Posts Tagged ‘creative parent’

Lessons On Play From The Bubble Dog

// March 6th, 2011 // 6 Comments » // creative parent, creativity

I’m on the floor supervising Fred, our youngest son, as he takes a bath. He holds a small plastic dog covered in bubbles. Fred is cooing over it, trying to get me to understand something. I have no idea what.

My wife walks in with a towel for him, and says “Oh, I know what you want.” picks up the dog and walks it across the side of the bath singing “Dooh-di Dooh-di Dooh!” tossing the dog back into the water at the final ‘Dooh!”

Fred bursts into laughter as my wife leaves the room, and thrusts both hands through soapy water to retrieve the dog. He hands it to me to continue the game.

Which I do, because, come on it’s great fun.

Once I’ve got a handle on the rules, the game goes on. Laughter and lightness fill the room and I’m struck by the complex nature of play and all the things that are happening here.

The plastic dog comes to life as we interact with it. Fred and I both imagine it’s glee as it skips along the bath rim, the exultation as she leaps into the water. The spark of play also brings me and Fred to life in a sense. Or more to life. There’s a delightful sense of buoyancy when we play together like this.

Fred also learns through the negotiation of game rules: “No throwing at Dad’s head.” Check.

He’s at the stage where his vocabulary is expanding, with new words being added daily. The dog bounces around the bathtub with cries of dog! buwoo! (bubble) Dada! wah! (water). When you’re 20 months old every word gets an exclamation mark.

I’m learning, too. Down here, eye to eye with him, roles of father and son drop away along with any implied status. Through play we become equal in stature and I see the world through his eyes. I’m suddenly aware that a lot of the time I must seem like a benevolent twenty foot giant to him. I sense the distance of that and resolve to find more ways to bridge it.

Receiving The Snow

// November 21st, 2010 // 5 Comments » // Labyrinths, painting

We got some snow today!

Just a flurry and it didn’t stick, but it was fun.

There was actually quite a bit coming down for a while there, it’s not that cold so it disappeared as fast as it arrived.

But still: Snow!

It was Fred’s first time out playing in it, and he freaked out a little. After a while he just stood there with his hands over his eyes trying to pretend it wasn’t happening.

My heart was thumping at the sight of my vulnerable little boy standing there, playing peek-a-boo with the snow.

I got to do a brief walk of the labyrinth while it was still snowing. It was so peaceful, experiencing the snowflakes whirling around, watching them land and dissolve at my feet as I walked, and being in that snowy space where time seems to slow down and soften.

I have a rock at the centre of the labyrinth and when I get there I usually reach down and touch it, take a moment at the centre, and begin my return trip back through the labyrinth.

But this time, as I turned to go back, It struck me how little time I spend at the centre, and I stopped.

I’m currently reading Lauren Artress’ wonderful book ”The Sacred Path Companion”, and  she writes of the three stages of a labyrinth walk–releasing, receiving, returning. I’ve been using the labyrinth very effectively as a way to release stress and get a bit more grounded and centred, but I rarely stay long in the  centre, where the receiving phase usually takes place.

So today I stopped in the centre and made a point of receiving the snow for a while.

It was beautiful to stand there, looking up at the snow swirling down over me, and give my self that brief moment.

Artress makes the point in her writing that there are no right or wrong ways to walk a labyrinth, and that there as as many methods of walking as there are people. I love that.

I’m also grateful to be reading and learning ways to get the most from walking the labyrinth. Each of these tips get filed away at the back of my mind. The labyrinth seems to kick these clues back up at the perfect moment on a walk, and allow me to gently reconnect with a part of myself just when needed.

Exercising Different Art Muscles

// September 30th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // drawing, painting, Uncategorized

In my last post, I spoke about the portrait drawings I’ve been working on through my online drawing tutorials. The painting here is the next step in the process, going from the scraps of paper to the canvas.

I’m actually pretty new to painting, up till about 6 weeks ago I’d completed about a dozen paintings. That’s ‘proper’ ones. On canvas.

I’ve done heaps of paintings in sketchbooks and on paper, but always found the act of moving from paper to canvas intimidating. Canvas seems so much more formal, more permanent, and more open to public criticism.

My earliest attempts at painting were in oils, but the fumes always made me sick.

So, that’s out.

Just before I came out to the U.S. I went on a painting spree in acrylics, and got a few paintings done, and even put one into a local exhibition. But I’ve always seen myself more as a drawer. (Of the pencil in hand kind, not the sock kind).

I’m getting more of a sense of control as I go, and regret not jumping into painting earlier. What stopped me was mostly my own fears, or self judgements.

It’s like the opposite of what I spoke about in my last post. Yes, it’s good to lower the stakes and do lots of drawing on throw-away paper. But it’s also good to raise the stakes and push myself on a bit.

As kindly as possible, of course.

I sold my first painting on Etsy the other day, which was great. The painting was actually painted over the top of two previous failed attempts. I’d received a few comments on that painting, some mentioned what a lovely texture it had. Well, the texture was the build up created by my prevoius mess ups. Which is pretty cool, there’s plenty of metaphorical ground to mine there.

What I’m finding is that part of the process of painting, for me, involves: beginning a piece, completely messing it up, then finding a way through that and ending up with a completely different painting than what I set out to paint.

Part of the reason I feel like I’m learning so much through each painting is that I’m completely messing up and having to push through that.

Part of my motivation to push through is the fact that I’m using a nine dollar canvas from the art-store instead of painting onto a disposable scrap of paper.

So, where I’m at now is swinging between two poles–moving from lowering the stakes and doing heaps of stress free drawings and sketches, to raising the stakes and really pushing myself to complete a painting on canvas.

I know my ‘default’ position is to try to keep the stakes lowered, to keep things as ‘stress-free’ as possible. So, it feels really good to move a step or two in the other direction. There is a nice tension involved in moving between these two ways of making art, I’m exercising different ‘muscles’ and my learning feels a little accelerated as a result. And I can always reserve the right to move back when I want.

Sleepy Buddha

// June 18th, 2010 // 6 Comments » // creative parent, curiosity, illustration

I love to peek in at our boys when they’re asleep. Our 4 year old is having a difficult time at the moment, learning to socialise with his little brother and his friends from next door. It’s hard.

He’s navigating all this stuff and learning, but right now things are a little fraught.

So when Finn falls asleep, the day’s tension drains away from his face, and he looks so peaceful and relaxed. Like a little sleeping Buddha all twisted up in his sheets.

I love seeing him like that. It’s a reminder that even though things are a little tough for him right now, that’s all just surface movement and deep down he’s really  o.k.

*****

I was waiting for a bus the other day, and running a little late, worried that I might not get home on time.

I could feel the tension rising and there was a whole lot of mental chatter happening about the bus, about being late.

This expanded to commentary on the people crossing the road while dodging traffic (chatter), the McCain-Palin bumper sticker on a car going past (chatter-chatter), cigarette smoke hitting my face from someone else waiting for the bus (chatter-chatter-chatter).

Then I looked up at a tree across the road from the bus stop.

One branch bent slightly over the road and a handful of leaves rustled in the breeze, they looked for a moment like small green fingers beckoning me. The flash of bright green and the soft movement reached me, and brought me back to myself.

The chatter in my head calmed down. And I was just there for a moment standing quietly, at the bus stop, in my body, waiting for a bus to arrive and take me home.

Everything was soft, and alert at the same time. As if the small gesture from the tree had briefly awakened the sleepy Buddha in me, and he’d lifted his head off the pillow and looked around.

Then the bus pulled up and I got on. And I couldn’t find my ticket, and the exhaust was smelly, and my shoulders ached from carrying my laptop around, and …

Parenting Is A Creative Act

// April 27th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // creative parent, creativity, curiosity, poetry

One of my favourite creative moments came just before the birth of our second son. My wife had been on bed rest for much of the second half of a very complicated pregnancy, and there were a few scares involving rushed trips to the hospital towards the end. Our oldest son had just turned three and was pretty freaked out by all of this.

We were playing in the yard and talking about how he didn’t want us to leave him to go to the hospital when his brother was born. At the time, one of his favourite toys was a Spiderman ball. So we got the sidewalk chalk and I drew a huge version of the Superhero on the driveway right by our front door, and told Finn that Spiderman was here to protect him.

Finn still had a hard time with the birth and the settling in of the new baby. The drawing helped at least a little, and he was happy to have it there. But beyond any talismanic protection Spiderman offered, the real value in this moment, at least for me, was that for a moment he knew that I was trying to understand what he was going through and doing something about that.

Creativity is much more than coming up with a great idea, or completing a piece of art. It infuses the way we walk in the world. Do we live as fully present as possible,in a way that embraces curiosity, imagination, and a sense of wonder at our surroundings?

Parenting is the ultimate creative act. It’s a wild place to be. You get to witness the creative energy streaming out of young children, as they explore the world and process it in the most amazing and unpredictable ways. What a joy to watch and participate in that!

But being a parent can, at times, feel like being stuck in the most uncreative place in the world. Where you’re stressed out, sleep deprived, shuffling from demand to demand like a zombie. You start wondering whether you’ll ever get some space just to be yourself again. Or if your creative days may be over.

As parents and creative people these are the two poles we swing between. But there are ways that we can allow the spirit of creativity to be continuously present, and even make it a haven in a chaotic life.

Commit! (to not doing your art)

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This is the one that makes all the difference to me. If I’m minding the boys and racing around making bottles, picking up toys, and fetching snacks while trying to work out an illustration or blog post in my head, all I end up doing is to make myself intensely frustrated. And resentful.

When I let go of my creative goals and commit fully to the fact that this is just Dad-time, then things get much easier. Just dropping the need to do my own thing (which would never happen anyway) relieves me of a huge amount of stress and frustration.

Something that really helps here is realizing that letting go of my creative goals means simply loosening my grip, not throwing them away.

Over time I’m really coming to trust in the wisdom of my unconscious mind. When I have a block of time where I’m looking after the boys I try to set a creative intention for my subconscious. If my next blog post is on parenting and creativity, I’ll just pop a simple question in like, what themes should I explore for that post? Then I let go and trust that something, no matter how small, will be bubbling away down there ready for me to retrieve when I have some writing time.

This allows me to be more fully present with the boys and not half-there to them while sorting out ideas. For me, being split like that guarantees this will be a day where I suck at both parenting and creating.

Surf Your Child’s Creative Energy

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Children have a lot to teach us about living creatively. Dinosaurs happen to be a big thing in our house. My son has corrected me, and I now understand that that they are not actually extinct, but very much alive. And, in fact, they live in our garden.

I’ve been on a number of dinosaur hunts with our older son and it’s great to walk around the garden trying to see things from his perspective. Puddles become Triceratops footprints, our cedar tree’s scattered twigs become fossilised dinosaur bones.

The world becomes larger as I crouch down to see bushes, rocks and tress from the perspective of a four year old. The world becomes more magical and alive as I drop my weary notions about dinosaurs and participate in a world where the ground still shakes with their every step.

Recalibrate Your Relationship to Time

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A few years ago I was consistently spending at least 2-3 hours a day on writing poetry. I had plenty of time to read books of poetry, and books on poetry, and got to hang out and participate on poetry forums. Add to this well many hours spent sketching and daydreaming, occasional visits to art galleries. I had all the creative time in the world.

I’m glad I had that too. I’m hoping one day to have that kind of luxury again.

But, now I have to make the most of every second I get. I’ve learned to work in 25 minute increments. Where I used to allow myself outrageous periods of incubation time, now I just snatch whatever moments I can. The surprising result is, I’m much more decisive an artist than I was a few years ago, and can feel myself sharpening up creatively.

Be Kind To Yourself

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While training to be a Creativity Coach, the first thing I was taught was to meet others where they’re at. The second thing was to practice self coaching. This involves asking a lot of questions of myself:

Can I meet myself where I’m at? Which of my creative goals are realistic right now? What small thing can I do to build some creating time for myself? What things I can prioritise? Do I have the support I need?

Most importantly can I be kind to myself? Even in simple ways like negotiating breaks with my wife, allowing myself a hot shower, clean clothes, healthy foods each day. (I’ve let all three of these slide by on too many occasions)

*****

I gladly chose to be a husband and a parent and this is my life’s major creative project. Even though some difficulties arise with this path, every single day I get swept up in the joy and privilege of seeing my two beautiful sons grow, and take part in helping them to shape their lives.

What can be more creative than that?

*****

If there are parents reading this I’d love to hear what you do to maintain your creative life as you raise your children. What difficulties do you face? What great successes have you had?