7 Principles of Creative Thinking

1. You Are Creative

Artists are not special, but each of us is a special kind of artist who enters the world as a creative and spontaneous thinker. While creative people believe they are creative, those who don’t hold that belief are not. After acquiring beliefs about their identity, creative people become interested in expressing themselves, so they learn thinking habits and techniques that creative geniuses have used throughout history.

2. Creative Thinking Is Work

You must show passion and the determination to immerse yourself in the process of developing new and different ideas. The next step is patience and perseverance. All creative geniuses work with intensity and produce an incredible number of ideas — most of which are bad. In fact, more bad poems were written by major poets than by minor poets. Thomas Edison generated 3,000 different lighting system ideas before he evaluated them for practicality and profitability.

3. You Must Go Through the Motions

When producing ideas, you replenish neurotransmitters linked to genes that are being turned on and off in response to challenges. Going through the motions of generating new ideas increases the number of contacts between neurons, and thereby energizes the brain. Every hour spent activating your mind by generating ideas increases creativity. By painting a picture every day, you would become an artist — perhaps not Van Gogh, but more of an artist than someone who has never tried.

4. Your Brain Is Not a Computer

Your brain is a dynamic system that evolves patterns of activity, rather than simply processing them like a computer. The brain thrives on creative energy that results from experiences, real or fictional. The brain cannot tell the difference between an “actual” experience and one that is imagined vividly and in detail. Both are energizing. This principle helped Walt Disney bring his fantasies to life and also enabled Albert Einstein to engage in thought experiments that led to revolutionary ideas about space and time. For example, Einstein imagined falling in love and then meeting the woman he fell in love with two weeks later. This led to his theory of acausality.

5. There Is No Right Answer

Aristotle believed that things were either “A” or “not A.” To him the sky was blue or not blue — never both. Such dualistic thinking is limiting. After all, the sky is a billion different shades of blue. We used to think that a beam of light existed only as a wave until physicists discovered that light can be either a wave or a particle, depending on the viewpoint of the observer. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. Therefore when trying to produce new ideas, do not evaluate them as they occur. Nothing kills creativity faster than self-censorship during idea generation. All ideas are possibilities — generate as many as you can before identifying which ones have more merit. The world is not black or white. It is gray.

6. There Is No Such Thing as Failure

Trying something without succeeding is not failing. It’s producing a result. What you do with the result — that is, what you’ve learned — is the important thing. Whenever your efforts have produced something that doesn’t work, ask the following:

• What have I learned about what doesn’t work?
• Can this explain something that I didn’t set out to explain?
• What have I discovered that I didn’t set out to discover?

People who “never” make mistakes have never tried anything new. Noting that Thomas Edison had “failed” to successfully create a filament for the light bulb after 10,000 attempts, an assistant asked why the inventor didn’t give up. Edison didn’t accept what the assistant meant by failure. “I have discovered ten thousand things that don’t work,” he explained.

7. You Don’t See Things as They Are – You See Them as You Are

All experiences are neutral and without inherent meaning until your interpretations give them meaning. Priests see evidence of God everywhere, while atheists see the absence of God everywhere. Back when nobody in the world owned a personal computer, IBM’s market research experts speculated that there were no more than six people on earth who needed a PC. While IBM saw no market potential for PCs, two college dropouts named Bill Gates and Steve Jobs viewed the same data as IBM and perceived massive opportunity. You construct reality by how you choose to interpret your experiences.

Advice FROM Siblings of Special-Needs Kids

Natalie was just four when her brother Patrick, younger by two years, was diagnosed with autism. Even as a young girl, it was a blow for her. “I remember when he was born; it was so exciting. I was going to have a sibling!” she said. She soon realized, however, he wasn’t going to be a traditional brother like her friends had. “Why our family? Why us? Why me?” she asked.

Now, as a 22-year-old, Natalie accepts and cherishes her brother. But it took a long road to get there. “There are certain stages you go through.”

First, there was denial. She kept wishing the doctors were wrong or hoping he would have the kind of autism that doesn’t manifest itself so openly. As a child she used to draw fake, perfect families, hoping one day they would be real.

Then the anger. Her brother’s situation meant, she said, “you are not the most important person in your house. Your parents’ effort, and the people coming to your house, the therapist and the occupational therapist-all those people aren’t there for you, but for your brother.”

She would get frustrated that simple trips to the grocery involved stopping to tie shoes, crying, fits over which side of the car to sit on, complaints that the lights were too bright. She regularly thought about how unfair it all was.

Slowly, over many years, a shift occurred. She started seeing her brother not as a source of frustration, but as a unique person with his own strengths. “I looked at it from a different angle,” she said. “He’s an incredibly talented musician, and he has perfect pitch, and he can play the piano, he can play the drums, he is an excellent guitar player. When he started excelling at guitar, I realized I wasn’t dealing with a burden; he is an individual who is in some ways much more talented and much more capable than I am.”

Sibling challenges 

Siblings like Natalie are often deeply impacted by a brother or sister with special needs.

In addition to having anger and resentment, Natalie placed pressure on herself to be the perfect child to her parents. She hated softball and basketball but played them for years so her dad would have a team to coach and cheer for on the weekends. “I tried to really excel at sports because my father didn’t have a son who he could go outside and play catch with,” she said.

She wouldn’t ask her parents for a ride to the mall or $5 for ice cream because she didn’t want to be a burden on them in any way. Even now, she feels the pressure to be successful in her career (she works in sales for a tech startup) so she can one day support her parents and brother. She even graduated from college a semester early to get the money rolling in sooner.

Rache, a 17-year-old high school junior, felt embarrassed inviting friends over to her house after school in case there was an episode by her younger sister Sophie, who had a severe form of OCD. There were times, she remembers, “when I would get anxious when Sophie was anxious” If her sister was having a tantrum, she would run into Sophie’s room and take away the scissors so she couldn’t harm herself or others.

Rachel also felt an obligation to take care of her sister. “As her older sister I took it on as my responsibility. There are times when she calls me her mom because I act like it, and I want to help her. I want to do whatever I can to support her.” One of the scariest moments was when her sister attended a treatment center across the country. “I felt like I was in zero control of what was happening,” she said.

We asked older siblings of children with special needs to give advice on how to address some of these challenges. Here is what they told us:

Advice for parents 

Build a wide support system  

Laura, a 26-year-old advertising executive, has a younger brother who is 23 and has a form of autism that makes it hard for him to communicate. As one of four kids, she felt the best thing her parents did was create a wide support system for her autistic brother so the burden didn’t fall as much on the family.

“He had after school programs, he had teachers who came to our house during dinner time, he had a lot of support so that didn’t put as much pressure on us or my parents,” she said. “They were able to care for more kids,” she said. Aunts and uncles would also step in and help spread out the responsibility.

Be open with your children and include them in decision-making.

Parents often try to shield siblings from what is happening. Natalie says that approach is well-intentioned, but it can cause more harm than good. “You want to feel like a team,” she said. “You want to feel like you are in this together, because too often the parents feel like a team and you are siloed, so it’s just you by yourself. If you include your kids in the conversations and let them help you make decisions, it’s huge because you feel like it’s not just on you.”

Set aside special time for each of your children

Rachel feels that the most important thing for parents is to “just remind your kids that you are always there for them and maybe set aside time for siblings so they know they are still cared about and loved.” This can be a private vacation, a special activity once a week, or five minutes before bed. Your children will cherish this time, she added. “I took the time that I did get with my parents not as much for granted as I had previously.”

 Advice for siblings

Reach out to others

When she was younger, Natalie felt she was the only one in her situation, and that no one could possibly understand what she was going through. Once she got older and talked openly about it to friends, teachers, and boyfriends, she realized she was hardly alone. She even wrote an article about her challenges on a website and received thousands of responses.

“The more you hold it in, the worse it is,” she said. “When you put yourself out there, it’s scary—you don’t know what will happen. But you have to put yourself out there and find support and realize you aren’t by yourself.”

Laura agreed: “I can see that it can be isolating as a sibling,” she said. “I feel like the support network is very important for caring for someone with a disability. We especially need to reach out.”

Make special time for your sibling

The more siblings spend quality time with their brother or sister with special needs, the more they realize how remarkable that person is.

Laura realized how hard-working her brother was. “He is doing things all day and working all night, and he usually does it with a good attitude,” she said. “He’s taught me a lot.” She sets aside time to do special things with him so she can appreciate him more. He loves Aladdin, so she recently took him to see the musical on Broadway. They also regularly go to a theme park near the family home on Long Island.

Now that she can drive, Rachel likes to take her sister to Starbucks when she is getting frustrated with her schoolwork, to get a break. It’s a special time they can share, and it helps them grow closer and appreciate one another.

Make time for yourself

Many siblings feel guilty about wanting a break from their sibling with special needs, but getting time away is essential, said Rachel. “That was a major thing for me, and I had to step back at some points and have a break from it all. In the summer, especially, I get to be anxiety-free instead of worrying all the time. Just going out to dinner with my friends or going to see a movie helps.”

Focus on how your experiences have helped you

Looking back, Rachel realizes how having a sister with OCD made her the person she is today. She became more independent because she felt she couldn’t ask her parents, who were always so busy with her sister, things like how to solve a homework question. “I figured it out on my own,” she said.

She also thinks it made her a more aware and sensitive person. When her sister went into a treatment center she channeled her need to help into serving others. She “wasn’t able to do much,” she said, so “I took it upon myself to help others.” She joined J Teen leadership, a teen-led community service organization and soon started chairing it.

Laura believes having an autistic brother made her more curious and tolerant of people different than her. She spent a year in China teaching English, something she might not have done otherwise.

Natalie learned the life lesson of not measuring people against each other. “I think you are always comparing people to yourself,” she said, “And when you stop comparing someone to yourself and start thinking they are being the best person they can be, that’s when your eyes open and you are like, ‘Oh this makes sense and this is right and all is good.’ “

10 Questions

Click on the picture for the questions…

“They Always Thought You Were Smarter!”

The study, published Friday in the Journal of Family Psychology, focused on siblings and academic achievement. Jensen and co-author Susan McHale from Penn State looked at 388 teenage first- and second-born siblings and their parents from 17 school districts in a northeastern state. The researchers asked the parents which sibling was better in school.

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Hovering or Loving?

New research by professors at Brigham Young University revealed that parental warmth cannot neutralize the consequences of helicopter parenting. Additionally, a lack of warmth makes the negative effects worse.  Such negative effects include lower self-worth and higher risk behavior, such as binge drinking.

The study, published in Emerging Adulthood, is a follow-up to 2012 research on helicopter parenting that found the children of helicopter parents are less engaged in school. Now they’ve found that helicopter parenting combined with an absence of parental warmth is especially detrimental to young adults’ well-being.

Researchers defined helicopter parenting as parents’ over-involvement in the lives of their children. This includes making important decisions for them, solving their problems and intervening in their children’s conflicts. Warmth is measured by parental availability to talk and spend time together.

Nelson and Padilla-Walker examined data from 438 undergraduate students in four universities nationwide (not including Brigham Young University). The students self-reported on their parents’ controlling behavior and warmth, then on their own self-esteem, risk behaviors and academics.

Results showed that the lack of warmth intensifies both the decrease in self-worth and increase in risk behaviors in the young-adult children of helicopter parents. High levels of parental warmth reduced the negative effects, but did not eliminate them completely.  The findings suggest that loving parents can’t justify their helicoptering tendencies; too much control is too much, no matter the parents’ affection and support.

“Overall, stepping in and doing for a child what the child developmentally should be doing for him or herself, is negative,” Nelson said. “Regardless of the form of control, it’s harmful at this time period.” The authors note that helicopter parenting is relatively uncommon and not as damaging as forms of control that are harsh, punitive or manipulative.

Nelson warned that helicopter parents shouldn’t overcompensate by removing themselves completely from their children’s lives. Young adults deserve more autonomy, but still need parental support.  “Lack of control does not mean lack of involvement, warmth and support,” Nelson said.

J. Nelson, L. M. Padilla-Walker, M. G. Nielson.Is Hovering Smothering or Loving? An Examination of Parental Warmth as a Moderator of Relations Between Helicopter Parenting and Emerging Adults’ Indices of Adjustment.Emerging Adulthood, 2015

Dyslexia is NOT an Eye Disorder

Eye training or other vision therapies will not treat dyslexia in children, say researchers who found normal vision among most children with the learning disability.   The findings confirm what eye doctors have known for a long time, said Dr. Mark Fromer, an ophthalmologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.   “Dyslexia is a brain dysfunction, not an eye disorder,” said Fromer, who was not involved in the study. “There are no studies that clearly identify that visual training can be helpful for the dyslexic patient.”

Depending on the definition used, as many as one in five school-aged children in the United States may have dyslexia, the researchers said. If severe reading difficulties associated with dyslexia aren’t addressed, they can affect adult employment and even health, they added.

The new findings, published online May 25, will appear in the June issue of the journal Pediatrics. The researchers tested over 5,800 children, aged 7 to 9, for a variety of vision problems, including lazy eye, nearsightedness, farsightedness, seeing double and focusing difficulties.    The 3 percent (n=174 children) of children with dyslexia who had severe difficulty reading showed little differences in their vision than children without dyslexia. And 80 percent of children with dyslexia had fully normal vision and eye function in all the tests, the findings showed.    A slightly higher proportion of those with dyslexia had problems with depth perception or seeing double, but there was no evidence that this was related to their reading disability. After making adjustments for other contributing factors, this finding seemed due to chance.

“It does make sense to think something is wrong with your eye if you’re not reading well, but there really is no connection between any ophthalmological disorder and dyslexia,” said  Fromer.    Though the study findings aren’t new, this review is much larger than previous ones, he added.     “The biggest issue here is that parents of dyslexic children should not waste a lot of money on vision training for their children with dyslexia,” Fromer said. “It won’t work.”

That research showed that the cause of the disability has to do with how someone processes letters and sounds, not with how they perceive letters and words in the first place, said Fierson. He is co-author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ policy statement on learning disabilities, including dyslexia.  An initial eye evaluation to find out if eye problems are present is important, he said. But this is only to rule out problems or treat specific conditions — prescribing glasses or contacts for nearsightedness or farsightedness, for instance.

“To date, the best techniques for the remediation of dyslexia involve intensive one-on-one — or at least small group — teaching by phonetic methods by experienced teachers,” Fierson said.  “At least as important, however, is an initial evaluation by a neuropsychologist or educational psychologist to determine the specific problem areas present in the poor reader,” Fierson added.  “Parents should avoid unproven quick fixes and go for intensive phonics,” Fierson said. “As is usually the case, things that seem too good to be true usually are. This includes vision treatments for dyslexia.”

SOURCES: Walter Fierson, M.D., pediatric ophthalmologist, Arcadia, Calif., former chairman, ophthalmology section, American Academy of Pediatrics, and co-author, AAP Policy Statement and Technical Report on Learning Disabilities; Mark Fromer, M.D., ophthalmologist, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City, and director of eye surgery, N.Y. Rangers; Cathy Williams, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., senior lecturer, child visual development, University of Bristol, England; June 2015, Pediatrics

How Stress Impacts Learning and Behavior – FREE Webinar

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Neuromyths in Education – “Let The Buyer Beware”

“Neuromyths:” content purportedly based on neuroscience that, while sounding plausible, is incorrect.  Neuromyths result from unsupported claims about interventions or products supposedly “proven by neuroscience research.” These claims are based on research that is either not scientifically valid or not supportive of the specific intervention being promoted (Willis, 2015)

The Big Three

The Left/Right Brain Myth

Over 20 years ago, neuroimaging demonstrated that both sides of the brain are in constant communication, transmitting neural signals from one hemisphere to the other. Although parts of the brain are particularly active during certain memory or learning activities, all brain activities requiring cognition activate neural networks on both sides of the brain. Yet the myth persists.

The Learning-Style Myth

No reliable research has ever demonstrated that instruction designated as appropriate for any “tested” learning style is effective because it matches that style. The research is missing several important control validations.

For example, there are no statistically valid studies comparing the response of a mixed-learning-style control group with the results of a learning-style-matched group. To qualify as “effective,” there must be support of claims that superior outcomes are the direct result of teaching to individual learning styles and not a general result to the instruction.  There is no evidence that “visual learners” have better outcomes to instruction designed for “visual learners” than do mixed-style learners taught using the same instruction. Without comparison groups, the before and after results could simply mean that the particular instruction is the most effective method for teaching that specific content to all students.

The “We Use Only 10 Percent of Our Brains” Myth

Neuroimaging research techniques, such as PET (positron emission tomography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans show that we use and activate most of our brains most of the time, and essentially all of our brains at some time each day.

To clarify the science, consider that the brain weighs three pounds and uses about 20 percent of the body’s limited oxygen and glucose resources. The brain has built-in efficiency systems to keep it trim — it destroys unused or disconnected islands of brain connections. When networks are not activated frequently enough to build up the strong walls of myelin and multiple dendrite connections, they are pruned away, assuring more availability of metabolic resources for the most-used brain networks. Hence, we have “neurons that fire together” (the construction aspect of neuroplasticity) and its flipside, “use it or lose it.”

Caveat Emptor – “Let The Buyer Beware”

The expression “edu-cash-in” is a reasonable description of people trying to capitalize on unsupported claims about the research behind the design and promised outcome of their books, cure-all learning theories, curriculum packages, and ed-tech products.   Despite the absence of valid supporting research, many products continue to promise more effective results when learning style is matched to teaching modality. Programs promise that their surveys or analytic tools yield vital information defining students’ specific learning styles. Their prescribed instruction differentiates not by mastery or interest, but on the sensory modality declared to be most effective for each learner and his or her “learning style.”

Children with Visual or Hearing Disabilities Can Now Access TV Programming

The U S Department of Education yesterday announced that thousands of children with visual or hearing disabilities may now access free on-demand children’s television programming.

Dozens of children’s and family TV episodes may now be viewed online featuring closed captioning and descriptions through our Accessible Television Portal project. Among the shows: “Ocean Mysteries,” “Magic School Bus,” “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” “Expedition Wild” and “Peg + Cat.”

TO VIEW THE CONTENT:  teachers and school personnel, parents, and other professionals working with qualified students can visit www.dcmp.org  and apply for access to the portal.  The portal is part of the Department-funded Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP). It includes video-on-demand content provided at no cost

Once approved, accessible content can be used with, and by, students in the classroom and at home via the Web, mobile phones and tablets, mobile apps, and set-top boxes. The portal itself is fully accessible to those with sensory impairments. Children with disabilities can locate any featured program without difficulty.

Teacher Tested & Kid Approved – MATH HELP

Help your students understand mathematical concepts and reinforce their skills.   Here are some teacher-tested tools that can help, from calculators to study groups to fun games.
Mathtopia

Addictive like Candy Crush, but nutritious Math Facts and assessments for the brain.

Base Ten BINGO

Play a bingo game using base ten blocks as virtual manipulatives.

Scalar

A calculator that saves all of your past calculations on a virtual piece of paper.

Jasymchat

Chat with classmates and share mathematical equations represented accurately.

NumberShire

A series of math games set in an animated whimsical Renaissance-style kingdom.

Math Manipulatives/Games

This one is curated by associate professor Brandi Leming.

Free Math Apps – All Grades

This one is curated by media paraprofessional Natalie Thomas.