Creative children?

My dd sees beauty in maps and pamphlets at hotels, on ferries, at tourist areas, she finds joy in the different shapes of rocks or shells, every paper she touched is important, and every thing she finds is some scientific discovery. She isn't exactly creative, but she's inquisitive and interested in the world around her, and she finds a way to relate everything to science or math.

She turned 7 last week and we decided to buy her a school desk for her birthday. Her room is small and I ended up picking a desk without a hutch or drawer, it has two small cubbies. The description said might not be good for a pack rat. Well - that is what I have! I secretly go into her room to recycle maps and brochures. Little things mysteriously disappear. So, I've cleared two shelves in her closet for nicknacks. And I bought her a magnetic shelf for above her desk for her things - and so she can attach papers and photos. And I bought her a white board for her wall that is also magnetic, which also houses some papers. I'm so not a pack rat so I do everything to try to stay organized. It helps. But I still picture her on hoarded - buried alive too!! Ha ha!

GIve him a well defined space for his crafting collections. It could be a single sterite shoe box or a set of their drawers~ whatever size you have tolerance for. He can keep all those found crafting treasures there and once the space is too full to close he will need to reconsider some of his collection to par it down.

But I also found the kids mirrored my tendency to "save the scraps" and the more often they were allowed to have my larger scraps, full sheets of paper, complete pipe cleaners, etc for their creations the less often they seemed to be compelled to hoard things so small I felt they were trash.

You just described my 7-year-old DD! She has been hoarding small scraps and items for quite some time now. When she first started hoarding scraps and small items, I'd throw them away thinking nothing of it. But she knew...somehow, she knew every time I tossed a wrapper or a pipe cleaner or a straw and it always resulted in a meltdown and frustration with me. She is highly sensitive and I didn't realize just how hurtful (and damaging) it was for me to toss everything.

She resorted to hiding things from me and that's when I re-assessed my reaction and realized I was in the wrong. I didn't want to make her feel as though her special tidbits weren't valued nor did I want her hiding things from me for fear that I'd come along and annihilate her collection. So, I compromised and bought her a treasure chest bin with a lid and I gave it to her as a safe place for all her things. She can put whatever she wants in it and it's entirely off limits to me. I don't go in it whatsoever. To this day, I don't know what's in it but I can assure you, it's all top secret, super special stuff with meaning.

Now, I should add that DD has been in play therapy for over a year now to help with her childhood anxiety and OCD. I have brought this up to her therapist and she attributes it to DD correlating these "things" with memories and this is her way of holding on to special moments. After looking back at the items, I have to agree. She'll save the napkin from a restaurant we went to on a fun family day, she'll save the wrapper from a gift her grandma gave her, she'll save the luggage tags from our cruises, she'll save the glitter that chipped from her nails because her Titi painted them, she'll save the name tag she wore on her first day of school, etc. For a while there, DD was collecting empty toilet paper rolls and that startled me. But then, she would turn around and use them to create little animals to play with or she would turn them into gifts for a loved one. For Father's Day this year, DH received a musical instrument made from a toilet paper roll.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I totally relate with you. I don't have many answers but I do have empathy.

ETA:  DD's therapist didn't seem too concerned about this but she did say we need to set limits.  Once her treasure bin is full, she has to remove something before adding to it.  She also has areas in her room where she can keep things but spilling out on to the hallway bookshelf is no longer acceptable and she understands that now.

My collector is now 35. He would have bottle caps, cheese wrappers that were all part of his collection. I never found a way for him to get a handle on it. He is now a well adjusted adult who only collects woods because he has taken up a hobby of building furniture, and he is quite good at it. He still has a treasure chest of items that he saved from his childhood, but it is only one box and the plastic bottle caps and cheese wrappers didn't make the cut.



Building Lifelong Readers

My DD went through a phase where she was saving wrappers and packaging from everything. I believe she intended to make things with them, but never did. Eventually I threw it all out. (These days she's making things out of Sculpey and has gotten pretty good!)

My 5 yo kid is very creative too, and I have the stacks and stacks of "artwork" and "books" she has made to prove it, LOL. She also somehow knows when I have decided to weed through her stacks of stuff and gets very upset when I have tossed or recycled something that to me just looks like a random piece of paper with crayon on it, so I've stopped doing that. Instead I collect it all up for a while and go through it with her asking if it's something to save or something that can go. After a while she's ready to let go of some of it. She's at a point now where some of her stuff is actually quite good and those things I want to keep. At some point I want to put up a gallery wall in my studio where I can rotate some of her artwork in and out.

The post about the kid who collects TP rolls made me laugh because my kid doesn't want me to throw those away either! I have a whole (deep!) drawer in her bathroom that is FULL of them. I'm not sure what she's keeping them for, but every once in a while she pulls some out and makes something out of them. Once the drawer is full, the rest get recycled. Last Christmas, she made us "gifts" out of them, which she wrapped with scraps of paper and everything.  

Your son would enjoy Camp Invention where kids are encouraged to explore and create. Lots of fun. Look them up to find a session near you.

I have a little girl in my class that comes in from recess every single day with a trove little trash-- I mean treasures. Bottle caps, little rocks, pieces of yarn, barrettes that are broken in half, rhinestones that have fallen off kids' clothing and shoes… all I can ever think is… Her for mother!

I wonder if, when you come to get rid of stuff, you sell it to him as a part of it's journey to be transformed into something else. That going to the recycling plant means it will be used to make electricity or new paper. I won't mention landfill at this point.

Perhaps knowing that stuff lives on (even if in another form) will help him to keep to a set limit.

we set limits - space limits - when the space allocated for treasures or artwork or saved stuff is full, she has to go through it and make space.

I actively work with my children on how to go through their belongings periodically and decide what to keep and what to pass on and what to trash. I also show by example. We always have a Goodwill box - and we empty it every week or two and deliver to Goodwill.

I have a soon to be 7 year old who is just like this!!! I was using my die cutter and he saw the scraps as something he could use... and put them aside. He keeps empty paper towel and toilet paper rolls. He collects "cool" rocks and stones wherever we go...you know because he can "make" something out of them. He's also a container junky. Boxes, empty jars, party bags you name it need to be kept to "store" things in. He's autistic so there is no reasoning with him on when to get rid of things. Everything needs to be kept..EVERYTHING! It's a battle we deal with every single day. If I get rid of stuff while he's not home, he will eventually ask for it and the meltdown that lasts for days ensues. I really wish I knew how to deal with this behavior. He's newly diagnosed with Autism...as in less than a week, so we don't have any support services in place yet. He used to dig in the garbage to see if I threw anything away he could use, but thankfully that behavior has stopped. If I don't get help with this, he will definitely end up on an episode of hoarders some day.

We do do that with some success. For instance "You have 3 boxes here you can only keep 2 which one is going in the trash?" He will always pick one, without much issue...but as soon as another box comes in the house he will sneak it up to his room to replace the one we threw out. So we are back to the battle again. IF we see something coming in that we KNOW he will want to keep we will either start out with either "You can't keep this box or container" or if it's a really nice thing that he will never agree on throwing out we do "If you keep this jar, another jar has to go" He is still very sneaky though and will grab stuff out of the recycling bin before we had a chance to hide it. He also LOVES rocks so he will fill up his pockets with rocks when we are out playing and I will find them in a container somewhere. Once he's found a home for it, it's very difficult for him to let go of it.  Recently we had talked him into throwing out a few boxes he wanted. We took them right out to the recycling container. The truck hadn't come that week and I didn't realize that (we live in a community with communal trash and recycle containers) and I sent his older brother out to throw something away. He went with him, saw the boxes still there and brought them back in without me knowing...I found them back up in his room. It's one of the many daily struggle we have and I would love to find a better solution.

I agree it's much harder once your child has decided they want to keep something. I do think involving them helps versus cleaning them out while they're at school.

LOL. I'm the one with the drawer of empty TP rolls, and quite honestly if space was at a premium in our house I probably would have locked that one down a little harder.   But since the space is not an issue here (the drawer is in her bathroom and otherwise totally empty) and she actually does make stuff with them, I let her keep some as long as they are confined to that one drawer.