Heal Your Inner Child By Creating With Your Kids

🍁Your inner child is waiting to play and create. Bring your curiosity, willingness to experiment, and a companion (your child) to create with. Try one of the projects shared below, as inspiration. Experience the joy of being a kid again as you delight in the wonder of your own child's creativity.  What awakens within you?  What can you take from this experience, that will help you to live with deeper authenticity and greater flow? Please share which project(s) you pick and what emerged for you.  Post your comments, in the Comment Section below.🍁

Seasonal Project Ideas (PDFs)

Creative Ideas for Fall

Creative Ideas for Winter

Introduction

As parents, we juggle schedules, responsibilities, expectations, and care for others. The playful, imaginative voice of our inner child often falls silent under the weight of “being an adult.” Yet, when we lean into creative play with our children, we give that voice permission to re-emerge.  When we engage in childlike play, we bypass the internal critic and return to a more fluid, exploratory state. We allow ourselves to make “mistakes,” experiment, laugh, restart, or just “mess around.” That’s a powerful pathway to reconnection with our creative instincts, spontaneity, and wonder.  Psychologically, creativity and play help us:

• Loosen rigid thinking and open up to new possibilities

• Access embodied knowing through tactile experience

• Regulate emotion through safe expression and processing

• Model curiosity and courage for children, showing them it’s okay to try without perfection

Strengthening Relationships & Attunement

When you create with your child rather than for them, you enter a space of collaboration. You witness their imaginative leaps, you adapt together, you respond. This strengthens emotional attunement, deepens trust, and builds shared memory and meaning.  Through creative play, children grow too.  They learn flexibility, narrative thinking, fine motor control, problem-solving, expressive confidence, and self-regulation. You also offer them something invaluable: the message that their ideas, play, and voice matter.

Working with a child gives adults a “permission container” to play in, creating less internal resistance to playful engagements. As you lean in, slow down, and give yourself grace to just be, your inner child can feel seen, heard, and nurtured again.  Creative activities invite chance through allowing imperfections to exist. By allowing these imperfections, you cultivate self-compassion, resilience, and comfort in uncertainty; which are essential for growth and transformation in adult life.  As you ask your child “what if…?” or imagine possibilities together, you reawaken that spark of curiosity you once carried freely. You may surprise yourself with new metaphors, color choices, or themes emerging from your subconscious.

Sometimes the materials or themes you lean into echo inner feelings: a branch that split, a torn leaf, a cloud shape. The act of shaping, connecting, and dialoguing through materials can help bring internal parts into conversation and harmony.  Showing your child that you can try, hesitate, repair, or shift directions, teaches them resilience, flexibility, and creative problem-solving. You embody the message that creativity is not just for artists, it’s for life.  These art sessions become part of your shared story and life long memories for both you and your child(ren). The stories born, the keepsakes created, the photos, and the laughter reinforce connection in ways that extend beyond the moment.

Practical Tips & Encouragement for Busy Parents

To prepare for creative engagement, review the projects you'd like to work on and acquire any materials that need to be purchased.  Create a craft box of these supplies so that it is ready when you are.  Forage for any natural materials you might use for your projects. Depending on the age of your child(ren), these creative sessions can be set up to last anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour.  Shorter sessions work well for littles with short attention spans.  Mix structured time/ time to follow instructions, with open time/ time to freely engage the imagination.  Allow the child to lead sometimes and be sure to normalize "imperfections."  Take pictures to solidify the memories.  Make this a weekly or monthly practice.  Use the table in the section below, to carry this time of connection with your child(ren) into a reconnection with your inner child through reflection and journaling - once your child has moved on to other activities, of course..

Core Values & Creative Connection

Identifying and cultivating individual core values is essential to creating growth and transformation in your life. Engaging in creative connection with your child(ren) highlights core values that can help you to see where your inner child feels stuck or uninspired.  Taking time to reflect on this creative engagement with your core values allows you to actively listen top your inner child.  The following table identifies core values, shows how they come through in creative activities, and provides reflection prompts to help you identify the impact of these activities in your personal experience.