Many people assume that exhibiting thoughts and opinions of one's own is an inborn talent that their kids either do have or do not have. Just as all children are not equally intelligent, all children are not equally able to express themselves. We know that it is a key to success in nearly everything we do. To impart originality of thoughts in your kids we should encourage them to be creative.

It is believed we have fundamentally changed the experience of childhood in such a way that it impairs creative development. Toy and entertainment companies feed kids with an endless stream of prefab characters, images, props, and plot-lines that allow children to put their imaginations to rest which helps children build their thoughts. Children no longer need to imagine a stick is a sword in a game or story they've imagined; they can play Star Wars with a specific light-sober in costumes designed for the specific role they are playing.

Here are some ideas for fostering creativity in your kids:

1. Provide the resources they need for creative expression. The key resource here is time. Kids need a lot of time for unstructured, child-directed, imaginative play – unencumbered by adult direction, and that doesn't depend on a lot of commercial stuff.

Space is also a resource your kids need. Unless you don't mind creative messes everywhere, give them a specific place where they can make a mess, like a room in your attic for dress-up, a place in the garage for painting, or a corner in your family room for Legos.

Next time someone asks for a gift suggestion for your kids, ask for things like art supplies, cheap cameras, costume components, and building materials. Put these in easy-to-deal-with bins that your kids can manage.

2. Make your home a Petri dish for creativity. In addition to creative spaces, you need to foster a creative atmosphere.

Solicit a high volume of different ideas, but resist the urge to evaluate the ideas your kids come up with. At dinnertime, for example, you could brainstorm activities for the upcoming weekend, encouraging the kids to come up with things they've never done before. Don't point out which ideas aren't possible, and don't decide which ideas are best. The focus of creative activities should be on the process: generating (vs. evaluating) new ideas.

Encourage kids to make mistakes and fail. Yes, fail – kids who are afraid of failure and judgment will curb their creative thought. Share the mistakes you've made recently, so they get the idea that it is okay to flub up. Laughing at yourself when you blow it is a happiness habit.

Celebrate innovation and creativity. Cover your walls with art and other evidence of creative expression. Tell your kids all about your favorite artists, musicians, and scientists. Share your passion for architecture or photography or that new band you want to listen to all the time. Embrace new technologies like Twitter so your kids grow to find change exciting, not overwhelming or intimidating.

3. Allow kids the freedom and autonomy to explore their ideas and do what they want. Don't be so bossy. (If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black, who knows what is.) Stop living in fear that they are going to be kidnapped or not get into a great college. Statistically, the odds are very low that they'll be kidnapped, and I'm here to tell you that I'm not a happier person because I went to an Ivy League school.

External constraints—making them color within the lines, so to speak—can reduce flexibility in thinking. In one study, just demonstrating how to put together a model reduced the creative ways that kids accomplished this task.

4. Encourage children to read for pleasure and participate in the arts. Limit TV and other screen time to make room for creative activities like rehearsing a play, learning to draw, reading every book written by a favorite author.

5. Allow children to express "divergent thought." Let them disagree with you. Encourage them to find more than one route to a solution, and more than one solution to a problem. When they successfully solve a problem, ask them to solve it again but to find a new way to do it (same solution, different route). Then ask them to come up with more solutions to the same problem.

6. Allow children to develop mastery of creative activities that they are intrinsically motivated to do, rather than trying to motivate them with rewards and incentives. Instead of rewarding a child for practicing the piano, for example, allow her to do something she enjoys more – maybe sit at her desk and draw or take a science class.

7. Ask open-ended questions. Rather than automatically giving answers to the questions your child raises, help him think critically by asking questions in return: "What ideas do you have? What do you think is happening here?" Respect his responses whether you view them as correct or not. You could say, "That is interesting. Tell me why you think that." Use phrases like "I am interested to hear your thoughts about this." "How would you solve this problem?" "Where do you think we might find more information to solve this problem?"

Thus, taking time to allow your child to navigate problems is integral to developing your child's thinking skills in the long run.