The artist's way for parents: Raising creative children by Julia Cameron with Emma Lively
Allen & Unwin, 2014. ISBN 9781743315064.
Scan the literature for quotes about the importance of the
imagination and creative thinking as an essential part of the
learning process and you will come up with thousands from people
ranging from Einstein to Jobs. Even Dr Seuss had one:
'Think left and think right and think low and think high.
Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try.'
Following the amazing success of The artist's way published
20 years ago and still selling, Julia Cameron has now written this
guide for parents who want to enable their children to maximise this
innate part of their being. Based on her belief that 'Creativity is
a spiritual undertaking. Parenting is a spiritual undertaking' she
describes this book as 'a spiritual toolkit, a support, a guide.'
She says, 'Let us lessen our grip on the obsession with perfection,
with the 'mastery' of parenting, and allow ourselves to explore and
delight in the mystery instead.'
This is not a how-to book that provides instructions on how to teach
the child to paint, knit, model, or play a musical instrument. With
chapter titles such as Cultivating Curiosity, Cultivating
Self-Expression, Cultivating Conscious Inflow and Cultivating
Humility it has a much broader focus written in a conversational
style with anecdotes and examples that could easily be adapted to
the classroom or the home. She addresses the issue of clutter and
mess that often inhibits parents from encouraging creativity, while
at the same time encouraging the parent to examine their own likes
and compare them to those of the child, providing a mix of the
practical with the philosophical. Spattered with such exercises that
challenge thinking and encourage small changes with big impacts,
this book has a place in both your Teacher Resource and Parent
Library sections.
There are a few pages devoted to the power of reading and at their
end, she writes, 'Sharing experiences through reading, we connect
ourselves to something larger. Connecting to something larger, we
become larger ourselves.' I think that 'reading' could be
substituted with 'creativity' and encapsulate the whole theme of
this book.
Barbara Braxton