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Winter’s Isolation Can Nurture A Child’s Creativity

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We have now entered the coldest days of winter, on average, for our area. Highs now average 19 degrees and lows 0. But it can be much colder, with temperatures falling to 35 below zero and highs as low as a minus 20 degrees.
Sunday, winds gusting to 40 mph in western Minnesota dropping windchills into the dangerous minus-25-degree range. Bitterly cold temperatures and strong wind mean few people venturing outside the house.
Winter can be a time of isolation, and with it can come boredom – and that’s not all bad. If you can disconnect from your television, social media, and shopping online.
When we were kids, our father would pack us up on a Saturday afternoon and take us tobogganing in the hills of Pope County, where we would fly out onto a small lake. Two or three of us, maybe four if it was a big toboggan, would eagerly pile on and with a push be off flying down the hill.
At times, we would get off balance or hit a hump in the landscape we hadn’t planned on, and everyone would go flying. Snow down the collar of our coats and down our boots, weren’t a deterrent as we trudged back up the hill for another run.
Or we would go cross-country skiing, venture out on the ice of Sand Lake, or go to Lake Minnewaska and hike into the cottage. Carefully going down the three levels of the ancient (from the early 1900s) cement stairway, we would first be fascinated by the large ice heaves piling up on the shoreline.
We wondered what we might find in the greenish-blue bottom of the ice slabs – it was always the same: a few rocks scraped off the shore and now embedded in ice. It was still fascinating to us.
Once on the ice, we would use another ancient technology – the hand-held ice chisel – to chop a hole in the ice to try our luck at fishing. Large cracks in the ice running out of sight were captivating to a child’s imagination. Once in a while we’d even hear a loud “Boom” as a new crack cut across the lake.
Sometimes, when the snow wasn’t too deep, we would walk down to the small ravine that ran through the woods. On one of its high banks, an ice “waterfall” would form as water seeped from springs to be frozen into place.
These were all memorable and enriching times with family and friends.
When everyone was settled in by early evening, and the cold and wind seemed to bite more in the darkness, we often would reach for a book – there were hundreds in the house.
What’s available to a child at home on a cold winter’s night? Is the house without a book for a child, or adult, to read to a child? Is it without materials or games for projects that might stimulate problem-solving and imagination?
Make a trip the library with your child. Let the child find his or her own books to read. Giving them the choice means there is an initial attraction that might get them to open the book at home.
Look up projects for a child to do at home. When we were young, there were Erector sets, Lincoln logs, model airplanes and cars, paint by number sets, child ovens and bake sets, and dolls to dress up or make clothes for, and puzzles. There are similar items available for children today – find them. Today, there are Lego sets and much more that doesn’t involve handing the child an electronic device that isolates their behavior and does little to nurture their creativity and ability to focus.
“Kids often complain about being bored. But boredom can actually help them develop skills, creativity, and self-esteem,” Gia Miller of the Child Mind Institute writes. “Both little kids and older ones often need some help coming up with things to do with unstructured time. But once you’ve got them going, they can take the boredom ball and run with it.
Don’t hover over them. Give children the freedom to solve problems and design projects on their own. Learning independence, accomplishing things on their own, nurtures a child’s self-esteem and confidence. It is a reward that is hard to beat when you see a child smile and show off their creation to you.
Giving kids freedom to experience taking on a project is also good for their personal growth.
“Boredom also helps children develop planning strategies, problem-solving skills, flexibility and organizational skills — key abilities that children whose lives are usually highly structured may lack,” Jodi Musoff, an educational specialist at the Child Mind Institute, told Miller.
“It’s not the boredom itself that helps children acquire these skills — it’s what they do with the boredom,” she told Miller. It’s the skills they learn. Creating a plan and working through challenges create self-confidence.
Children aren’t the only ones who can benefit from being proactive in how they address cabin fever and winter isolation. Adults need to act, too. America is suffering a plague of loneliness as too many people are left at home alone.
So many of the activities we can do during the winter time, when we are more isolated, can involve something that is missing from so many people’s lives today – social gatherings. Even in small groups to talk, play a game of cribbage, or whist, or buck euchre, to put together a puzzle, or bake cookies.
There will be a lot more smiles and many more rewarding memories when spending a night with friends doing something social versus sitting with a hand on a TV remote or being fixated on social media. It takes some initiative to organize an evening with friends, but it is well worth the time.
Social activities and togetherness are proven to be good for our mental health and keep our minds sharp.

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