We Steal Our Children’s Imagination… Then Pay for Courses to Teach Them Creativity

By Dr. Carol Al-Majali
Academic Consultant, Curriculum Author, and Academic Researcher

In an era when parents’ concern for their children’s future is increasingly reflected in schedules packed with activities and courses, childhood itself has become so meticulously structured that little room remains for imagination. The moment children return from school, another round of commitments begins: taekwondo practice, followed by art classes, swimming lessons, and perhaps additional tutoring and educational activities. All of this stems from the belief that every minute must be invested in developing their abilities.

Even when children finally return home, we continue to occupy them with educational toys, interactive programs, and adult-directed activities, as though we are afraid to leave them a single moment without instructions or predetermined objectives.

Yet amid all these well-intentioned efforts, a fundamental educational question deserves serious reflection: Are we genuinely nurturing our children’s creativity, or are we simply teaching them to wait for someone to tell them what to do?

We have become so uncomfortable with the idea of children having nothing to do that the moment a child says, “I’m bored,” we rush to offer another toy or suggest yet another activity. We forget that children do not always need someone to keep them occupied. Sometimes, what they need most is the freedom to discover for themselves how to spend their time.

In early childhood education, this concept is known as Unstructured Free Play: time during which children choose their own activities, invent their own rules, and creatively use the materials around them without adults imposing a particular way of playing or an expected outcome.

Imagine a five-year-old child discovering an empty cardboard box and transforming it into a spaceship. A shoe becomes a car, cushions turn into mountains, and a piece of fabric becomes a tent. Suddenly, ordinary household objects are transformed into an entire universe of imaginative stories, adventures, and events created by the child.

We see a box, a shoe, and a cushion. The child sees a world of limitless possibilities!

This is precisely where the extraordinary value of free play becomes evident. Rather than merely using objects for their conventional purposes, children reimagine and repurpose them, engaging in symbolic thinking, divergent thinking, and cognitive flexibility. These mental processes are closely associated with creativity and problem-solving and are widely recognized as important foundations of twenty-first-century skills.

Scientific research lends support to this perspective. A study conducted by Bonawitz and colleagues (2011), published in the journal Cognition under the title “The Double-Edged Sword of Pedagogy,” found that children who received direct instructions on how to use a new toy explored fewer of its possibilities than children who were given greater opportunities for independent exploration.

This finding invites us to recognize that excessive adult direction can sometimes restrict opportunities for discovery. It does not, however, diminish the importance of guided instruction; rather, it highlights the need to understand when guidance is beneficial and when stepping aside may allow learning to unfold more naturally.

Similarly, a study by Barker and colleagues (2014), published in Frontiers in Psychology, identified an association between children spending more time in less-structured activities and stronger performance in certain aspects of self-directed executive functioning, including the ability to manage goals and regulate behavior independently.

Although the study did not establish a direct causal relationship, its findings raise an important question about the developmental value of allowing children the freedom to make their own decisions.

Such opportunities are particularly significant during early childhood, especially between the ages of three and eight, when imaginative and symbolic play form an essential part of children’s developmental experiences.

When a child pretends to be a doctor, a teacher, or an airplane pilot, that child is doing far more than simply playing. Through these imagined roles, children recreate aspects of the world they observe, experiment with social interactions, and invent situations and solutions drawn from their own imagination.

This leads us to a rather uncomfortable question:

How can we expect our children to think outside the box in the future when, from their earliest years, we confine them within boxes of instructions and predetermined activities?

I am not advocating the elimination of structured activities, nor am I questioning their educational value. Sports, the arts, and organized learning programs provide meaningful and beneficial experiences. What I am advocating is a healthier balance between what we explicitly teach our children and what we allow them to discover independently.

Perhaps one of the most valuable experiences parents can offer their children is simply the gift of unstructured time: time away from screens, instructions, and ready-made activities, within a safe environment where ordinary objects can become extraordinary creations through the power of imagination.

Observe your children without imposing your own ideas upon them. Allow them the freedom to experiment, change direction, make mistakes, and invent.

You may be astonished by the unexpected ideas their minds produce. You may even discover that their creative abilities were never absent; they simply needed the space to emerge.

Dear parents, childhood is not a management project whose timetable must be filled from morning until evening. Constant busyness is not necessarily evidence of better development, just as an abundance of toys does not automatically translate into a richer imagination.

Give your children the right to experience moments in which nothing is expected of them: no task to complete, no instructions to follow, and no adult-defined objective to achieve.

When we teach children how to use objects, we give them knowledge. But when we allow them to discover new ways of using those objects, we open the door to creativity.

Perhaps, then, the question we should be asking ourselves today is not:

“What activities shall we arrange to keep our children occupied tomorrow?”

But rather:

“How much time will we give our children to astonish us with what they are capable of creating on their own?”