Last week I wrote about Creative Compulsion and how it runs in my family. I followed a thread from my parents to my granddaughters.

Molly questioned, “What about Noah and Oliver? You left them out.”

It was then that I realized my thread motif may have been a little vague, thin or unrecognizable. So, being an equal opportunity grandmother and being exceptionally proud of my two grand-boys, I will continue my discussion of Compulsive Creativity.

Noah first, which is fitting as he is my oldest grandchild. You may remember that he is oldest daughter Traci’s son, the one who has recently gone off to the wilds of LSU. Noah is a typical boy in most ways, played soccer, then tennis, excelled in the Dallas TAG high school. But his creativity surfaced years ago as evidenced in this picture Traci recently unearthed. It’s a panda Pez dispenser lest you’re thinking something more scatological.

His more practical creativity (in addition to a wicked sense of humor) surfaced a few years later in a competition called Destination Imagination which involved out-of-the-box, creative problem-solving and improvisation. His team worked together for ten years, won multiple local and regional events, traveled to the Globals Finals several times, then last year went to the global competition and brought home first place in the Instant Challenge. Killer Creativity!

So if I’m following a thread here, it’s the Mitchell performance gene at work (Traci was a team coach, after all.) That side of the family could form a stand-up improv troupe to rival Second City.

Newest to our group, Erin’s son Oliver became part of her life (and ours) when she married Kate in 2020. Also a typical boy, Oliver loves his dogs and video games. But our first introduction to him came that first Christmas when Legos were pretty much his only request! His creativity (from my point of view) is evident in the hours he spends building on his own and with mom, Kate. Since that first Christmas he has also embraced more advanced construction kits with motors. During my last Christmas in Salem, OR, he tore into a kit I had brought and started building immediately. (You can see us working on a motor-less gingerbread train above.) Maybe he’ll be the engineer my Dad always wanted!

I suppose everyone has a creativity gene just waiting to be let loose and explored. That’s why it’s important to expose kids to lots of different past times from music to art to science and even comedy. You never know when you’ll have the next Einstein or Seinfeld on your hands.

And make sure to help them cultivate a creative talent when it starts to peek out at you. Yes, creativity can be messy, time consuming, even expensive and it might require you driving here and there, going to recitals or art shows or one competition after another. Maybe it means you get them into a group of robot builders or give them cooking lessons. You can do it. Its kinda your job, if you’re a parent, to help your kid figure out what they’re good at. You don’t have to do it all at once. These things take time. But watch for it. You’ll see the signs. They may be obvious, but maybe you’ll have to do a little sleuthing.

At any rate, the reward is worth it. We could use another Einstein or Seinfeld. Or a Maya Angelou or Pablo Picasso. Or a Frank Lloyd Wright or Julia Child. Or a Noah Brown or Oliver Crain.