Importance of Imagination in Child Development

By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

mother reading a book to her son at night for imagination in child development
Reading Books to Strengthen Imagination in Child Development – Photo by Mizuno K on Pexels.com

Imagination in child development plays a vital role, influencing a range of outcomes. Even as an adult, you can spot the role ingenuity plays in your life. Coming up with a new way to double your income, design home decorations with dried flowers or implementing a way to build confidence in your children. Each of these developments requires ingenuity.

So Much to Gain – Imagination in Child Development

Take away imagination and with it go creativity, inspiration, innovation and progress. It’s so important that Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “Logic will get you from A to Z. Imagination will get you everywhere.”

Scholars and scientists have studied imagination in child development for years, some leaders thinking that imagination or creativity are naturally given. In fact, Yale Insights shares that, “The idea of humans as uniquely creative animals goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks.” Others, like Aristotle, were under the impression that imagination or creativity was a gift from the gods.1

Defining Imagination in Children

But just what is imagination?

Merriam-Webster dictionary says that it is, “the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality,” From a creative stance, it is defined as the “ability to confront and deal with a problem.”

Above all, the ability to “confront and deal with a problem” is crucial. If children don’t know how to face and deal with challenges in healthy ways, they could experience inner turmoil. For example, they could feel hopeless and a lack of confidence.

How Imagination in Child Development Proves Critical

Without the ability to confront and deal with problems, children could also give up or resort to fighting to try to resolve a conflict. Here are more ways that imagination in child development proves critical:

  • Language development relies on imagination. Also, the more languages children speak, the stronger their creative thinking may be.2
  • Play is a primary way that children develop friendships and learn to make sense of the world. Critical thinking, social development and physical abilities are discovered and developed during play. Additionally, play helps regulate emotions and mental health. If you’ve ever seen a child become happier, more engaged and more energized after healthy playing, you saw firsthand the impact of play on a child’s development.
  • Creative writing, especially fictional writing, needs strong imagination. Develop Good Habits says that “Creative writing strengthens language arts skills and improves children’s grades in all areas of coursework.It helps them understand and develop good grammar habits, sentence structure, vocabulary, and dialogue.3
  • Emotional functioning is at work when a child relates to others. Active listening, the ability to actually hear and respect what another person is saying and skills to manage their own feelings are parts of emotional functioning.
  • Artistic expression can surface during play or while reading, an activity that encourages the use of imagination.

At first glance, imagination in child development might appear less important than logical and practical skills. However, logical skills like math, biology and geography don’t touch on as many life components as imagination does.

Ways to Strengthen Child’s Imagination

Yet, simply knowing how important imagination is in child development is not enough. You have to find effective ways to encourage children to exercise their imagination or creativity. Here are several actions you could take to encourage your children to strengthen their imagination:

  • Invest time to actually play with your children. Don’t stop when your children start school. Continue to play with your children as they age. Doing so can strengthen your and your children’s imaginations.
  • Bring in art. Let your children have fun creating pictures and splash drawings, getting their hands colorful in washable paint.
  • Ask your children questions, aiming to get them into problem solving mode. Help them learn to use critical thinking and emotional functioning as they ponder your questions and potential answers.
  • In healthy loving ways, motivate your children to “try again” when they encounter failure. For instance, you could ask your children to list or talk about ways that they could approach a challenge or overcome a failure. Make it fun.
  • Encourage independence and free thinking. This means that you don’t demand that your children see life the way that you do. Who knows? Your children might come up with a way to solve a decades-long problem when they grow up.
  • Travel, allowing your children to explore different cultures, physical landscapes and environments.
  • Dance with your children, celebrating their unique moves and rhythm.
  • Allow your children to help you complete daily tasks like cooking. In fact, if you add toys and your children’s favorite songs to a meal preparation, your children might not only love to cook, they might appreciate finding creative ways to decorate food.

Let Your Child’s Creativity Bloom

Perhaps more importantly, let your children see you using your imagination. You can do this by reading books to your children. And you can let your children see you reading books by yourself that you love. Benefits of reading extend beyond imagination.

Reading aids in learning. The more your children read, the quicker they can pick up details. When you consider the wealth of information inside books, reading is a shortcut to a broader and deeper education, the type of learning that last a lifetime.

Pay attention to what blooms from your child’s imagination. You could be the parent or guardian of a gifted artist. That, or your child could be a medical, scientific or technological innovator.

So, curl up with your children and a good book. Make it a regular, special event. If you make reading books fun, your children might start asking you to read to them. It could become a fun, bonding experience that exercises your children’s imagination and yours.

Resources:

  1. What Is Creativity? | Yale Insights
  2. Bilingual Kids Better at Creative Thinking (medicaldaily.com)
  3. 9 Benefits of Creative Writing to Help Your Children (developgoodhabits.com)

7 Reasons Books Are a Top Entertainment Choice

By Books Entertainment Writer Denise Turney

black man with dog reading book for entertainment
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It doesn’t matter the time of year or what’s going on in the entertainment world, books are always a winning choice. Remember when you read a story that kept you on the edge of your seat? While you turned the pages, your hands might have shaken or maybe you smiled, swiped a tear or laughed. You may have felt a myriad of emotions, ranging from peace to joy to sorrow to hope. Talk about a deep emotional payoff. This is just one reason why books are a top entertainment choice.

Books Are a Top Entertainment Choice Because They Build on Entertainment’s Core

Admittedly, it’s easy to miss. Yet, that doesn’t change how books are a top entertainment choice because they are built upon entertainment’s core — storytelling. Your favorite movies, television shows, live stage plays and popular songs and video games, rely on storytelling. Dance might even rely on storytelling. On top of that, the best books are written with a rare sincerity, a sincerity fueled by passion and not money.

Still, there are more reasons why books are a top entertainment choice. Some of these benefits may be hidden. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not getting a lot of gain from reading books. Check out these seven reasons books are a top entertainment choice:

  • Education – Reading good books doesn’t just teach you about the book’s topic, it broadens your vocabulary. If you read books written in your primary language and a secondary language, you could learn a new language. Nonfiction books teach you about a broad range of topics, including the brain, health, wealth management, inner healing, governments, cultures, history, science and geography.
  • Stress Reducer – As an avid book reader, you know how reading good books lowers stress. It may take 20 minutes before your brain shifts away from worrying into relaxation. Yet, once that shift occurs, you can settle into a story and, before you know it, you’ve forgotten what you were worrying about. Your mind will have broken free.

Good Brought on from Reading Good Books

  • Empathy Booster – The best fictional books dig into the human condition. Great novel characters confront issues that humans have been facing for decades, sometimes centuries. Furthermore, it’s for this reason that works by writers like William Shakespeare, Frances E. W. Harper, Olaudah Equiano and Edgar Allen Poe remain relevant near centuries after those stories were written. Learn what motivates characters to do what they do, and you could become more empathetic in your day-to-day life.
  • Brain Exercise – Here’s a benefit gained from reading books that crosses both sides of your brain. Read a mix of scientific books and great fiction and you can exercise both the left and right sides of your brain. Choose to read different types of books, and you can do more to boost your cognitive abilities. You might especially notice this when you read books that require you to complete worksheets.
  • Improved Sleep – Lower stress can lead to improved sleep. Similar to watching a riveting movie, reading a good book could lull you into restful sleep. As a tip, don’t be surprised if you have dreams about scenes you read in a novel, especially events similar to what you may currently be dealing with.

Benefits That Guarantee Books Are a Top Entertainment Choice

lighted candle on white book beside black glass bottle
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  • Better Communication – Watching characters deal with challenges can help you learn better ways to communicate with the people in your life. Even more, as you read more books, your expanding vocabulary and deeper empathy can strengthen your communication. Here’s another way that reading can lead to better communication.
  • Continual Growth – Whether you’re reading books to be inspired, to be entertained or to reduce stress, as you continue to read books, you continue to learn. Reading books help you continue to grow.

Furthermore, reading books offers a great escape from life routines. It’s a good way to take a recess from watching news programs. And who doesn’t want a break from watching one negative event after another?

Lower Your Mental Defenses

If you’re a fan of self-help books, you could work through emotional or mental blocks while reading. Another takeaway you might get from reading self-help books is the inspiration and techniques to start practicing self-awareness.

This single change could see your life grow sweeter. After all, if you’re not aware of how you could be arresting your development or holding yourself back, you might not know what to change to break free. This reveals another advantage gained from reading good books.

Reading good books helps you lower your mental defenses. Get caught up in a story and it could be days after you finish a novel before you see links between a novel character and yourself. It might take that long before you notice the main characters in popular books you love struggle with similar relationship, childhood, sexual or emotional issues that you do.

Real Links Between Your Life and Your Favorite Books

Let the characters transition from surviving to transforming to thriving and you might, even if it’s only subconsciously, start to believe that you too can and will make these rewarding transformations.

So, enjoy reading good books, fiction or non-fiction. Let your inner light guide you toward books that speak to what you’re dealing with now. You may get a lot more than an emotional lift from those books. You might put those books down and realize that you’ve gained a lot more than entertainment.

7 Tips to Help Kids Love Reading Books

By Books Author Denise Turney

girl with glasses reading books on table in house
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Despite what you might think, many kids love reading books. As long as I can remember, I have loved to read books. Even more, I’m from the school of book readers who loves holding a paperback in my hands. Could be the scent wafting off the pages. Or it could be the way that it feels to hold a good book against my stomach while I flip the pages.

Benefits of Reading Books

Like a train, boat or airplane, books took me to different places. In fact, it’s how I got to Paris, Kenya, Spain and Australia while I was growing up in housing projects. And, all the journey cost me was an active imagination, concentration and a library card. Oh, and the help of talented authors who knew how to use a pen to carve out worlds of wonder.

Back then, I read 35 to 50 books a month. Every Single Month. On top of that, I ran track, kept up my school work and wrote poems and short stories. Honestly, there are times when I think that books may have saved me from experiencing the full sting of trauma.

Reasons Kids Turn Away From Reading Books

Yet, benefits aside, it’s not always easy to help kids love books. In fact, some kids don’t like reading books because they think that they’d have to invest too much time into a book, even really good books. Other reasons why kids might turn away from reading books include:

  • Reading books feels too much like being back in school
  • Ebook reader stories are a turnoff due to having to stare at a screen
  • Story topics aren’t exciting to kids
  • Other events, choices vie for their attention
  • Parents, other adults and older siblings telling them reading books is boring
  • Benefits of finding good books to read is hidden from kids

Advantages to Kids from Finding Good Books to Read

Fortunately, there are a myriad of benefits that can be gained from reading books. Chance to explore other parts of the world is just one benefit. More benefits gained from digging into the best books to read include:

  • Increased empathy – While exploring books to read, kids can learn about different cultures. They can also learn how people experiencing challenges similar to their own feel. Even more, when kids love books, they can see how these same people overcome challenges. This alone can be inspiring, motivating and empowering.
  • Brain strength – Reading exercises the brain. According to Reading Horizons, the brain’s occipital lobe and the parietal lobe are stimulated while reading books. This stimulation helps kids process visual information. It also helps kids process letters into words.
  • Reading comprehension – The more kids love books, the stronger their reading comprehension can become.  Whether kids are reading children’s books in print or via an ebook reader, the more they read, the easier it may become for them to understand what’s shared in a story. As it regards school, kids may shorten the time it takes to study for tests. Additionally, they might recognize what to focus on in a book, including non-fiction textbooks.

More Advantages of Kids Finding Good Books to Read

two kids reading a fairy tale book
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This happened for me. Granted, it took several years of avid book reading. But after reading kids’ books, I could spot areas teachers were likely to focus on in tests. Soon, I could read textbooks and know just what to highlight and zone in on.

More reasons for kids to find good books to read are to exercise their imagination and to open themselves to new ideas. Also, characters in some children’s books may keep kids from feeling alone. For example, a child who’s being bullied in school might feel less alone while reading a kids books series about a girl who’s also dealing with bullying.

Reaping Rewards When Kids Love Books

Building a broader vocabulary is another advantage for kids finding good books to read. Also, if kids read more advanced books as they age, it can help them maintain healthy cognitive abilities. Other advantages include:

  • Supports healthy sleeping
  • Improves concentration
  • Lowers stress (a plus in a busy digital world)
  • Aids healthy self-esteem (Of course, this depends on the books that kids read. Good books to read can support healthy self-esteem.)

Tips to Help Kids Love Books

Yet, with all the advantages and benefits of reading kids books, it can be hard to get kids to read. So, how can you encourage kids to read more books?

Check out these tips. For starters, let your kids see you reading books. This next tip is closely connected to the first. When your children are young, read good books to them. Other actions that you can take to help kids love books are:

  • Turn your kids’ favorite books into a play that the entire family can participate in
  • Let your children pick the books they want to read
  • Ask your children questions about books they read
  • Buy your kids books for their birthday and on holidays. They make great additions to other gift options.
  • Make a trip to your local bookstore fun. For example, you can go to brunch, then to the bookstore and later to a movie.
  • Take crayons and draw cartoons based on book characters and plots to help kids love reading books
  • Get your kids a library card. Also, let your kids participate in fun library events.

Fans of Good Books

kind elderly ethnic woman lying in bed with curious grandchildren and reading book
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Even more, you may find it beneficial to let your kids read good books with you. For instance, you can read parts of a book and let your kids read other parts. As you see the benefits of your kids reading books, you might encourage reading more.

Who knows? Along the way, you might find good books to read and become a book lover yourself. And, kids who become fans of good books might grow up and pass book reading on to their children. In today’s world, you have more options.

Thanks to the digital world, you can find good books for your kids to enjoy on an ebook reader. Furthermore, your kids can read free or discounted books online. If their school has a book club, they can even share their thoughts and feelings about books they read with their classmates and peers.

Emotional Stories Readers Love To Connect With

By Books Writer Denise Turney

pensive woman resting at home with emotional stories in a book
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Good books touch emotional cores. It’s these emotional stories, written by emerging writers and established authors that resonate with readers. Even more, readers love stories that fuel them with emotion and transport them away from their everyday lives. But novelists can’t just transport readers, they have to create characters, dialogue and plots that dig up deep emotion. In fact, emotion may be the key difference that separates average books from top sellers.

Characters Drive Storytelling

Another benefit readers look for in storytelling is for characters to take surprising risks. They also seek tension, the type of suspense that creates an emotional connection between characters and readers. Now, here’s a key.

To achieve great storytelling, dialogue, character development and a tense, believable plot aren’t enough. Readers must be able to get inside the minds of your books characters. They need to feel like they know the characters personally. Even more, readers need to understand character motivations, fears and strengths.

Elements In Best Books To Read

One way to do this is to have a character make a vow she does not intend to keep. For example, a real estate manager could vow to her team that she loves her job and plans to continue managing at the real estate firm after she completes her psychology master’s degree when, in actuality, what she really wants is to retire and start a nonprofit counseling agency in order to avoid facing a financial scandal that’s on the verge of being exposed at the real estate firm.

But writers can’t just spring the contrast on readers. Instead, they have to build tension and reveal the struggle between what characters say and do. It’s this slow build of tension that’s found in the best books to read. And it can take years of fiction writing for authors to acquire this skill.

Also, whether it’s an autobiography or work of fiction, writers need to take readers to places that readers haven’t been before. It’s easy to do this with science fiction books, not as easy with contemporary fiction.

Classic Emotional Stories

This is where the mental workings of characters helps to strengthen stories. Ralph Ellison pulls this off in Invisible Man. Ellison masterfully takes readers inside the mind of the book’s main character, an African American man who leaves the South and relocates to New York. The move doesn’t bring the man what he’d expected it to. It’s from here that Ellison takes the man into a basement where the tautness, the powerful emotion of the storytelling takes over.

Invisible Man left an imprint on me when I read the book. Ralph Ellison’s writing skill blessed my soul. His writing took me into that basement with the book’s main character. Before I knew it, I was pulling, literally rooting, for that man to do what it took to win, to get back on his feet and rise.

Knowing this, it’s highly recommended that writers who want their stories to become among the best books to read, invest the time to actually read powerful books. Surprisingly an autobiography could help writers spot ways to sharpen their characters.

After all, when you think about it, don’t the best books of all time have such deeply developed characters that the characters feel like real people? But don’t just read books until you unconsciously spot the elements of great characterization, keep writing to develop your own voice, your own powerful writing style.

Everybody should love reading books!

Everybody should love reading great books!  Reading is an excellent way to learn, to continue to grow. It’s also a great way to exercise the brain, ensuring that you stay alert and sharp. While reading books, you can explore new lands and learn from characters’ mistakes without actually having to make the same mistakes yourself. You can experience thrilling life events, meet fascinating people, learn how to build or fix things around your home and learn new languages.

The above cartoon really captures how fascinating your life could become after you start loving to read great books!  It’s a habit so rewarding, you might not be able to stop, and why should you!

Happy reading, my friends!  May you find wonderful, thought provoking books in the most amazing places!  May the stories that keep you up reading until late at night usher in tremendously rewarding experiences, ones you may not have even thought you’d ever have!

Before you leave, be sure to grab a copy of my new book, Love Pour Over Me! To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

Great books open up new worlds

Great books open up new worlds, in ways that, perhaps, few other things do. Think about it? How many times have you felt down, picked up a great book, started reading it and, before you knew it — you started feeling better? How many times have you felt like throwing in the towel, read a series of inspirational poems or quotes, then lifted your head and advanced forward?

In a nutshell, great books leave us changed. They stir up deep, rich emotions in us, causing us to shift in ways we don’t consciously understand.

No wonder billions of people read books. They do more than teach, so much more, starting early in our lives, when we’re kids. And considering early books, aren’t those the stories that stay wish you, that you still remember as if you read them yesterday?

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

Great Novels Make Reading to Learn Fun

By Denise Turney

Gain good reading comprehension skills and you can shorten the amount of time it takes you to learn. You can also improve your communication skills and gain the confidence to talk with people from diverse backgrounds because you know you’re well versed on several interesting subjects.

Reading Fiction is a Gateway to Learning

Reading books filled with illustrations and dates that illustrations historic events occurred on and reading books filled with facts and numbers can help you learn. However, you might not have a lot of fun learning this way. In fact, this type of reading might feel like work.

It’s a reason schools and youth organizations use colorful fiction books to teach children how to read, count and learn basic subjects like science and history. When it comes to older children and adults, reading good fiction can help stimulate independent thinking. Good fiction can also help you to solve a puzzle you have been striving to find the answer to for several days, weeks or months.

Novels Can Hold Answers to Challenging Questions

Sometimes the answers to your questions might be revealed in dialogue shared between two characters in a novel. Other times you may arrive at an answer to something that has been puzzling you after following the ins and outs of a romantic or mysterious relationship highlighted in the pages of a novel. You may even come to realize that you are not alone as you deal with a perception challenge, especially as you continue to read and discover that similar challenges keep coming up for your favorite book characters. This is one of the benefits gained while reading Love Pour Over Me. [Keep in mind that real people create novels and sometimes they include real life perception challenges they’ve faced in stories they write.]

But perhaps most of all, reading good fiction is a great way to learn grammar skills. It’s also a great way to learn how to become a talented storyteller yourself. [It’s no wonder great authors advise up and coming writers to read a lot of good fiction.]

So enjoy curling up with a good novel. Read books to your children and young relatives. Give books to family, friends and colleagues for holidays, etc. Get to know characters in intriguing novels and let yourself grow, expand and learn.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Even if you choose not to purchase your copy of Love Pour Over Me today, I encourage you to “consider Love.”

More about Books – Starting on a New Novel

By Denise Turney

I was almost finished editing Love Pour Over Me when I started writing my next novel. Looking back, I think that’s the way I’ve always managed the creative side of my writing career. The process keeps me from getting too attached to the book I’ve just finished writing. This, in turn, allows me to keep moving forward, ready to receive the next fiction story that surfaces within me.

Writing the first draft of a new book is fun. It’s also the most challenging part, especially considering the fact that I’ve learned how to cut the fat out of a story without feeling like I’m taking blood from myself. Oh, the despair, the dread I felt years ago when it came time to start editing and cutting away at a story I’d spent months laboring to pull together. Although I can’t confirm it, I imagine that most authors struggle with this part of the writing process.

As I’m experiencing with my next book “Gada’s Glory” (working title), I feel exhilarated while I’m creating a new book. It’s so much fun! The process is pure – purely creative. There’s no need to focus on marketing, promotions, etc. during this process. I don’t have to spread the word about a new novel I’m creating because it’s all mine . . . for now.

It’s like being in a laboratory, trying this and that, creating intriguing characters and placing them in challenging and/or rewarding scenes. In time I start rooting for one or more characters and disliking other characters. Amazing how this happens considering the fact that I’m the one who’s creating all of the book’s characters. Oddly, with Love Has Many Faces (sold out) a character I loved (Leslie Fletcher) was absolutely hated and despised by readers. That was a first for me. Leslie made a lot of mistakes, many of which deeply hurt innocent people, but she evolved and awakened by the end of Love Has Many Faces; however, readers were not up for dismissing her prior mistakes.

Which brings me to another point I love about starting on a new novel . . . I love working with emotion! It may well be my biggest payoff as a book author – hearing from readers, especially readers who are emotionally charged about a scene or character. I love when that happens!

Malcolm (Raymond Clarke’s father) is the guy who pulls loads of emotion out of readers in my recently published book, Love Pour Over Me. Unlike Leslie, readers come to see Malcolm differently by the end of Love Pour Over Me. Guess I got a little better at allowing characters to evolve and awaken. That or Leslie struck a nerve in readers and wouldn’t let go.

But that’s me . . . what are your favorite parts of a novel? What makes a story a winner for you, the type of book you simply can’t put down? Is it the plot, dialogue, an intriguing setting . . . Just what is it about a book that keeps you turning the pages?

I’m sure you can tell; the rewards of writing are a plenty! I love to write, to create stories that pull emotion up within readers like you! Gotta tell you, as a reader, you make my life’s work wonderful! Thank you!

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You!