We were recently talking to a friend whose daughter had decided that she wants to go to college to study puppetry. Another adult in the room quickly chimed in, “Why would she want to do that? How many jobs could there possibly be in that profession?”

This, as we know, is exactly the sort of thing young people always hear when they are deciding on a career choice: it’s better to pick something practical, blah, blah, blah. Surely, yes, the world always needs more doctors and teachers. But it also needs people who are creative, and who are doing uniquely creative things…otherwise our lives would be, let’s face it, kinda dull.

A story by Carolina A. Miranda which appeared on CNN.com back in 2012 - originally published by Parenting.com - still says it best: “We all have creative potential. Our job as parents and teachers is to help kids fulfill it.” (It’s actually a quote from Mark Runco, Ph.D., director of the University of Georgia’s Torrance Center for Creativity & Talent Development.)

Kids are naturally drawn to art because their young minds are very much in “exploration” mode - and certainly, creativity is at its best when it is not all that concerned about rules and boundaries. Many of the most iconic artists in history were, in their time, challenging the established ideas of art. The likes of Rafael and Michelangelo, for instance, brought together the humanistic, the scientific and the divine in shaping the Renaissance during the 15th Century - and they ruffled a few feathers while doing it. And in the early 20th Century, Cubism practitioners like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque totally rearranged the accepted notions of the composition of objects, landscapes and people, and painting would never be the same again.

Kids, who are often confronted with peer pressure and the need to conform, can explore their individuality via the freedom that being creative allows.

A 2022 US News & World Report article stresses the benefits of K-12 arts education, specifically listing several potential long-term benefits to children: (1) Developing social-emotional and interpersonal skills, (2) Handling constructive criticism, (3) Bolstering academic achievement, (4) Improving focus, and (5) Enriching their experiences. Perhaps most importantly in this age of digital overload and mental health challenges, learning about art and being creative can very much help kids develop confidence and boost their self-esteem. 

This insightful article at TED.com offers several informative tips on how parents can encourage creativity in their children. But perhaps even more usefully, Good Housekeeping has assembled dozens of ideas here for how to to it all at home on a budget.

But acclaimed British artist David Hockney put it so perfectly when he observed that, “The urge to draw must be quite deep within us, because children love to do it.” We can reasonably conclude, then, that when kids are being creative, they will be discovering things - sometimes really deep and profound things - about themselves along the way.

Oh, and just in case you were actually wondering, the World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts estimates that somewhere between 5000 and 10,000 people currently work in that field across North America. Go for it!