Ep #76: Everyone Is Creative: How Art Improves Our Kids’ Brain Function with Karen DeLoach

Did you know that doing 20 minutes of art a day not only helps our emotional regulation and our IEQ, but it also actually improves the function and connections in our brains. It’s kind of amazing. My guest today, Karen DeLoach, has been doing art for many years, teaching at a university level as well as in home school groups and private lessons. And she talks about some of the incredible experiences that she’s had watching the impact that art has on both physical ability and emotional health.

She answers that question that I think so many of us have asked ourselves, what if I’m not an artist? What if I’m not good at drawing, good at painting? And she talks to that. She speaks to that and talks about what that can look like and how we can find our creativity, how we can find our ability to express ourselves through art. She shares some amazing science as well. It was a fascinating conversation, really helpful and makes me want to maybe pull out some paints and kind of try something that I thought that maybe I wasn’t very good at. The conversation is coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Amy: Karen, I’m so happy to have you on today. Welcome to the show.

Karen: Thank you so much for having me.

Amy: It’s going to be so fun. I can’t wait to talk about all things art. Before we kind of get into it though, and art and the value that it has for our children and the therapeutic properties and all of that. Can you tell me just a little bit about how you got to where you are and why you do what you do?

Karen: Well, thank you. That’s a really big question.

Amy: I know.

Karen: But I’ve spent my whole life in the arts. My father was a storyteller, did Vaudeville in Brooklyn, and he was just great at acting. And so that was always on my radar. I was a kindergartener who directed plays in the playground. And I didn’t know that I’d end up in film school and teaching filmmaking and doing independent films at that time.

And the other part was my mom would give us all crayons and paper but the paper was just too small. So, I ended up painting on the walls, which got me in big trouble, of course, but my mom had no way of knowing that someday people were going to pay me to paint on their walls. And I’ve painted countless over the last couple of decades.

Amy: I love that.

Karen: And having been a homeschool mom and home school art teacher, I just love the way, seeing all different ages respond to learning and doing art. And how it heals and restores and brings wellness and engages that right brain which gives more fullness to all those neural connections. And as I’ve studied, what I already saw happening, I was excited to find the science backed up what I was already seeing happening with art and children and art and adults, even, all ages.

It seems to be an important component of us as human beings. So, I pursued and studied art, studied film and studied theater. This is all arenas that I’ve had passion about all my life and became an artist and an art teacher. So, it’s been a really fun way to live life. You never retire from being an artist.

Amy: I love that. I think that’s so great. And what a beautiful thing to be able to share and help children with and being able to express themselves. I sometimes wish, I have children that are artists and I feel that wasn’t something I explored enough as a child. But I got to do music and so it’s been such a place of expression for me to be able to do that and maybe some storytelling. My mother was an epic storyteller and so I got some of that, but the drawing and the painting and the ceramics and all that wasn’t something.

I feel like I got one of the worst grades in elementary school in my art class actually when I was doing ceramics. I’m like, “This is hurting my grades.” That’s how not good I was. But I guess there’s some artistry in what I do now, too. So, there’s, I don’t know, maybe it’s coming full circle, I don’t know. But I am so excited to get to talk to you about art and self-therapy. And I have seen this work for children and I would love to learn more about it for myself and so I’m really excited to talk to you about this today.

Karen: First of all, I’m very sorry that someone discouraged you in your art. I teach art and I teach all ages, and I promise you, I create a no criticism zone. Because what I’ve learned, what I saw experientially, and what I learned about science is that our right brain creative center is very sensitive. It feels, tastes, touch, smell, it responds to these five senses in a very sensitive way. And consequently, words and criticism and being put down really affect that part of our brain more acutely than any place else.

And when you have a teacher or a parent or even peers, deride your music, your singing, your art, your dance, whatever creative activity you’re engaging in, creates a deep soul wound. And I can’t tell you how many people come to me, “I can’t draw.” Well, what brought you to that conclusion? Why do you feel that that’s the case? Did you want to draw? And usually, it’s something like what you experienced and what I eventually experienced in art school as a painter, I had that experience and it devastated me. And I wasn’t even, well, I guess 19, 19/20.

Because I tried four different painting teachers and they came to the same conclusion that I could not paint. That I was a three-dimensional artist, not a two-dimensional artist. And it shut me down as a painter for the next decade. I could not complete a painting. Even when I started having these beautiful little baby boys, I wanted to paint portraits and portraits of scenery and what I could see. And those professors wanted me to be more abstract. And so, I did pop art, I did humor and that got me through school but I needed to learn more about how to paint.

And I ran into a mentor eventually who had been to the old school Chicago Art Institute, and he taught me those fundamental things I was missing, and I learned to paint. And not only did it make me a better artist, a better painter, but it also has made me a better teacher. Because I understand that you have to create that safe learning environment whenever you’re doing any kind of creativity with your child or as a child or even as an adult as you’re learning. To overcome those mindsets and to not create those hindrances in your own children or children that you work with.

They feel like, well, we’re going to make you better by criticizing you. It just doesn’t work. That’s not the way the right side of the brain works. It may work for your left brain critical thinking, logic, order, memorization, all these timely skills that the left brain is so good at. It’s so easy to grade. It’s easy to monitor. It’s easy to assess. More difficult is how do you assess the right brain. And you don’t want them working independently of each other. The perfect is a balance between left and right, we make these neural connections.

Because just picking up a utensil or an instrument, if you do music, you’re using your left brain. But then as you let your right brain, once you get past, where do your fingers go? Where are the notes? How do you translate from that piece of paper onto the piano or the guitar or whatever instrument you’re using? Then you’re moving into, how does it sound? What’s the rhythm? You’re going to move into the more right brain area of music or singing or art. And that’s what I found to be fascinating. And you can start early with your children doing that.

Amy: That’s so amazing. And I think it almost goes maybe the other way too, where you’re getting into this logical stuff and we can kind of get stuck there. But we need the creative side to know what math questions to ask and what things to do and how to get outside of just logic and being more creative and think about things in different shapes and different ways. And to be able to solve problems and ask the right questions. So, I think they kind of go together, I think in both ways, it’s so beautiful.

Karen: That’s a really good point that it isn’t one or the other. The goal is both. And there’s a plasticity in our brain. And I’m making it very simple, left brain, right brain but it’s really more complicated than that. They’re always studying the brain and the mind and how it works. And that’s true. You’re a podcaster. You’re creating content from nothing. So, you are using both your left brain and right brain because you have to schedule, you have to have all the technical things in place. You’re outreaching with marketing.

But you’re also making content and you’re utilizing visuals and you’re putting this together. And there really is no profession on the planet where you’re not needing to engage both. So, it’s not an either or. And unfortunately, we do have a public school system that engages mostly left brain to the point of trivializing, even damaging the right brain as you experienced with one teacher giving you bad a grade. I can’t imagine. It’s awful. I’m so sorry that happened to you.

Amy: I just, I think it was so interesting and it does, it kind of shapes how you feel. I remember my cute dad, I love my dad. But he told me one day, I was in high school at the time, I was doing a project. And I told him, “I think, dad.” I was working with this amazing neighbor that I had. It was this world famous architect and she was helping me design my dream house for a math project. And I told him, I’m like, “Dad, I think I might want to be an architect.” And he says, “Amy, you have to have some creativity for that.” And I was like, “Oh no, that’s kind of harsh, dad, okay, let me go cry, I’ll come back later.” No, it wasn’t too bad.

But I thought about that for years and it was kind of funny because I really did. I thought, wow, I’m meant to be an accountant and I’m not creative and I’m not artistic. And I didn’t even think about, I have so many ways that I create art, and I’m so creative in other ways. And then now I do what I do and people message me every week, just amazed at my creativity. And I think it’s so funny. I think we maybe, we forget, we kind of put things in boxes sometimes, that creativity and art and the way that people do things can look different and they just can kind of celebrate it.

And I love that you kind of talked about that, being careful when it comes to something more subjective like creativity and art and what we’re creating. It’s harder to kind of put that down and say what’s right or wrong and grade that as opposed to some things where it’s a little bit easier. There’s specific rules you have to follow and things you have to do. Anyways that was kind of interesting.

Karen: And start because it’s never too late, by the way. I went back to school, I’m 54 and I go to film school. So, you’re still very young. So, if you really felt that, you could do it because I am convinced, utterly, totally convinced that everybody is creative. Why do we have a whole hemisphere devoted to creativity, if we don’t all have access to it? It’s just that we don’t understand it, doesn’t mean you have to be an artiste to be creative. And we do make it, these special people that are born with talent. Well, I have good eye hand coordination cause as an athlete.

Well, guess what? That good eye hand coordination translated into being able to draw. So, I could draw well, which is what drew me to art, but I didn’t know how to paint. I didn’t have anybody that really taught me the fundamentals of painting until I found a private mentor but I didn’t learn it in art school. And those words really do make a difference. And if you have a wound, with somebody telling you, you can’t or you aren’t. I was told, “You can’t sing.” And it probably kept me from trying out on Broadway, growing up. I could see the Empire State Building and oh, man, I wanted to be Barbra Streisand all the way.

And I’m an extrovert, and I really love it and I can be an actor and I am an actor. I still, I have a gig next week and I’m shooting a movie, so I love it. And it’s part of me, but I was told I couldn’t sing. And of course, parents don’t mean to mess you up when they say things like that. But you can learn to sing. You can learn to draw. You can learn to paint. You can learn to dance. Alright, you may not, at this point in your life be able to be a prima ballerina and in New York City Ballet. But that doesn’t mean you can’t dance.

One of my favorite Christmas presents was when my husband bought our whole family, ballroom dancing classes. We had a class, we counted it for homeschool. We had so much fun. We did that for two years as a family. We brought in our church, our family, all our friends. We just had parties, dancing. So, you want to find the things that you love. And if you are an adult and you’re thinking, gosh, I don’t feel that joyful, fulfillment because guess what?

This is what I learned through the science, just looking at art or beauty or ballet or gymnastics, beautiful skaters, it releases serotonin in your brain which is the happiness chemical. So, if you’re feeling down, listen to a comic or go for a walk, just not a Fitbit, count your steps kind of walk where now it’s aerobics. I’m talking about a stroll where you were describing loving to hike. Well, it’s not just the goal of getting to the top of the mountain. It’s looking and smelling and tasting and touching and feel the burns and feel the crunch of the leaves underfoot and see the vistas.

And what’s happening with the sky and the weather and the temperatures and really enjoying your whole environment. When you get into that moment, you are actually exercising your right brain. Now using your left brain, is your hands are coordinating with your body, your legs, and you’re walking up. But you’re using your left brain when you’re in the moment, engaging in your surroundings. It’s that simple.

Amy: Enjoying it. So beautiful. I love it.

Karen: If you have children you’re working with, teach them to cook, boys and girls. I have three boys, you’re all going to learn to do some cooking. Well, guess what cooking is? It’s that combination, we have a recipe that we’re going to follow. That’s left brain. But now we’re going to put these ingredients, we’re going to measure and we’re going to [inaudible]. That’s right brain. You’re making those neural connections.

Gardening, another fun thing to do with children of all ages. Again, you’re utilizing both left brain, right brain and it really increases their brilliance and their creativity. I’m going to share a story with you. I was a homeschool art teacher and working out of my studio until we got a co-op. But one family brought their son and he was not thriving in school because academically he was challenged with ADHD and dyslexia. He was discouraged, had no confidence.

And at this time, he was probably a pre-teen, he was a middle schooler but he wasn’t thriving, and his parents brought him to my studio just to see if he thrived. Let me tell you, once he put hands on clay, there was no holding him back. Sculpture, paint, then I got them painting. I got him drawing. I got him doing [inaudible]. I started entering his work into youth competitions and he was winning ribbons. And eventually it gave him the confidence that he needed to graduate from high school.

Well, he turned 18, he won, I entered his work, he won not just first place, but best in show. Then unfortunately, he had a traumatic brain injury, a brain infection that caused a stroke. So here he is, 18 years old, paralyzed on the right side. They didn’t even know if he was going to live. Four months therapy in the hospital, four straight months. And when he left there he could barely walk. He couldn’t talk and they were just trying to keep his right hand from curling up, just to keep it open.

And his mom brought him right back to my studio. And I’m not an art therapist. I’m an artist, art teacher. And I’m like, “Okay, learn to draw. Let me teach you to draw.” And it wasn’t very long before David was drawing, painting, writing with his left hand as good as he could with his right. I got a call from his neurosurgeon who said, “What are you doing with this child? He is stronger with his week hand than I am and I’m a surgeon.” I’m like, “I don’t know, I’m just doing art with him.” And he said, “Don’t stop. He is getting healing on the right side of his body.” Our brains have plasticity.

So even if your children, I had a lot of autistic students, I’ve had students on the spectrum, all kinds of issues with their learning and they do so well in the arts. And they get confidence then to move in other areas. So, David, now he can talk, he can walk, he’s got a plastic skull and he is thriving. He’s still stronger with his left hand than his right hand, but he has a wonderful life. And I know, his family says, “Okay, we did the medical things, but that wasn’t going to work. It took the art to really bring the healing he needed.”

And he had already been making good connections, left brain, right brain. So, as you do these things with your children, you’re creating brilliance in them that really can’t be taken away because it stood him in good stead. As he continued to learn and draw he was still building these connections and it helped him to be able to communicate. And I know it was miraculous, but it also showed me the healing power of the arts. And I mean more than just painting and drawing, but also dance and music and singing.

And as I’ve been reading these scientists, this is one study I read about. Singing, a lot of people love to sing, but maybe they don’t want a microphone in front of them unless they’re singing [crosstalk]. Well, do you know that you can get all the benefits of the serotonin release and building your left brain, right brain connections by singing in the shower?

Amy: That’s a good sign for a lot of people. That’s so good.

Karen: Yeah, it’s true. Just rub a dub, dub, there you are scrubbing in the tub. You’re letting your left brain rest even as you’re using it to soap up or shampoo. And you’re singing your favorite songs and you come out, you’re drying off. You’re feeling good. But then you get an idea, maybe a solution to something you hadn’t thought of, or a different way to put something together. Because while you’re singing, your right brain is engaging with your left brain to come up with things you have thought about, but maybe couldn’t figure out. I’m telling you, it’s brilliant, so sing, go ahead and sing in the shower all you want.

Amy: Turn on the Frozen soundtrack and just go.

Karen: Let it be, yeah.

Amy: The little girl singing. I have a lot of little girls and they love to sing the Frozen soundtrack. That is so fascinating. I actually volunteer at our school and play the piano for our school choir. So, we have 60 children in our elementary school that are part of this choir, it’s amazing. And it’s so fun to get to see them come and sing and all the little different personalities and the different learning challenges and the different, whatever, and come together and sing. So, it’s so fascinating to hear that you can get the value. Go sing in the shower. Sing in the car. Sing all over the place. It’s so beautiful.

Karen: You don’t have to be talented for it to benefit.

Amy: That’s good. And I think sometimes we don’t think that we’re good at singing, but it might be like you talked about, people haven’t learned to sing. So, I kind of grew up singing. I think I was singing before I was talking. And so, singing is kind of one of my things. Music is one of my languages. And so, my fiancé doesn’t feel like he is a singer but he sings all the time. I don’t know if everyone knows this about him, but he sings all the time but he just kind of sings to be silly and sings for fun or whatever. But I love that. I’m going to share this with him now.

You’re getting all the benefits, the brain benefits from singing because you sing the silly songs just at home in front of the family to be silly. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about art as self-therapy. And tell me a little bit about that and the value of being able to do art and how that’s therapeutic for us, for students, for children, for adults. What is that? How does that work?

Karen: Yeah. It’s just occurred to me, as I shared about David and even just singing in the shower, taking a walk. There’s ways to be creative that I think most of us don’t even understand how we can engage for our own lives. And really it’s 20 minutes a day therapy, is between 15 and 20 minutes a day is all it takes whether it’s singing, playing the piano, taking a stroll, drawing, coloring, doodling. Just there’s so many way. There’s a reason that they now have adult coloring books.

And even my 92 year old mother was coloring with her great granddaughters and she said, “Karen, I’ve heard you talk about it and I thought, well, that’s only for children.” She said, “But I see how relaxing it is when I’m just coloring with these children. I was having a really good time. “So of course we made sure she got some of her own coloring books. But she wasn’t convinced unless she tried it. So, I say, try it, there’s so many ways.

And I have, if your listeners would like to access it, a free three-part podcast series on art as self-therapy and there is one that’s all, do the do, different list of different ideas that you can engage in to be using that right half of your brain. We all have it. So, we all have ways we can be creative. And it’s called getcreativewithkaren.com. And you can go there and register for that podcast series to get more ideas.

But the therapy is the part that really has fascinated me. Walter Reed Hospital, which is the foremost army hospital probably in the world was taking their soldiers, who had been wounded in war. They had done the medical things. They’d already done some therapy, but they did a special summer program where they were trying different techniques with these soldiers. And at the end they surveyed them and they said, “What do you think was the most effective, fun part of the of the program?” And they said art.

Now, these are soldiers, these aren’t people identifying as artists. And it’s interesting because most of the people that I know that are identifying as creatives, they have more than one thing they love to do. There’s very few people, I drum, I only drum because I have a son that everything became a drum. And you get these hints, like I was describing at the beginning, from your early childhood. What did you love to do? And if you look back and reach back, you loved to sing and that brings joy.

When you engage in these creative activities, it’s igniting not just connections, neural connections between the left brain and right brain, but it’s engaging. It’s releasing all of these happiness chemicals, not just serotonin. And so, these transmitters are helping you become more human. If you’re worried about AI and what do we do with, I mean, I use ChatGPT. It’s very handy and it seems like it’s going to replace those kinds of jobs, but it will never replace our creative brains, our ability to be unique, our abilities to be imaginative and intuitive and very sensitive.

Those are things no computer can replicate. So, your humanity, you say, “Who am I?” You are unique. I mean God went to a lot of trouble to make 10 different fingerprints on every one of us. And there’s seven and a half billion of us on the planet. So, we’re not all going to be the same. We’re all going to have our unique talents and skills and it’s about having fun. Even Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is the brain having fun.” So, as you engage your imagination and the children that are happiest, I remember my little children getting a toy in a box and they seem to have more fun with the box than they did the toy.

Amy: Absolutely, yeah. I’m reading a book right now by Adam Grant, called Hidden Potential. I love his books. His work is so powerful. But I was reading this chapter. He talks about this idea of the 10,000 hours. And after that everyone’s like, “Okay, I’ve got to do all the practice. We’ve got to get all these repetitions in.” And he’s like, “But there’s a difference between 10,000 hours of deliberate practice and 10,000 hours of deliberate play.”

And he said, “When you go through the research and you see the difference between people that have to just practice for the sake of reaching a goal. This kind of practice, this is where we run into things like burnout. And there’s actually a technical term, bore out, it’s a psychological term, bore out. I kind of, I love this term. It’s my new favorite one. But this can become a big problem. And he said, “When you find a lot of the people at the top of their game, they practice deliberate play. And so, what they do is they find a way to bring the joy into it, bring the play into it, make it fun.”

It’s not even just gimmicky. It’s like, how do I do this from a place of joy so that I want to keep doing it and increase it and keep going. And anyway, and so he talked about it. It was really powerful in how much of a difference that kind of practice is from just deliberate practice. Anyway, so, this is kind of making me think of what you’re talking about and finding a way to bring that in. And I think too, this creative side and it not only helps us do better at our left brain stuff, I think. I think it makes us more effective in our work and more effective in everything that we do.

But it also, I think, brings so much of the color and the joy and the play to our lives. We talk, and Planning Playtime is my business, and we talk so much about how important play is for children. But I think we forget sometimes that play still matters when you’re an adult. And for some reason when we grow up, we think we have to stop playing and grow up. But play matters for adults too. It can look different, . Maybe we’re not out playing tag. I still play tag, but maybe we’re not all still playing tag. That’s okay. I’m a kid, I do hide and go seek in the dark, it’s fine.

But what does play look like for your adult brain and it still matters, and maybe some of that is art and different ways of being creative. For me again, music is one of my go-to’s or things like that, but what could that look like as an adult?

Karen: Yeah. I think one of the things, one mindset that we really battle as adults and I found this as young as pre-teens have this issue, and that’s the paralysis of perfectionism, it’s steals our joy. In our effort to be excellent we sometimes get caught in this insecure trap of perfectionism.

When that does, it robs us of the fun. I have three sons, all of them very musical. The first one went to school, went to college to get a degree in worship music, met some musicians, one lived in Germany, ended up in Germany, ended up staying and he found a beautiful German woman and married her and gave me German grandbabies. But he knew what he wanted to do and he had worked very hard at it.

Now, my third son, he’s one of the most gifted musicians I’ve ever seen. He’s a kind of child that could just sit at the piano, if he hears it once, he can play it. He can play the guitar. He invented this way to beatbox on a flute. I mean he’s just so naturally gifted. But he didn’t want to go and study it. He failed music in college because he just said, “Mom, then it becomes work.” Now it just flows out of him in this creative center and it is fun and full of joy for him. But as soon as it became, of course I made him take lessons. It was drudgery to get him to lessons.

I didn’t realize what was being unleashed because he was my third son, not my first son and they’re so different. Everybody is so different, and that’s why it’s important for you to find not only for yourself, but if you are a parent, what each one of your children loves. They’re not going to all love to sing. They’re not going to all love to drum. They’re not all going to love to be actors, even though all of mine are actors. We’ve got all the Irish creatives, actors in our family, but my son’s been in bands. They tend to use their acting skills on stage.

But the way that we interact with our creative center is crucial to how we can express ourselves. Depression, according to the word of God, is anger turned inward. And you can be very young and be angry and depressed. Well, expression, which is why a lot of art therapy is using art in some way to have the child or adult or teen, express what’s inside. They may not have the understanding mentally or the words that they know how to use to say it. But sometimes they can express it with art or drawing or painting or singing or music.

Dance, you can dance your pain away. You can hook your way out. You can garden. There’s so many ways to do it. And as a sculptor, a ceramic artist, we have something we call throwing, where you work out you need all this clay and then you literally throw it on the wheel head and we don’t call it spinning your pot, we call it throwing your pot. And after coming to graduate school to do ceramics after doing painting, a couple of years of painting teachers. I was shocked at the difference in the personalities of the painting teachers and the ceramic teachers.

The painting teachers were kind of uptight and serious and intense and deep. The pottery teachers were, “Take it easy, just you know, try.” Because I think getting all that angst out, all that anger and stress and anxiety out on the clay just kind of sets your emotions free.

Amy: I love it. Let me ask you this. For parents like myself, who have children that are starting to create art and they bring it and they want to show it to you because I think so often they do. Sometimes you can tell when they start to maybe feel shame and they kind of don’t, they’re nervous to show you, they’re afraid. But previous to that, when they’re so excited to show you whatever they’ve created or whatever they’ve made, whatever they’ve drawn or painted. What are some phrases that we can use to engage with them in their art rather than maybe being critical of it or whatever, how do we encourage it? What are phrases we can use to ask and be curious about it?

Karen: That is a brilliant question. That is such a good question, Amy. I’m so glad you asked because having been going to school, getting your master’s. All this training really makes you prideful, I think in some regards or elitist or kind of critical of anything that isn’t excellent. And we have this standard and it’s very high and we think excellence is the same thing as perfect.

And when I really got the understanding of the words and how important they are and creating a non-critical zone. I’m like, “Okay, someone brought me a painting and I’m not even talking about a child.” These are adults. They knew I was an artist and they’d been to a fair and they bought one of the most hideous canvases I’ve ever seen in my life, the size of their living room couch. They’re going to hang it behind their couch. And this thing was so bad, I stood in front of it and I just prayed. I said, “I don’t want to discourage.” They bought real art, their first piece of real art and they’ve put it on their wall. And they were so excited to have me say something.

And everything I’d learned was popping up. And I realized, and I’m changing these people’s lives with the words I say next. I’m like, “Wow, this artist loved color.” And they’re just like, “Yeah, we love the colors.” I mean, it would have been so easy for me just as I was treated that way when I was a student. That criticism shuts down that right brain. And so, I’m saying, “You bought your first real piece of art. I’m so happy you love it, yes.” And so, I could join in their enthusiasm.

So, as we have this small child and they obviously, the stick figure. Here’s mommy. Here’s daddy. Or maybe it’s just a bunch of lines, but to them, this is the candy store or whatever is on their little heart. Well, it doesn’t matter what we see. What we see is them creating an effort. We can praise the lines. We can praise the colors. Because one thing I saw about little children, you can give them five different colors of paint, and they’re going to paint the same spot until that spot is as brown and muddy as anything else.

For some reason they don’t all see the whole sheet of paper but they see the red and let me see what happens when yellow goes on top of it. Let me see what happens when blue goes on top. And they’re probably just enjoying seeing those changes but to them, it’s just fascinating. And I mean, I’m not a child psychologist, but from what I understand is in their child brain, they’re seeing this red square with a triangle on top. That’s their house. They don’t mean it’s a symbol of their house. Even if their house has a flat roof and shutters, I mean, to them it is that representation.

And that little stick figure with the braids, that’s mom, that one with the hat is dad or whatever. It is them to them. And that’s so important to find something you can share that is good with them. And you don’t have to lie to do it. You just try to be as sensitive as you can. Now, interesting, I’ve been teaching how to draw and how to paint for a long, long time and I was teaching when we got into the co-op, I was now teaching large groups of children at once, 20, 30 children at a time. Usually in my studio I could only fit 10 at the time.

So, I had these young boys, I was teaching them drawing, teaching them painting. And it seemed to me that they were not getting it at all. And so inside I was like, “Well, I guess some people just are never going to get it.” They came back after summer, they were prepubescent boys, came back that next year and both of these young men, they weren’t even related, now could draw anything. They could paint anything. Now to them, nothing had changed. Now, this is what’s fascinating.

It’s not like before they were saying they were terrible, and now they’re good. It was the same for them. And then, as I understand a little bit more about the brain, a part of their brain developed to where they got it, it fit into place. And I realized, wow, if somebody keeps doing this, they’re going to get it. I saw one five year old, I had one five year old who had the most incredible ability to draw out of any five year old I’d ever seen. It was a boy because usually boys develop a little slower in certain areas than girls.

We seem to go faster, can read faster, can do certain things faster, grow up faster and it takes boys a little longer to get there. But this little boy, his parents hardly even spoke any English. And I said, “This child needs to be taken in hand as an art student because he is so good.” But most people aren’t and so what we need to understand is that we don’t start out great, very few are prodigals like that. And I’ve probably taught thousands of students. I teach hundreds of students a semester.

So, I’ve seen so many different age people and yet very few are gifted and talented. I think it’s much more important, what do we love, what brings us joy as you’re describing. And if your child is showing an interest in drawing or painting or dancing or singing, do what you can to train them, but let them find their particular joy in a way to be creative. And there’s so many ways that we can do that.

Amy: Let me ask you this question. Is there value in, because this is coming to my brain, I know some people want to be cautious around over-praising. So, if you’re trying to be careful not to criticize but you don’t want to be praising in an inauthentic way or something like that. Curiosity, does that kind of work kind of in the same way? If you’re asking them questions about it and being engaged in it and wondering about it and how they did this in an encouraging way. Does that kind of work as a type of praise, without necessarily just praising something that doesn’t feel necessarily authentic to you or something? I’m curious about that.

Karen: That sounds good. I hadn’t thought about that, but I think you’re right. I mean, curiosity absolutely is one of the most brilliant things we want our children to have, and that engages left brain, right brain. It’s very valuable in that regard. And I’m asking questions, why? But why? That’s a four year old, But why? Why [inaudible]? And we can ask that after our eclipse day. But the point is that this creative part of us, I think, is curious, it does want to know and giving children lots of options.

One of my grandchildren just loves to build. I mean, it doesn’t matter what it is. He may end up being an engineer, I don’t know. But you want to make sure he has lots of opportunities to build things that aren’t going to break, whether [inaudible] or blocks or Styrofoam or whatever, just different ways to build things. And as you see your children showing an interest in certain things, just make a way for them to be able to explore that.

I know my children because they were so left brain, math, for three out of the four of my children was really, really difficult. And so, we found manipulative math, ways to do it where you’re engaging both left brain, right brain, if they could see it. Just like you’re talking about your mom and you like storytelling. Well, if you can tell a story, you can bring a picture to it. I know my children, it made a huge difference in whether they got the concept. And some people are really, really good at finding ways to tell it through a story and make it relevant.

I found out one of my children is a kinetic learner, a desk is just someplace for their books, not for his body to sit behind. His body needed to move, [inaudible] means they learn by talking, talking it out. If they’re “Oh, you said this.” And then they hear it and it actually makes more sense. So, you find out what works best for each one of your children, because they’re all going to be unique. They’re all going to be different and its viva la difference, I say, it’s wonderful that they’re different.

Amy: This is so good. Oh, my goodness, well, we are out of time, but this has just been lovely. And I am so grateful for the stories you’ve shared and just this perspective of being so encouraging, I think, around our children’s and us as adults and our friends and everyone really are attempts to be creative. And to do art, whatever form that takes and the value that it brings into our lives, the way that it shapes and builds our brain. And also, just brings joy, I think, and expression and emotional health, all kinds of things.

Karen: Absolutely, it does. Yeah. And you don’t have to be worried about over-praising, I don’t think. If you’re not disingenuous, if you’re just saying, “Wow, I’ve seen progress.” Maybe that’s just one sentence you can say. Be honest as you can be without being negative. Find something good to say, but don’t exaggerate or make it something it’s not because you don’t want to steal their joy, but you also don’t want to create a fake platform. I know that it’s a kind of vague thing to say but you know your children better than anybody.

Amy: Absolutely. And I think you can always praise effort and praise a mindset. And praise for me sometimes with my kiddos, I try to focus on not necessarily praising outcome because I’m trying to get away from that perfectionism type of, I have one kiddo who is such a perfectionist with her art. And she doesn’t even want anyone to see anything she drew a year ago because she’s so horrified by them. But I’m like, “But girl, this is part of your process. This is it. I love seeing your pictures you drew when you couldn’t draw as well as you can now. It’s part of your growth.”

But I always love to praise effort and I love to praise just the way their brain works. And I love seeing the things that you make. And so, it’s not necessarily like, I love that you colored inside the lines and that everything is proportionately correct, when the little kids draw themselves bigger than you and they’re holding your hand. I love that you drew something that makes me feel like you love being together with me or something. Finding a way to praise it that’s authentic, I think is something that you can do.

And yeah, I’m going to think through that even more now, hearing you talk about being so careful about being critical of right brain activities. That’s just really beautiful. And thank you for sharing and coming and chatting with me today. And we will put your links in the show notes so we can send people to your three-part series and to learn more about what you do.

Karen: Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, thank you for your efforts and your recognition of how important play is, and joy is for our children and for our adults. So, I just say and by way of parting is give yourself grace. If you do find you’re struggling with perfectionism or negative mindsets about whatever you’re trying. Give yourself the same grace you would somebody else who hadn’t done it before. Or tell a student learning, I say, “I’m a practicing artist because we’re always practicing.”

And I wish I could say everything I do now, decades later is great. It’s not but do I have fun doing it? Yes. I was at the park with my family on Sunday and having so much fun drawing. Is it a drawing anybody will ever see? No, but I had fun doing it. So that’s part of the criteria. Do you enjoy the process or your child who is struggling already with perfectionism, say, “Can you give yourself grace for the learning process just as you would for somebody else who was trying something new or trying to make something better.” And that’s a great tool.

Amy: It’s so beautiful and something we could take to every other part of our lives. I love that sometimes we learn things in play or learn things in art or learn things in these different pieces that we can take to everything else that we do. So that’s so beautiful. Thank you.

Karen : You’re doing a great job, so thank you.

Amy: Thank you for coming and sharing with us today. I so appreciate it.

Karen : My pleasure. God bless. Bye bye.

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Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website planningplaytime.com. See you next week.