Imagination is a Muscle

I don't care what anyone says...I think the imagination is like a muscle: if you don't exercise it regularly, it will at the very least atrophy, if not disappear altogether. (Okay, so unused muscles don't actually disappear, but you grok my meaning, right?)

It actually makes me sad to think that if TheMister or I ever asked TheChild to tell us a story that doesn't already exist, she most likely couldn't come up with one. She might try to tell us a story that comes from one of her many cartoons. I think that might actually be the most likely source for her, since her contributions to conversation are often something she found funny in a cartoon, which usually turns out to be not nearly as amusing in the retelling of it as it was to her at the time.

A couple of months ago, she actually used a cardboard box in which something had been delivered to the house to make herself a fort. I was so excited that she was finally using her imagination for something! Then I realized she got the idea out of a book she was reading.

Every time she comes to TheMister or I and says, "I'm bored!", it bothers the hell out of me.

At one point I told her, "It is our job to buy you toys to play with. It is your job to figure out how to amuse yourself with said toys. "

At another point I said, "We are not a cruise line or a summer camp. We don't have every hour of every day scheduled out with activities we will be doing to amuse you. We shouldn't have to entertain you ALL THE TIME. Sometimes we have to actually get stuff done and you'll have to amuse yourself for a while."

I don't know if it's because I spent so much time reading as a kid, or because I just naturally figured out how to entertain myself for long periods of time in my head. Someone could name an object - any object - and I could tell you at least a few ways to entertain yourself with it. If you gave me a stick, I'd say you could pretend it was a sword and fence with it, write in the dirt with it, or collect bugs by getting them to crawl on it. If you had paper and a pencil, you could draw something, write a story or your own Mad Libs or fold the paper into paper airplanes or origami.

I think that all of TheChild's tv watching and video game playing have actually made her imagination shrivel up like a raisin. (There is actually a study that proves that more than 2 hours of tv-watching a day actually makes kids lose IQ points. There's truth to the nickname "idiot box".

This article basically proves my point: http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=108363

This is a great source of information about the effect of TV on children: http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/family/tv_affects_child.html#

Study about kids' TV and computer habits: http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/parenting/10/28/tv.kids/

Study about kids and language development: http://www.switched.com/2009/06/02/tv-hinders-kids-language-development-study-says/

So...what do you think? Does imagination fall into the "use it or lose it" category?