Play, Dreams, and Storytelling as Creative Development

This week’s reading from Golomb’s The Creation of Imaginary Worlds: The Role of Art, Magic & Dreams in Child Development discussed the roles of play and dreams in children’s imagination. I greatly appreciated the breakdown chapter two gives of child development in relation to the play activity common for specific age groups. Even with limited parenting/caretaker experience I recognized the activities as ones I had observed children participating in or recalled participating in myself as a child. I think that will help me with my interaction with my students because I will have some grasp on what level of discovery and play they could be expressing to me. It seems that there is a lot more understanding today of a young child’s need for play time interaction and space, but that understanding quickly diminishes as a child hits pre-adolescence. I was intrigued by the case study of Brittney, age 16, who participates in play in her own elaborately created imaginary world inhabited with the pipe cleaner action figures she had been creating since she was 7. My initial reaction was one of appreciation for the artistry and imaginative endeavors of this child…wait…she’s 16? My appreciation for her creativity was overshadowed by my socially-programmed ideology that a person of this age should not be playing in her room with action figures and imaginary friends. Ideally, such creative/abstract thought should be fostered shouldn’t it? Golomb notes that when emphasis is placed on “…continuity, sameness, and the preservation of the status quo, pretense play might not find much support” (p. 129). As an artist I am conflicted now with how to feel about Brittney’s activities because what she does is really pretty cool, but at the same time I am aware that popular opinion could be she is behaving abnormally. We kill childlike creativity with our expectations of acceptable adult behavior. The role of dreams in creativity I feel is such a broad topic. I think Golomb does well to reduce the coverage in her book to children’s dreams, remembered dreams, nightmares, dream interpretation, and daydreams. Though neither of this week’s chapters discusses art making much, dreams can serve as springboards for visual representation of imagery or as a response to it. I read an article a few years ago about Stephanie Meyer, the author of Twilight, a popular series of teen fantasy novels involving a vampire who falls in love with a human. Meyer reported having a dream about a specific scene played out between her two main characters. When she woke, she typed up a written transcript of her dream which became a chapter of the first novel. As an adult, Meyer was able to interpret her dream scene as fictitious and expanded upon it to create a fantasy novel. A child may process dreams of vampires differently, most likely as scary and not so loveable! The imagery could similarly inspire the child to create artwork or an expressive narrative but this could be in an effort to interpret and manage fear or other emotions triggered by the imagery in the scary dream rather than an effort to expand upon the experience. Imagination is influenced by so many things. Practically every experience we have contributes to our collective ability to imagine and create. I agree that play and dreams play a very significant role in the development of a child’s imagination and creativity. I hope to provide environments and interaction with my students that encourages all stages of their creative development.