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Growing Creative Kids

Training Your Family’s Divergent Thinking Skills

By Sheena, on May 2nd, 2011

How often do you dust off your divergent-thinking muscle? If you’re not sure, think back to the last time you took an idea and ran with it. That’s divergent thinking. It’s a great skill set to have and is priceless for your kids as they operate in a continually changing world where divergent thinking skills are increasingly crucial. Here are some skills you can work on with your kids so you can all develop your divergent thinking  ability.
Curiosity - Curious people rarely take the world around them at face value, they’re always questioning. If your child isn’t always asking why, get them started! It’s a great habit to get into. Ask probing questions while encouraging kids to do the same, search out answers and look into topics of interest deeper and from many different angles. I’ve already have a post on curiosity and kids here, in “Growing Curious Kids”, if you’re interested.
Imagination - Having the ability to dream, invent, and think outside the box is very important if you want to become a divergent thinker. For kids, imagination is as natural as breathing, but the real challenge here is to keep their imagination alive. Imagination is often considered silly or frivolous in the “real world” but don’t let that discourage you or your kids! Without imagination, innovation is impossible! Training your imagination is as simple as playing, and one great activity you can do anywhere to encourages imagination is “Adventure Story Telling.” In order for imagination to flourish, it needs security and encouragement and as a parent, teacher or care giver you are in a position to offer both: embrace your own imagination, and children will realize imagination is a gift and they will be able to embrace their own.
Flexibility – If you’re always taught there is one right answer. it hampers your flexible thinking. Similarly, children often taught “the right way or “This is how we do it.” While this way might be faster, any chance of flexible thinking is lost because they no longer feel the need to seek out new methods and new answers. A great way to encourage flexible thinking, and perhaps even learn something yourself, is to ask how can we do this? while teaching. You might have an answer in mind, but it encourages kids to first think critically about the solution.
One of the best places to utilize flexible thinking in in the kitchen. Find a basic recipe for muffins, granola bars, smoothies or any other recipe that’s easily adaptable, and try a different method or ingredient. You never know, you might just come up with a masterpiece! (You might also come up with something decidedly less than masterpiece-ian. In this case, it’s an excellent chance to teach a lesson in embracing mistakes…) This is what the greatest chefs do; you learn the basic recipe and what makes it work, and then you play and play some more! I do suggest writing down what you did, just in case you come up with something amazing. There’s nothing worse than hearing “This is excellent! What did you put in it?” and having to follow up with “No idea, enjoy it now because I might never be able to make it again!”
(This happens about once a week on our house)
Originality – Divergent thinkers must be original thinkers. The ability to create and combine information is new and unique ways is an important skill, but how do you teach someone to be an original thinker? This was a perpetual problem for me when working overseas, in a system where following the prescribed learning outcomes is the way to success and original thinking is discouraged.
One of the best ways I found was to increase the variety of experiences and learning materials I exposed my students to. The more varied the source material, the more creative combinations and new ideas. This is easy to do with kids. Plan your activities taking different learning styles and multiple intelligences into account and you will naturally be exposing kids to new and different ideas and ways of looking at things. I have a post on Activity Planning and Multiple Intelligences here.
Elaborating – The ability to elaborate on an idea is important to divergent thinking. To elaborate is to take basic idea and add onto or build off of it, and it can help in many areas of life. It is an important element to effective communication, as many people, kids and adults have a hard time expressing their thoughts in detail, which can in turn lead to confusion, misunderstandings and the feeling that you are not being heard. Numerous careers depend on the ability to elaborate: authors, teachers, managers, and yes, even parents.
Encourage kids to get into the habit of elaborating on their thoughts by providing more details. Exercises such as creating speeches and presentations, and even creative writing encourage elaboration. My friend’s family has the tradition of everyone sharing something at the family dinner table about their day. This could be what’s happening or any ideas they have or problems they have encountered, and it’s a great way to build family communication skills and learn how to elaborate at the same time!
Fluency – While elaboration is taking a single idea and expanding on it, fluency is the ability to generate a large number of different ideas. It’s quite a simple concept, the more ideas you have, the greater chance that one of the ideas will be a workable solution. Often our fluency is hampered by that little negative voice in our heads that says this won’t work or this is a stupid idea, and our desire to brainstorm different solutions is hampered by our fear of what others will think of us.
The best way to become a more fluent thinker is to get into the habit of keeping a notebook with you at all times (I use a Pocket Mod). Also if you are trying to teach kids to think fluently, it is important to provide a safe environment for them to share their ideas in. If a child is told that their idea is “silly” or “dumb” they’ll stop generating ideas – instantly.
A great exercise in fluent thinking is the “List of 100.” Take a problem or an everyday object and write down 100 things about it. You might struggle at first, but the idea is to look at it from all angles and to not censor yourself. In the end, some of your ideas might not be very useful or practical, but others will be, and you will start to notice elements or combinations you never noticed before. Once you have a great list of ideas, you can begin to elaborate and develop the ideas that have a seed of promise.
Risk Taking – The greatest leaders are divergent thinkers, and their success relies on how comfortable they are with taking risks. Risk taking means trying new things, having new experiences, and letting go of our fears. It doesn’t necessarily mean taking physical risks, rather, the largest part of being a risk taker is simply not allowing the mental blocks (fear, negativity, and similar feelings) to stand in your way. Risk taking means acknowledging your fear and deciding to do it anyway. You can teach kids to rise above their fears by rising above yours, or working on it together. Acknowledging a fear is the first step, otherwise you find yourself avoiding it; once you acknowledge it, you can create an action plan to overcome your fears. This is an important process for kids to learn.
Many of these skills work together and build off each other. They are skills that can be practiced every single day and in the process make your experiences and the world around you deeper, richer and more vibrant.

Reclaim Your Divergent Thinking Talents

Many older adults worry about memory loss. This is a serious issue especially if it leads to dementia and the inability to do the activities of daily living.

But just as serious, and more so in many ways, is the dramatic loss of divergent thinking skills in young children.

One long-term study found that in a group of 1600 children those that ranked tops in divergent thinking dropped dramatically with age. Specifically, those achieving a top score for divergent thinking went from  98% in kindergarten to 32% five years later to just 10% when they reached early teens.   Divergent thinking is a natural talent and is rapidly educated and socialized away.
Divergent thinking is the capacity to see  multiple options, alternatives or possibilities. The goal is not to find a solution but instead find an enormous range of potential and therefore very different solutions.   For example, how many interesting uses can you find for a rubber band?  On average people might find 10-20, genius level performance would generate in excess of 150.  The trick to generating many more options is to begin to relax assumptions about what a rubber band is. What if it was a mile long?  Of course, some would claim that is cheating, as we have all been taught to do. Just as there is one right answer so why worry about so many?

The question is how can we reclaim our genius level of performance in divergent thinking?  How can we then channel it into creative expression and break-through problem solving?

Mind mapping, journaling and traditional brainstorming are techniques that are typically offered to those looking to build divergent thinking skills.
Start simple with brainstorming by yourself but apply it to a practical problem that means something to your right now.
Here is what you do.  Let’s say you are buying a new computer.  Use divergent thinking to decide what to do with the old one.   Set a time limit (say 20 minutes at most), and list as many ideas as you can. Best to write them down. Go for the largest number, don’t worry if they are good/bad, look at how you can combine ideas and allow for the weird and strange.  Have fun with it. Open up your mental jets.
With continued practice your mind will get use to this mode of thinking again and you will start to reclaim your divergent thinking talent. Consider using mind mapping or some other way of seeing how your ideas related to each other visually. Include others. Let alternatives bubble up all day or all week and capture them in a journal as you go.  Soon your thinking will diverge far and fast when you want it to.   The payoff?  Good ideas that you would have normally never even considered.
Interested to hear form readers that practice divergent thinking. What techniques do you use?

Weblinks

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/09/26/8-tips-to-feel-better-about-yourself/

About Cognitive Psychotherapy

By Michael Herkov, Ph.D

Cognitive therapy is based on the theory that much of how we feel is determined by what we think. Disorders, such as depression, are believed to be the result of faulty thoughts and beliefs. By correcting these inaccurate beliefs, the person’s perception of events and emotional state improve.
Research on depression has shown that people with depression often have inaccurate beliefs about themselves, their situation and the world. A list of common cognitive errors and real life examples is listed below:

• Personalization — relating negative events to oneself when there is no basis.
  Example — When walking down the hallway at work, John says hello to the company CEO. The CEO does not respond and keeps walking. John interprets this as the CEO’s lack of respect for him. He gets demoralized and feels rejected. However, the CEO’s behavior may have nothing to do with John. He may have been preoccupied about an upcoming meeting, or had a fight with his wife that morning. If John considered that the CEO’s behavior may not be related to him personally, he is likely to avoid this negative mood.
• Dichotomous Thinking — seeing things as black and white, all or none. This is usually detected when a person can generate only two choices in a situation. Example — Mary is having a problem at work with one of her supervisors who she believes is treating her badly. She convinces herself that she has only two options: tell her boss off or quit. She is unable to consider a host of other possibilities such as talking to her boss in a constructive way, seeking guidance from a higher supervisor, contacting employee relations, etc.
• Selective Abstraction — focusing only on certain aspects of a situation, usually the most negative. Example — During a staff meeting at work, Susan presents a proposal for solving a problem. Her solution is listened to with great interest and many of her ideas are applauded. However, at one point her supervisor points out that her budget for the project appears to be grossly inadequate. Susan ignores the positive feedback she has received and focuses on this one comment. She interprets it as a lack of support from her boss and a humiliation in front of the group.
• Magnification-Minimization — distorting the importance of particular events. Example — Robert is a college student who wants to go to medical school. He knows that his college grade point average will be used by schools during the admission process. He receives a D in a class on American History. He becomes demoralized thinking now that his lifelong dream to be a physician is no longer possible.

Cognitive therapists work with the person to challenge thinking errors like those listed above. By pointing out alternative ways of viewing a situation, the person’s view of life, and ultimately their mood will improve. Research has shown that cognitive therapy can be as effective as medication in the long-term treatment of depression.

About Interpersonal Therapy

By Michael Herkov, Ph.D

Interpersonal therapy focuses on the interpersonal relationships of the depressed person. The idea of interpersonal therapy is that depression can be treated by improving the communication patterns and how people relate to others.
Techniques of interpersonal therapy include:

• Identification of Emotion — Helping the person identify what their emotion is and where it is coming from.
  Example — Roger is upset and fighting with his wife. Careful analysis in therapy reveals that he has begun to feel neglected and unimportant since his wife started working outside the home. Knowing that the relevant emotion is hurt and not anger, Roger can begin to address the problem.
• Expression of Emotion — This involves helping the person express their emotions in a healthy way. Example — When Roger feels neglected by his wife he responds with anger and sarcasm. This in turn leads his wife to react negatively. By expressing his hurt and his anxiety at no longer being important in her life in a calm manner, Roger can now make it easier for his wife to react with nurturance and reassurance.
• Dealing With Emotional Baggage — Often, people bring unresolved issues from past relationships to their present relationships. By looking at how these past relationships affect their present mood and behavior, they are in a better position to be objective in their present relationships. Example — Growing up, Roger’s mother was not a nurturing woman. She was very involved in community affairs and often put Roger’s needs on the back burner. When choosing a wife, Roger subconsciously chose a woman who was very attentive and nurturing. While he agreed that the family needed the increased income, he did not anticipate how his relationship with his own mother would affect his reaction to his wife working outside the home.

15 Common Cognitive Distortions

By John M. Grohol, Psy.D.

What’s a cognitive distortion and why do so many people have them? Cognitive distortions are simply ways that our mind convinces us of something that isn’t really true. These inaccurate thoughts are usually used to reinforce negative thinking or emotions — telling ourselves things that sound rational and accurate, but really only serve to keep us feeling bad about ourselves.
For instance, a person might tell themselves, “I always fail when I try to do something new; I therefore fail at everything I try.” This is an example of “black or white” (or polarized) thinking. The person is only seeing things in absolutes — that if they fail at one thing, they must fail at all things. If they added, “I must be a complete loser and failure” to their thinking, that would also be an example of overgeneralization — taking a failure at one specific task and generalizing it their very self and identity.
Cognitive distortions are at the core of what many cognitive-behavioral and other kinds of therapists try and help a person learn to change in psychotherapy. By learning to correctly identify this kind of “stinkin’ thinkin’,” a person can then answer the negative thinking back, and refute it. By refuting the negative thinking over and over again, it will slowly diminish overtime and be automatically replaced by more rational, balanced thinking.

Cognitive Distortions

Aaron Beck first proposed the theory behind cognitive distortions and David Burns was responsible for popularizing it with common names and examples for the distortions.
1. Filtering.
We take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. For instance, a person may pick out a single, unpleasant detail and dwell on it exclusively so that their vision of reality becomes darkened or distorted.
2. Polarized Thinking (or “Black and White” Thinking).
In polarized thinking, things are either “black-or-white.” We have to be perfect or we’re a failure — there is no middle ground. You place people or situations in “either/or” categories, with no shades of gray or allowing for the complexity of most people and situations. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
3. Overgeneralization.
In this cognitive distortion, we come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or a single piece of evidence. If something bad happens only once, we expect it to happen over and over again. A person may see a single, unpleasant event as part of a never-ending pattern of defeat.
4. Jumping to Conclusions.
Without individuals saying so, we know what they are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, we are able to determine how people are feeling toward us.
For example, a person may conclude that someone is reacting negatively toward them but doesn’t actually bother to find out if they are correct. Another example is a person may anticipate that things will turn out badly, and will feel convinced that their prediction is already an established fact.
5. Catastrophizing.
We expect disaster to strike, no matter what. This is also referred to as “magnifying or minimizing.” We hear about a problem and use what if questions (e.g., “What if tragedy strikes?” “What if it happens to me?”).
For example, a person might exaggerate the importance of insignificant events (such as their mistake, or someone else’s achievement). Or they may inappropriately shrink the magnitude of significant events until they appear tiny (for example, a person’s own desirable qualities or someone else’s imperfections).

With practice, you can learn to answer each of these cognitive distortions.

6. Personalization.
Personalization is a distortion where a person believes that everything others do or say is some kind of direct, personal reaction to the person. We also compare ourselves to others trying to determine who is smarter, better looking, etc.
A person engaging in personalization may also see themselves as the cause of some unhealthy external event that they were not responsible for. For example, “We were late to the dinner party and caused the hostess to overcook the meal. If I had only pushed my husband to leave on time, this wouldn’t have happened.”
7. Control Fallacies.
If we feel externally controlled, we see ourselves as helpless a victim of fate. For example, “I can’t help it if the quality of the work is poor, my boss demanded I work overtime on it.” The fallacy of internal control has us assuming responsibility for the pain and happiness of everyone around us. For example, “Why aren’t you happy? Is it because of something I did?”
8. Fallacy of Fairness.
We feel resentful because we think we know what is fair, but other people won’t agree with us. As our parents tell us, “Life is always fair,” and people who go through life applying a measuring ruler against every situation judging its “fairness” will often feel badly and negative because of it.
9. Blaming.
We hold other people responsible for our pain, or take the other track and blame ourselves for every problem. For example, “Stop making me feel bad about myself!” Nobody can “make” us feel any particular way — only we have control over our own emotions and emotional reactions.
10. Shoulds.
We have a list of ironclad rules about how others and we should behave. People who break the rules make us angry, and we feel guilty when we violate these rules. A person may often believe they are trying to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if they have to be punished before they can do anything.
For example, “I really should exercise. I shouldn’t be so lazy.” Musts and oughts are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When a person directs should statements toward others, they often feel anger, frustration and resentment.
11. Emotional Reasoning.
We believe that what we feel must be true automatically. If we feel stupid and boring, then we must be stupid and boring. You assume that your unhealthy emotions reflect he way things really are — “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”
12. Fallacy of Change.
We expect that other people will change to suit us if we just pressure or cajole them enough. We need to change people because our hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them.
13. Global Labeling.
We generalize one or two qualities into a negative global judgment. These are extreme forms of generalizing, and are also referred to as “labeling” and “mislabeling.” Instead of describing an error in context of a specific situation, a person will attach an unhealthy label to themselves.
For example, they may say, “I’m a loser” in a situation where they failed at a specific task. When someone else’s behavior rubs a person the wrong way, they may attach an unhealthy label to him, such as “He’s a real jerk.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. For example, instead of saying someone drops her children off at daycare every day, a person who is mislabeling might say that “she abandons her children to strangers.”
14. Always Being Right.
We are continually on trial to prove that our opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and we will go to any length to demonstrate our rightness. For example, “I don’t care how badly arguing with me makes you feel, I’m going to win this argument no matter what because I’m right.” Being right often is more important than the feelings of others around a person who engages in this cognitive distortion, even loved ones.
15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy.
We expect our sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if someone is keeping score. We feel bitter when the reward doesn’t come.

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Dr. Sheila Jocelyn Shaw, Ph.D./D.B.A
424 East Central Blvd. @10digitsSheila, http://professsorshaw.blogspot.com/
hellomsshaw@gmx.com
nine09digits@yahoo.com

Long term professional training,the psychology/function of organizational culture management,and my tenure in academics are assets in my career portfolio as the foundation towards building a successful relationship with the college/universit.I am interested in a full time or visiting instructor position within post secondary education the college or university. As an experienced educator in the progressive educational paradigms a position with your college/university would compliment my  future within academic endeavors through professional exposure and alliance.

PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP:I implemented customized course material and designed course instruction based upon a global futurist paradigm in education oriented with cohesive team networks of communal,virtual classroom, collegiate/university student multimedia communication collaborating with experts in online distance learning paradigms & extended student programs, curriculum acceleration & diversification as an educator.I designed, administered/outsourced grade examinations to assess achievement of course objectives as identified in the student curriculum. My experience in redesigning infrastructure,implementing connected teaching models,effective teaching to enable & stimulate expanded learning resources that provide a learner centric architecture populated with technological assess to asynchronous continuous learning systems enabling the design of student portfolios to create engaging, extraordinary transcripts that exemplify & highlight student portfolio achievements inclusive of comprehensive merit based achievements towards scholarship performance.








Credentials: Ph.D./D.B.A. Corllins University November 2010
MBA Everest University July 2009, http://www.corllinsverification.com/ Graduate ID: RV50008193 PW:51480769