How to live with your grade-schooler's imagination
Set limits. Creating and enforcing rules — color at the table, not on the carpet — is crucial for everyone's sake. But if you can, let your child live for a bit with the reminders of her flights of fancy. The fact that the dining room table isn't available for dinner because it's hosting a stuffed animal tea party gives you the perfect excuse to have a "picnic" on the living room floor.Keep messes manageable. Yes, pretending to be pioneers on the Oregon Trail may lead to a roomful of camping equipment. While it doesn't hurt to allow some temporary disarray, at this age your child is ready to learn to clean up after herself and to respect the fact that certain parts of the house may be off-limits for playtime. If you have the space, it's a good idea to designate a room, or part of a room, as an arts and crafts corner where your child is free to create without worrying about making a mess. A few containment strategies can help, too: Old button-down shirts make great smocks when worn backwards with the sleeves cut off, plastic sheeting under the Play-Doh construction site can protect the rug, and large sheets of butcher paper over the crafts table can prevent an encrusted layer of multicolored paints or glue.
Encourage wild ideas. When an enthusiastic grade-schooler says, "Let's build a roller-coaster in the backyard!" it's easy to be practical and point out the expense, building code violations, and safety hazards that would incur. But wild ideas can be the seeds of inventive thinking. It's better for her creativity if you answer, "Why don't you start by building a small-scale model for your action figures?" and point out the long-unused toy train track that she can fashion into a mini amusement park outside. (Be prepared to help out!)
Enjoy the offbeat. When your grade-schooler decides her favorite clothing color is black and she wants to wear it (along with her lime green belt) from head to toe every day, or that her room looks best with the curtains rolled up onto the rod, cut her some slack. Adults are socialized to view only certain behavior and aesthetics as acceptable; your child is still developing her sense of what's attractive or appealing. Encourage your child — who is now beginning to be exposed to peer pressure — to feel good about her favorite colors, flavors, stories, subjects, and other individual likes and dislikes as distinctive examples of what makes her unique.
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