In his recent book, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, Dr. Anthony Esolen, a noted literature professor and translator of Dante’s Divine Comedy, wrote this:

If we have children around, and we let them be children, they will not miss entering our world. That will come soon enough, and indeed their play is part a preparation for the adult world, for better or for worse. As Saint Augustine in Confessions puts it, ‘Yet we loved to play, and this was punished in us by men who did the same things themselves. However, the trivial concerns of adults are called business, while such things in children are punished by adults.’

The real danger is to ourselves: that we will look upon their world, a fallen world no doubt, but a world still touched with wonder and gratitude, and choose to allow those childlike virtues to enter our hearts.”

I have been contemplating this quote for a while in light of my own parenting efforts and I have concluded that developing imagination is not good enough in and of itself. We have to go deeper. We have to ask ourselves why we want to cultivate imagination. And we have to differentiate between healthy imagination and unhealthy imagination.

Do we want to develop imagination in our children because it will allow them to be “creative” or to “think more deeply” or so they will “do well in school”? Or do we have more noble – more human – goals in minds, goals Esolen speaks to in this passage above?

The truly healthy imagination is one which allows a child to see with wonder and gratitude, which cultivates in them an ability to see the world in the vibrant colors of awe and wonder instead of the sepia tones of modern cynicism, which provides for them a canvas upon which they can paint with the unadulterated joy of seeing for the first time.

Of course we should help our kids develop creativity and the ability to think deeply and a desire to work hard enough to do well in school. But a student with a healthy imagination, who looks at the world around him with awe and wonder and joy will naturally become creative, thoughtful, and hard working. So it’s up to us, as parents and teachers, to provide an environment in which that awe, and wonder and joy can grow. Have you ever tried planting tomatoes in a bed of rock?

To that end, here are some suggestions:

1) Let kids play with toys that aren’t toys (like pots and pans).

This is terrifying, I know. It’s going to be loud. You might get a headache. And it will definitely be messy. But it’s worth it, if you can stand it.

My son, Coulter, who recently turned three, is obsessed with “cooking”. Every evening he climbs up on a chair and “helps” me make dinner. He gets a pot from the cabinet and dumps in some seasonings and oil and whatever else might be around and he goes to town. After a while, he turns to me and says something like, “I made a butter pie for you and mommy” or “look, its a roast chicken”. It’s super cute and maybe one day he’ll be a chef, but neither of these things are the point, exactly.

When kids play with things that aren’t designed specifically for them – and that, therefore, don’t cater to their limited abilities – they are forced to do two things: 1) imitate and 2) re-imagine. Coulter knows that a pot is for food and he learned that quickly. But he doesn’t yet know what that means. I have to resist the urge to tell him “boy, that’s not what that’s for” or “hey, you’re spilling my olive oil”. I do try to teach him as I go, a bit at a time, but it’s also important that he learn for himself what happens when he pours too quickly or when he combines room-temperature butter with water, or what it smells like to combine smoked paprika with, well, anything.

Not only will learning these things help him eventually learn to cook well, they also will force his imagination to make connections between things, they will teach his imagination to learn “if/then” equations. And the more he imitates, a bit at a time, the more his imagination will develop.

Limits are important, and so are rules. But where you can, let your kids play with more than the toys designed for them.

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