Episode 83: How Embracing Creativity Can Help You as a Parent with Sierra Casher
/When we think of "creativity", we immediately think of art, paintings, and drawings. But it actually goes way beyond that and creativity is a crucial skill we need as parents for ourselves & our own experience, and for our kids as they grow. Embracing creativity means encouraging our children's (and our own!) curiosity and using everyday situations to stimulate new ideas, find new ways to see old problems, see things with a beginner's mind, and find innovative solutions.
So, even if you don't see yourself as a "creative" person, I invite you to listen to this week's episode with an open mind as we delve into the incredible ways creativity can support you as a balanced, conscious parent. And I have a really wonderful guest with me for this week's episode. Her name is Sierra Casher and she is going to help us talk about cultivating creativity in our kids and ourselves. Sierra and I first connected in a Clubhouse room and I just loved everything she has to say about creativity, embracing JOY, worthiness, and how cultivating creativity can bring more fulfillment and peace. Sierra is a woman who fearlessly embodies creativity while inspiring others to do the same. She's a wife, a mother of two vibrant kiddos, and an artist who paints pictures both with her inspiring stories and on canvas with her magic paintbrush.
Here is a summary of what we talked about:
Ways to express ourselves through art (even if you're not an artist!)
Tips to cultivate creativity and learning in our children
Creativity as a parenting and problem-solving tool
If you want to have more support on how to be creative, follow Sierra on Instagram.
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts, and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello, everybody! Welcome to another episode of The Balance Parent Podcast, this is Dr. Laura Froyen and I have a really cool guest with me today. Her name is Sierra Casher and she is going to help us talk about cultivating creativity in our kids. Sierra is a woman who fearlessly embodies creativity while inspiring others to do the same. She's a wife, a mother of two vibrant kiddos and an artist who paints pictures both with her inspiring stories and on campuses with her magic paint brushes. Siera, thanks so much for being here. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
Sierra: Okay, so from that introduction, I just kind of get a little warm and fuzzy inside me to like I literally probably pandemic really pulled this creativity out of me. I realized that we had to start to be creative as parents, as wives, as my, like all of the areas. I was like, okay what do I do now? And for me it was like going into this space of learning how to problem solving, learning how to navigate, figuring out what I'm going to get food at the grocery store. I had to become creative again and I was like, oh my goodness, this is something that I've been having my pocket for years and I'm having to use it now.
I would say for me it's like I love, love, love being in a space to where I have to problem solve if I'm honest. And so just like you and we talked, I was a very academic person, like people really here, you're very smart here, you can go far. And so I chased that for years and then I realized like that's not what I really want to do. I simply want to be creative and help other people to be creative because I see that is very, very impacting.
Like now especially you have to be creative in some way form of fashion, we just think that it looks like art, we think it looks like painting, drawing, writing and it's more than just that it's problem solving, its resiliency, it's like learning how to problem solve something, but to be able to say okay this, I don't like that, how this looks, I can paint over it and that and practically that looks like I don't like this grocery store that has these things, I'm going to go to another one and that can be painting over it, you're just going to a different grocery store and it's like writing, you know like a lot of times we're getting our stories and we're trying to figure out what is it that I bring to the table and it's like you get to rewrite your story and that's creativity.
I don't want to do the things that I did growing up, so I'm going to do something different, you're rewriting your story and that's creative kitchen when you're cooking, that's creativity, I don't have this ingredient, so I'm gonna substitute with this, that's creativity. I know for us in the pandemic in texas there were certain things that they didn't have at the grocery stores and so I was like how do now I got to look up how to NATO's and something how to replace yeast and something they don't have yeast here and I'm like okay well there's creativity there as well.
And so it's like for me, the pandemic really push this out of me again and it reminded me of who I really am and I was like, man, this is different, but I like it and I've been able to assist other people to realize like, hey, this is not as a big deal as you think it is, you just have to be creative and they're like, I'm not trying to paint, I'm not trying to draw and I'm like, well you don't have to pay the draw, however you do have to solve a problem, and that's what creativity does, it solves problems.
Laura: Oh my gosh, Sierra, you're blowing my mind with this kind of broader conceptualization of creativity because I think you're so right. I think so many of us think, you know, when we think of a person who is a creative, we think about a person who is an artist, but having this broader idea of what it means to be creative. I love, I wanted to touch on two things that you mentioned there. One is that we can build our creative muscles in maybe an art practices, you know, through painting, but that those skills, those muscles can be applied in a variety of ways. I loved all of those examples you just gave.
I love that you mentioned in your upbringing, your creativity, your that piece of you wasn't necessarily seen as valuable, wasn't honed wasn't held to the light wasn't allowed to shine. And I have a very similar story I feel within me that I do have creativity that has just never been nourished because I was academically successful. I just like you got pushed into the sciences. I There was no time when you're taking three science courses to take an art course, there just isn't time for that, you know, and, and that's how I was pushed and directed. And now here I am. We're in the middle of a pandemic.
We've gotten the message that our creativity, you know, maybe some of us were lucky and we had people in our lives who saw that within us and held it to the light, but many of us didn't. So what do we do now? Now we're in this place where we have to learn how to be creative again, you know, or maybe for the first time.
Sierra: So I would say for someone who is learning to be creative for the first time simply maybe go to the store and buy paint whatever you're feeling like if you're feeling paints have like each color of the paint is like a feeling for it. Like blues and greens. They're more so of the happy and yellows and oranges. They're more so of the happier colors and red is usually one of those colors that if you think about it, you look at red and you see the paramedics have read. So that's like alarming. There's red when you see when you go to the hospital, the landing for the airplane that's red. So that's alarming.
So if something alarming is going on, you're probably gonna use a blue. If you're having like a somber type of like melancholy type of day, you may be brown, blacks, greys, it's a gloomy type day. So it's like just go grab some colors and paint and when I say paint, you literally just don't have to paint anything specific. But you just go with the flow turn on your favorite music, put on your favorite dress. If you're a woman and just go go with the flow. It doesn't have to look like anything that you've ever seen. It could just be your imagination.
Laura: That's so hard.
Sierra: We forget that part. It's like, just go, just go like everything, especially in the pandemic. Everything can be boxed in, you know, in a box or it has to look like this or you know where your mask and it's like, okay, this is a place you don't have to wear a mask. Just go, just go with the flow turn on the music and you will be amazed at what you create. I promise you, you'll be amazed at what you create simply just by, especially music.
Laura: I can, I just pull out, this is art is a place where you don't have to wear a mask and I know you're talking about a facial covering that we wear in the source, but we talk a lot in this podcast about the masks we wear and that's so true to your just thinking about this. You know, we were so many masks, you know, we come up through this world finding out figuring out that there are parts of us that are unlovable or worrying that there are parts of us that are unlovable. And so we, we start masking very young and this idea that there is this place where we can go where we don't have to wear a mask. You know, we can be fully and authentically ourselves. It's beautiful.
Sierra: You want to stay there. I promise. Like I think for sometimes when you first see what you create, you're looking, you will be like, I don't really know because you want to make it make sense. You want to see your face. You want it to look like something because everyone around us is telling us to look like this, be this. And if you think about it, it's always especially commercials, be this. Get more of this, look like this, don't look like this. Oh, this is acceptable. This is not acceptable.
But art is for me has been a place that I both found myself and I lost myself at the same time, art is truly freedom. And if we can really tap into it, it will help us to turn those wheels to realize that hey, I don't have to be this. This commercial is telling me, I have to be, I don't have to have more. I simply can create what I want, I could create what I want and like you said, the mask, like for me, that was a part of my story. I mask my creativity for years because it was weird, it was like, what is that? I tried to wear clothes that matched because that was acceptable. I really like to wear in the, I'm still coming out,
I like to wear stripes and circles at the same time, but socially, that's not acceptable. They're like, where are you going? You look like a clown at this point in my life is like, it is what it is going to be wearing stripes and circles and you're just gonna have to just learn how to get with it.
Laura: I love that. And you're highlighting to this place of you know, we are so hard on ourselves and that this the idea that this could be a place where you are free of judgment, self judgment, external judgment. I know I can hear my listeners because I know they're out there, the ones who are thinking like but yeah, but I'm not an artist and you know, who would still be afraid to paint on paper because they would be still continuing to judge themselves. You know that they like what I would make wouldn't look good.
I don't know how to mix colors. I don't know how to make paint strokes and you are encouraging people to be brave and to just do it and to accept what is, that's it, right, accept what comes out. See the beauty and whatever comes out. Even if it doesn't look conventional or what you thought it was going to look like or what joe down the streets as it should look like you were just fully accepting what comes out of you creatively. And in the process, I think you learn to accept yourself.
Sierra: It's like, it's like a mirror or it can be a mirror. Yes, exactly what I was saying about the colors, it's like if you're having a gloomy day, you're more so going to be drawn towards darker colors. If you're feeling vibrant inside, you're probably gonna be drawn to more of the brighter colors. So it's like whatever you're painting on this paper you're going to see and I think there's a part of like art therapy where they present different colors to a child and see which colors they're picking and they'll ask them why did you pick this?
And you will find out, hey, who this child is having this going on with them because of the colors that they have Children just like with us when you're getting ready to paint, if that's not where you want to start, you can find music. I know a lot of people speak music, you can find music that like if you listen to the type of music that you listen to when you're very high you listen to music that's fast, be like Yeah.
And when you're having like those not so good days, you're probably listen to a sad love song and it's like that's art as well. Like we don't necessarily have to simply create. Somebody may have already created something. For you to be able to give life to that thing, if that makes sense.
Laura: Yeah, 100%. I love how we're talking about this. I love that we started out talking of our goal here is to do a little bit of talking about how to cultivate creativity and our kids. And I think we're hitting on this note right here that if we want to really cultivate anything in our kids, we have to embody in ourselves first, right? And so bravely finding ways to express yourself and to figure out like, how am I like, I mean, just even this practice that you're talking about, like letting the things that speak to you give you information without judgment of Yeah, this song is really speaking to me.
I wonder like why it's resonating just a little bit of curiosity there. And I think, you know, to what you're talking about with the idea of art, of creating art with this mind. If we're not going to get it right, there's no perfection. There's no one right way to do this, Bringing this to the way we do art in front of our kids can also be hugely impactful for them. I hear all the time from parents who have kids and kind of the 3-6 ranges. When I see this the most where kids become very perfectionistic with their art, with their drawing, very concerned that they're drawing doesn't look the way it's supposed to.
And I actually, you know, when that's happening, I prescribe scribbling to the parent so that the parent is doing a lot of scribbling a lot of just messy art, a lot of art that looks like nothing to give permission to the child to re-find that in themselves. But I never really thought about it in a like, you know, this was always like from the mindset of this is what the kid needs the kid needs you to to not draw perfectly, because they can't they don't have to fine motor skills to be able to do it. They need you to match where they are and give them permission to do it imperfectly so that they can have a creative process, but I never thought about how just how good it would be for the parent themselves as individuals, you know what I mean?
Sierra: That's one of the philosophies that I live by is like our Children do what we do, not what we fill them. And so it's like if you are embodying what you want them to do, then they're going to do it. If you want them to eat vegetables, you have to eat vegetables because they're like, mom's not eating it. I want to eat it if you want them. Like you're saying like when it comes to article activity, it's like creativity is really about the environment.
If mom is always wearing black and white, I'm probably gonna wear black and white as a kid because I don't see her being vibrant or different choices with her clothing. And so it's like even with my daughter, she'll tell me mom, I want to be a mom want to grow up. And I'm like, why do you say that because you wear lipstick? And I'm like what? And so I took note of that. So when I catch her in my lipstick, I am not, you know scolding her for that because she's trying to be like me. So even with art, she my art is around in her office space and so she will mimic what she sees me doing. Mom, I want to be like you because your paintings are beautiful. And so she'll just try to do what I do.
And so just yesterday she took her canvas and she just went to work on it and I looked at and I was like, she's trying to do something that she saw on the other candidates. And so like now like some paintings that I have that are like flowers and stuff like that. I keep them in the closet because I don't want her to think her paintings have to look the same as mine. And so you don't want to limit her creating like exactly what you were saying. Like I don't want her to feel like, oh mom, my flower doesn't look like yours. It is not supposed to, it's not supposed to simply supposed to be whatever you come up with. And as she grows like I still have her paintings from when she was like, maybe two and three, she's four now and I look back at them and I'm like, wow, I can see improvement.
However, I am still starting to see that she's still a child and Picasso. I'm probably gonna venture this. But Picasso has a, he has a quote where he's talking about basically, you can't go back to childhood. You can't like, like paintings that we see from Children. We are usually in all of them is childlike. And when you try to pay as an adult, you don't paint like a child because you have so many experiences now.
Laura: and you have limitations. You have judgments and thoughts and constraints that kids don't have. They don't know they exist.
Sierra: Exactly unless you put them on them.
Laura: Right. Unless we put them on them and we do that in lots of completely like well intentioned or unintentional ways, you know, like, I mean just with the best of intentions when they're three and they say Mommy will you draw me a horse, like, you know, it's hard to deny a child when they're asking something as simple as that, you know? But in that place, when we do that, when we draw a horse for a child, then we tell them that's a horse and we put a constraint on them right?
Sierra: Now, that we looked at a child's photo, and I know we all do it, but even with my daughter, whatever she draws, if she says it's a horse and it looks like a little flour that is a horse.
Laura: that's a horse.
Sierra: That's the best horse I've ever seen. And if I'm honest, sometimes, like I've been a art teacher at the Boys and Girls Club and the other teachers are not artists and they just didn't get it. So Children would show them scribble scrabble and they'll be like, this is my house, and they're like, this is not, I'm like, don't do that.
Laura: don't crush their dress.
Sierra: you can't see what they think that is their house, and then like, that needs a house, and I'm like, I'll talk to them later and I'm like, hey, don't do that, like this is a place they get to be created, this is a place they get to just create if they draw scribble, you understand that as that, but to them that is a house and we don't want to combine them in here, I don't like there was a time, I hope the people out because I'm like, you're just not ready for this because it's a very tender place and like you were saying earlier, like when they look at something and they think, you know, hey, this is what this is.
And we have those constraints. It usually comes from another person. They view what we did and they're telling us that that's not acceptable and that's a child. They don't realize that I get to be who I wanna be, I get to draw how I want to draw. But we internalize that. I know for myself out, I internalize it as men, I have to do something that works. People looking at and realizing what it is abstract. It was like, no, you can't, no.
Laura: I have to do something that's worth people looking at, Oh my God, I mean that's a metaphor though for everything in parenthood, we do so much as parents in an attempt to fill someone else's idea of what's worthy and right.
Sierra: or oh my kids are eating this and this is what's healthy.
Laura: Yeah, we do so much. We let so many other people's ideas confine us, man, you're really heading
Sierra: It’s an art. This art, it releases you from that. So we constantly do art. It will release you from different boundaries and boxes that people have put us in is beautiful, if I'm honest, like change the world like just be creative every single day, do something creative every single day and you start to realize the boxes that you are in just not being creative.
Laura: okay. And you're really helping me with a block. Actually, Sierra right now that I have around my art because I do really enjoy painting and I have one of the blocks I've had is that what do I do with the paintings when I'm done? That's a waste of money. It's a waste of materials. It's not going to go on a wall. Like maybe I might even throw it away. Like it just there's this piece of me that's very like depression and what like poverty, trauma that comes up from my family history with money story. But there's this idea that the act of doing it is in in and of itself purposeful is what you're saying, right? That's what you're saying that in the in the
Sierra: Nobody has to see? you know, have you, no one has to see it. Like, you don't have to share them with anyone. If you do, then that's a bonus to them because you're sharing your inside, this is my heart. And so that I poured onto paper and if you want to view it, you don't have to say anything. You're just like, oh, thank you. Like, people should be saying thank you for seeing other people's art.
Like you see this and then goes art all the time. And he's basically saying, hey, here is my heart organize, like when we paint and when we create is from the inside, I don't know someone, I don't know how you would be able to create for me, I don't know how you would be able to create without going inside. Like you can do that, somebody can teach me but if without going inside because it's like it's a deep place of that's not judged.
And so it's like if I can put this on paper and let people see it, you are a brave person just to even put it out because it's like almost like open heart surgery, it's like uh what do I want to paint today? Um You gotta put your heart on the paper because people are going to look at it and not all the time, but if you share it, people will look at it based on their perception of their life and their experiences and they will say that's not what that is, that's not what they're supposed to be. Oh that color doesn't go with that color, that's not you, That's them, That's their experiences, That's the things that they have been through and that is like their story, that's coming up with your art.
Laura: Oh my gosh, I feel like Sierra, you are teaching a class in like conscious communication right now. Like I mean you're teaching like all the things through art because you were just talking about boundaries, holding boundaries for yourself. That if you're going to put something out there that's vulnerable. You are not going to let other people's perception of it change how you feel about it.
You just gave everybody a crash course in conscious living. I mean it's beautiful. I love the way that this is all flowing from you. Okay, so let's talk for a minute now. We've been talking a lot about us as parents. So a little bit about kids, but are there other ways that we can be cultivating creativity? I think we've hit on why creativity.
So there's actually a lot of research in the business world in career and financial success That as we move further into the 21st century that people who have creativity, one of their core competencies will be more successful in a future. That requires a lot of flexibility, Problem solving, critical thinking skills, you're spot on with that. That's something that's backed by amazing research. So how do we then, how do we cultivate creativity and our kids? Like can we talk about that a little bit?
Sierra: I would say it starts with the environment to things that are important is doing like simply I was doing, being like simply just being creative. Um not always having very, I would say like maybe by a creative shirt that you have that doesn't look like your regular work shirts. And so like or in the kitchen we usually cook this, this this mix it up a little bit and do something different and that will teach them like mom usually cook oatmeal with apples on the side today.
She cooked oatmeal with, I don't know, let's say apricots on the side and it's like, that's different. Oh mom just get a little creative in the kitchen today and that there's like, oh, so we can do things differently. It doesn't always have to be in such a structured environment. And then also to, I would say that it is being in doing like doing things you want them to mimic the other part, the environment have art work and different things in the environment. Like if the child comes to you and this is my favorite one to use and she has on rain boots, night jacket and pajama pants and you're going to the grocery store, who is she going to harm?
Laura: Oh my gosh.
Sierra: nobody, nobody, she's fully clothed. So let her rare that just let them be in their creativity because they're trying to express themselves. Mama want to be a firefighter. I want to be a princess and a unicorn all at one time, let them just be that and don't and I would say try not to, what do you like if you're going to somewhere that's required of, you know, business attire and they need to be, you know, in a specific uniform, do that.
However, it's like, let them just simply just be, if you're going to a friend's house and they want to warehouse shoes, whatever it is. Let them just express themselves, let them dress themselves and just go and be. And also to like my daughter, she plays with lots of legos actually have a chalkboard wall in my office space. So when she feels creative, so she's not painting on every other wall, draw on the chalkboard wall.
So it's like cultivate the environment first and then they'll just do it. They'll follow your lead by what you're doing. And they'll also see that, oh, this is my space to create. I have a table cloth, like a plastic tablecloth on my office wall and I sent her campus there whenever she will go to that, she's probably painted on the same campus like three or four times and I'll just say, hey, come to mama, let me put the paint into your palate and she can just go paint, clean it up when you're done and you can do it again tomorrow.
And whenever she's feeling it, she'll tell me, mom, I'm about to go paint. I just let it go paint mom. I want to create a car. I let her just create a car and it's like what she's seen me do these things first or she's like I said with the lipstick earlier, she gather creative with that too. And I'm like, yeah, I gotta go hide.
Laura: well, at least our good lipsticks, you know, those things can be expensive sometimes like.
Sierra: we can get one of them, you know.
Laura: we're not about that kind of creativity and we're not about the smashing lipstick creativity. I mean, I love this too. I think that's one thing that can be, what I'm hearing you saying is not being afraid of their creative spirit of nurturing it, creating room for it in your day and supporting them to figure out how they can do that within the bounds of what's okay.
Like you you know, have we're not drawing on all of the walls were going to draw on this wall, that's a chalkboard wall, that's for you to draw on. You know, we're not going to paint on this surface, we're going to paint on this service. So giving her good boundaries in which she can channel, you know, her creativity more freely.
I would imagine to that having access to materials is good, right? So access that she can get herself and feel independent with the ones that need a little bit more support or supervision. Those ones are up high or something.
Sierra: Yes. And then like this only in my office space that she can get her creative stuff. Just because I know like if I leave it anywhere else, I will find paint on the walls, like, like like when she was three, she painted a mural of her hands on the wall, we walked in and there was handprints everywhere and I was like what? And that taught me, you don't have a good boundary because you have the art stuff just where she can reach.
So not only are you teaching them boundaries, you also teaching them to allow their creativity to flow from them. If she, you know, she knows where the things are. However, she still has to come to me and say, hey mom, I'm ready to go paint and then I can get them down for her and versus you know what I learned, You just can't have free access to it.
Just it. But she has legos in her room that she can play with. She has puzzles that there's a lot of different things that besides pain because I like, okay, but there's lots of different things you can use this legos. There's building box. There are like these don't really know what you call them, but they're like star shaped and you put them together. They're usually like very vibrant colors.
Laura: Oh yeah, these like little kind of like, I don't know, brain flakes kind of thing.
Sierra: Yeah.
Laura: That you can stick together.
Sierra: Yes. There's all different types writing. That's the way to be creative. They can have a journal right into draw in sidewalk chalk if you don't want it done in the house. There's so much that they can do saying the kinetic sand.
Laura: I live in that story that you told about your daughter at the handprints, you fully situated the responsibility for that moment on yourself. I love that about like because that's a hard moment. Like it was like, oh, that's on me. You know, I one day I walked into my daughter when she was three, she's eight now, so it's like a long time ago. But she, during her rest time she didn't nap anymore.
But she still intend to her room for quiet time. She got into the bathroom and gotten a jar of raw shea butter and you know, like raw shea butter, like that doesn't smell the best, you know, But it's a lot. She's got this jar of raw shea butter and had rubbed it all over herself and all over her floor. We had hardwood floor.
So I mean just conditioned the floor all over her furniture and we walked in and we're like, well that's on us, the shea butter on the counter, We should have put it up higher. Like, you know, like that's not her fault. Like they don't have any impulse control. You know?
Sierra: Like, I mean, I had, I want to use it. Everything else can use a little shape.
Laura: But yeah, one thing too that I liked to is that you highlighted at how the way that you situate these boundaries is that you are her partner in creativity. You're not a block, You're not a stopper, you're not a, you know, a thing where you're blocking it from happening, that she knows you're her partner in it, that she can come to you when she wants to paint and you're right there with her.
Yeah, I want you to be able to paint too. She knows that you're on her side, they're going to make it work with her. You know, maybe if she wants to paint you know in a certain way or you know that you will help her figure out.
Sierra: She'll ask mama, do you think it's beautiful every time is? Yes, I think that's beautiful. What you know, what are you trying to create? I don't judge it. If you think that those three colours go together, then they go together. I'm really trying my best like in the beginning I was I would be honest, it hasn't always been this way.
I was looking at the scribbles and being like that, it's not that and I realized the impact that it had and then now I for her birthday, her birthday is coming up, I'm gonna her old paintings and her new things. I'm gonna frame them and put them in her room so that she can see like this is what you have created, but also have her age on the back for later on.
So she can see like this is what you painted when he was three and she can make the judgment that she wants to make about her own work. However, at this age, I'm like, I just want her to see, like, continue to create, just continue to create. So there is a constant reminder. So when she becomes an adult continue to create that is my hope that she will continue to create.
Laura: We put our kids artwork on a wall, it tells them something like it communicates to them that this is important. What you just did was important, you know, I love that I have a client whose high school, best friend, her parents do let her draw on all of her walls from childhood and when she moved away from college, they like, took pictures of it all because like, by the time she and she was going to an art school, but and by the time she was 18, when was moving out, they were going to repaint it all of her walls were covered and like, what a beautiful gift for a creative kid, you know, like it was her room and it was ok, like, that was okay with her parents.
Like that's not, I don't know if I can handle that, you know, but I think what a beautiful gift that child's parents saw in her, something that like Doctor that need to do it and cultivated a safe place for her to be able to do it, what an incredibly, like, an incredible thing to be seen in that way by your parents. It's a beautiful thing, right?
Sierra: And I think it's more so, like you were saying, like, they partnered with her and let her do that. I can see how that's a little different as a little child though, just like, I don't know if that's gonna change over to you can't do this in other people's homes or other people.
Laura: Yeah. I think it takes careful holding of those boundaries, you know, really clarifying having a very clear boundary. Yeah. I don't know how it would work for all families, but it worked for there's I mean yeah.
Sierra: I love to draw in my room, Oh it came out.
Laura: My five year old when she goes in for her rest time. She doesn't like to get out of her bed. She likes to stay in her bed, but she plays in it before she had her crib up and we didn't know it was happening, but she has these little murals in the like that she's drawn on the wall between the bars of her crib.
And so when we took her crib away, we saw them there and they're like, you know, they're just like, I couldn't bear, they were just pencils easy to wash off. You know, I couldn't bear to do it. Like there's all represented all this time that she spent in her bed creating, I couldn't bear to wash them away. They're still there even though she's in her big girl bed.
Sierra: Because it's different because like I said, it's their heart wall at that time, they were experiencing this or they were feeling this and they were just like, well, I think I want this to be on the outside you do and it's just like for you to like even to act like sometimes I asked my daughter like what is this about?
And then she was explained to me what it is and the story usually doesn't go with the picture, but I'm like, okay, whatever this is what this is about. And even though they don't match to me, I'm like in her mind, that's what that's about. And like for her that storytelling as well, like you created a whole story off of this picture that you drew.
Laura: Yeah.
Sierra: beautiful. Like it's a purpose in what you just drew.
Laura: I love that you keep saying this that they have put their heart on the page and then they're giving it to you. I think it's really important that we understand that when a child gives us that they are giving us a piece of them a little picture into their mind and into their heart and it's our job to accept it.
Like unconditionally with no judgment to ask them about it. You know? So like some of the things you can do in a child gives you a piece of art or saying things like you know, tell me about this and oh wow, I see you, we're really careful with these colors. Will you tell me about why you chose them? You know, really kind of lets them feel seen and heard and then valued. You know.
Sierra: They'll bring you another one, they'll bring them now.
Laura: They will.
Sierra: Be celebrating it. They're like my daughter, she have a card on my door now because she's like, hey mom and I asked her about it and so she's like, hey, I want to make dad one and like okay, so I think people know that piece of paper into like once you celebrate it and they will see, don't want to just give it to everybody because she told, she's like, hey, for my birthday, I want to make cars for everyone and I'm just like, okay, it's your birthday. However okay.
Laura: But look at the generous heart that you're cultivating through our, I love that I really appreciate this conversation that we've been having about the gifts of creativity, like what it can offer us as parents as such on our journey of releasing perfectionism, releasing self judgment and also for our kids, thank you Sierra so much for this conversation. I really appreciate it. Okay, so tell us where parents can find you because I've watched a few of your paint along videos on instagram and I want everybody to come and see you.
Sierra: So on Instagram I actually just created a new artist page is going to be cashiered to you and if you go to my regular Instagram sierra_cashier and you'll just see the link to get to the new page, haven't uploaded things there yet. However, I'm excited about putting things, there are just simply creativity. Um I also have a website and you can see some of my old paintings and new paintings because there's some things from Instagram there and it's the seracashier.com.
Laura: Just, we'll have all of those links in the show notes for the podcast episode. I hope everybody goes and finds you.
Sierra: Yes, I'm excited.
Laura: Yeah, thank you so much for having this conversation with me. It was fun to talk with you about this. Thank you for, for holding that space for us.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review. That really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out and definitely go follow me on Instagram @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes, look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family and plus, I share a lot of other really great resources there too.
All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this.