the words and greetings they are using. Realistically, most children cannot be expected to say “Thank you” (and mean it) until they are at least 4 or 5 years old.

I can relate to a parent’s impatience to hear a child express gratitude. I still worry that my eight-year-old son will forget those words and I occasionally ask him quietly, “What do you say?” or remind him, “Don’t forget to say, thank you.” But if I waited another moment or two, my son might say those words on his own without prodding. When I am on the other end of this scenario, as the host or helpful person, I know I would much prefer a child to look in my eyes, smile shyly, or do nothing at all, than perform a robotic “Thank you, Mrs. Lansbury.”

Our trust and patience is an investment in a lifetime of good manners motivated from within. Instead of prompting responses from our baby, we should try to relax, observe and enjoy our child’s natural reactions and expressions. We might be surprised by our child’s spontaneous displays of cheer and affection. And when we encourage the authentic development of social skills, we give our child permission to continually act from the heart.

When one-year-old Max entered the classroom during a recent parent/infant class, his friend, Jack, walked over and gently embraced him. I can’t imagine a more sincere “Hello.”

My acting career was a white-knuckle ride. Whether I was auditioning for a B-movie or acting in a TV guest shot, I felt deep down that I did not belong in the entertainment business. Acting was not my calling. Rather, it was a lifestyle choice that by sheer chance had chosen me.

I possessed only modest talent, suffered from a debilitating lack of confidence, and accepted whatever roles came my way. My insecurity and lack of conviction made me jittery, sometimes even panicky on the set. I attempted to ‘take the edge off’ with a variety of substances (well, it was the 80s), but chasing chemical highs and lows only added to my general unsteadiness. Thankfully, friends, family and a sense of humor helped me to weather the storms.

But there were brief moments when I tasted the joy of acting. Those moments came in my acting classes with Harry Mastrogeorge. When I left the entertainment business, became a mom, and then began intensive training with infant expert Magda Gerber, I was often aware of an intangible feeling of familiarity with many of Magda’s theories. I later realized that Magda’s child-rearing ideas felt familiar because they recurrently brought to mind the methods of my favorite acting teacher. The core values these two approaches share struck a chord in me. Two parallel lessons stand out among the many.

The first parallel between Harry’s acting lessons and Magda’s child care philosophy is that they both are gimmick-free approaches that require us to trust simple logic. Harry Mastrogeorge eschewed artificial acting techniques like “substitution”: dwelling on the death of your dog to drum up tears for a scene that has nothing to do with your dog (or any dog); and “repetition exercises,” which involve two actors repeating the same words to each other until they connect emotionally—“How are you? How are you? How are you?!

And Harry had the least patience of all with the idea—encouraged by some acting institutions– that an actor has to have a real-life experience to be able to be immersed in a role. For instance, to play a homeless person, an actor should live on the streets for a week. But there were some obvious limitations to this method; to play a vampire (as so many do these days!), would you have to bite necks and drink real blood?

Harry was inspired by Einstein’s quote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” And Harry would often say, “On the wings of your imagination you can create anything!” He wanted us to approach a scene with “childlike innocence,” to “play make-believe” and he taught us that acting was no different than “Cowboys and Indians.” He instructed us to prepare for a scene by spending hours daydreaming, imagining each detail of the situation from our character’s point of view as prescribed by the writer, until we began to believe our make-believe. Then, when it was time for us to act we would submit to the situation we had spent time imagining. It was a challenging process, but it was simple and uncluttered. Harry’s approach gave the actor independence because it could be used when acting in any scene anywhere, while other techniques I’d been coached in had to be altered and rethought for every role.

Magda Gerber’s approach to child care is also free of gimmicks and quick fixes. A parent is asked to forego most of the equipment that we are told by others we need. Bouncy seats, walkers, jumpers, infant swings, musical mobiles are unnecessary and unproductive at best, and can even be detrimental to our ultimate goals for a child. We are taught to observe our baby’s self-initiated activity in a peaceful environment rather than resort to artificial stimulation to entertain, teach, or coax a response. We trust a baby’s inborn capabilities to daydream and create play. If imagination is more important than knowledge, isn’t listening to the songs of birds, gazing at clouds, or touching spots of shadow on a wood floor vastly more important than memorizing a word on a flashcard?

Magda gives us a basic strategy: pay full attention to a baby during ‘caring’ rituals like diapering, feeding and bathing, and then allow him to spend the rest of the day playing without interruption. The job is still challenging, but the logic is common sense. We don’t have to start suddenly doing different things for our child and rethinking our role because he is, for example, now six months old and ‘should’ be able to sit up. Trusting a child to develop at her own pace, respecting the child’s inborn abilities and developmental timetable is the overall approach. This basic trust doesn’t alter, regardless of the child’s age.

A second parallel lesson that both Harry and Magda taught me is the importance of self-reliance and intrinsic motivation. Both teachers espouse approaches that rely on inner-direction. Harry never allowed students to applaud each other after a scene. He did not want us to think in terms of performance or product, but to simply focus on our imaginary experience as completely as possible.

It was extremely annoying to a people-pleasing, validation-hooked person like me when he would say, “Janet, tell me about your experience,” rather than, “That was good,” “You were fantastic,” or “That sucked.” But those stamp-of-approval kinds of responses only reinforced and perpetuated my dependence on feedback from others to function as an actor.

Playing to an audience is bad acting, and Harry wanted us to intuit for ourselves when we were truly involved in a scene, when we were not, and when we were “in-and-out.” One of his mantras was, “If you believe it, the audience knows it.” Harry believed that when an artist of any kind works to please an audience, it’s the kiss of death for his creation. Masterpieces are made when an intrinsically motivated artist expresses himself and creates to his own satisfaction.

Children are born intrinsically motivated, but can be conditioned to be outer-directed by our responses. Magda Gerber taught me the value of preserving inner-directness in a child, and this resonated, because it was an attribute I struggled to regain for myself.  Magda believed in the importance of acknowledgement and encouragement, while urging caution with respect to praise. In Magda’s book Dear Parent, Caring For Infants With Respect she suggests that, rather than praise, we act as a “broadcaster” and describe the child’s actions. When an infant rolls from his back to his stomach for the first time after days of struggle we want to yell, “Hip-hip hooray! Good job!” But when we look into a child’s eyes with a joyful smile and simply say, “You rolled over!” we see in the child a glimmer of self-satisfaction and he keeps ownership of his accomplishment.

Children naturally wish to please us; indeed, pleasing an adult caregiver is vital to an infant’s basic survival. Tempering our responses is sometimes necessary if we believe in the value of inner-direction. It is important to protect our children from becoming “performers,” hooked on praise and external rewards. Being told we’re great doesn’t ever make us believe we are great; it only conditions us to look to others for approval. We grow in self-confidence when we stay in tune with our capabilities, when we overcome struggle and adversity to finally accomplish a goal, and when we survive failure. And, after all, aren’t self-reliance and self-confidence one and the same?