Real Life | Creativity is a Muscle

I'm probably not the first mom who has told her kids to get off the screens and be creative! I try to model it for them, but truth be told, I'm playing Hay-Day in spare minutes here and there and checking social media in between chores. Creativity is a muscle, my friends, like a lot of other really important things, and we've gotta practice flexing it.

So -- we get ready for the popsicle stick bridge building contest and pull out the pneumatic Legos and yes, the hose in the backyard with a collection of PVC pipes. And when they are on screens, we encourage TV and apps that develop brain cells rather than eat them up.

This time of year is hardest. Soon the days will be longer and so much warmer and we'll be outside a lot more. Our five weeks of fog seems to have burned off [maybe? fingers crossed!] and the sunshine is making me very very happy.

My top advice? Don't give up. Don't throw the screens out the window. Keep talking to your kids about their brains and how addiction happens and what things are going to develop their creativity and what things probably won't. Sometimes give them choices about how they will spend their time and other times enforce an hour or two of screen free time. But what do I know? I'm in the middle of this mess hoping my kids will turn out alright. We're making choices one day at a time. It's really not as easy as these photos make it look. #couragetousall