The One Thing To Encouraging Creativity In Your Kids

"The Ballerinas" -- A drawing by MerriGrace

I had this thought this evening that I am enjoying the golden age of Sabo creativity. Over the past four weeks as our older kids who are in college spent time at home our house was cozily full of people, doubled as a 24-hour restaurant, featured a virtual parking lot full of cars and was a hub of creativity. Music, art, stand-up comedy, cooking, you name it. There was simply this amazing confluence of creativity in a variety of expressions.

Evie and MerriGrace were painting and drawing; Taylor and Ethan, both self-taught guitar players, were writing and singing songs; Claire and Madeline were playing instruments such as guitars, keyboards and the cajon and singing and Claire was cooking ... Brenton is an artist with his coffee-making and a gifted Bible teacher. I could go on down the list. Abram's Legos creations are remarkable. Judah makes us laugh with his creative use of language and expressions and so does Seth.

I was thinking about this after MerriGrace showed me one of her pencil drawings. I think it's beautiful and I was wondering what, if anything, has sparked all this originality in various mediums. Are they born with it? Is it something genetic. I like to joke that I was born without the left side of my brain, the part that's for math and science. I'm more the writing type, I guess, so maybe that's where some of this stems from. Julie is a musician; she sings and plays the piano so maybe that's where the kids get their music chops because it certainly isn't me.

Who knows. It's probably a combination of things and it will be interesting if somewhere in the long line of Sabo kids we get an engineer. Or a mathematician. Maybe even a rocket scientist.

As I was kicking around these things the thought struck me that maybe it's just the way they've played together that has led to these creative giftings. I haven't done any research on it and haven't made this a thesis for my Ph.D. But something I know about a large family and how the kids play together is that it's very creative and encourages creativity.

One of their favorite games over the years has been "Town." They all dress up -- even the older kids get in on the action -- and they each have a role in the town. There's doctors, lawyers, cops, bad guys, teachers, storekeepers, bankers and everything else that makes up a town. They make business signs and currency and dress up in the various costumes and come up with laws and regulations that any town has to have to function. It's really pretty amazing and requires a good level of cooperation. They learn to work together and to be a part of a team. They come up with town story lines and elaborate plots ... and they have a blast. The games of "Town" have lasted all day sometimes. Cousins and friends have gotten involved.

Who knows. Maybe it has something to do with it. Maybe more parents should encourage their kids to play together and see what comes out of it. Then again, it's possible our kids are gravitating
to their God-given talents in art, music and cooking. Whatever the case, I know that I love to hear the music, see the art and watch them fully engage in the creative process. Truly, I'm a blessed father.

Cooking Dinner For Multitudes. Or Dinner Every Night At The Sabos.

We get a ton of questions about what it's like at meal time around here. I'm not sure if people are considering inviting us over for dinner and weighing the costs -- literally -- or if they're just curious. As you can see from the above photo, basically it's a box full of veggies every night with several pounds of barbecued beef.* When you are cooking for 16, which I believe is the total number in the Sabo household as of today, it's pretty much all about volume. But technically with a few older kids away at school we're typically only cooking for 13. Piece of cake, eh?

When it comes to preparing meals, I start out by taking all the seats out of our 15-passenger van and then backing it up to the loading dock of the nearest nearby grocery store.** The non-perishables, to include the pastas, cereals, flours and baking products, canned goods and other edible products, are in large boxes on wood pallets that are stuffed into the van with a forklift. We buy the milk in multiple-gallon containers similar in size to small vats. A small vat of milk usually gets us through a few days.

Perhaps by now you are thinking, `Surely he can't be serious!' You would be right. There's no small vats of milk, no forklifts packing our Chevy full of non-perishables and certainly no backing up to loading docks (although that seems to me a pretty good idea now that I think about it). I will say I spend a lot of time at the grocery store. They know me well there. And when it comes to cooking, consider that we have a lot of little kids with little tummies. Except maybe Seth. The other night we got some pizzas (4 larges) and I cut several slices in half for the younger set. Seth, however, got a whole piece. He likes his pizza.

The other night for dinner was clam chowder and fish sticks. The biggest pot in the house was used for the chowder -- we had some leftovers -- and a box of 48 fish sticks was disposed of by the hordes of ravenous Sabos. Is that the way it is in your house?

So taking into account smaller tummies, in theory we're cooking for more like 9 or 10. See! That's not so bad. Now, things change when all the kids are home from school. Those aren't little tummies. Essentially there's foraging occurring in the Sabo kitchen for a solid 18-20 hours a day when everyone is home so it's vital to stock up come Christmas or Thanksgiving. You know how people totally stock up in Virginia when there's word of a hurricane that's heading our way? That's how we treat the times when the older kids return from college. It's hurricane grubbing season.

As for the cost of feeding everyone, well, that's privileged information. Let me put it this way: We have a smaller mortgage. As for how we feed everyone, I have a simple answer: The Lord provides. God has been so good to us over the years in so many ways. We have been blessed abundantly in children, in provision of all our physical needs, in friendships, in memories and so many other ways. It's been a true feast.


*Just kidding! This box full of veggies pictured above was brought to us by friends and we've got big plans for it over the course of several, even multiple, meals that have already begun. The barbecued beef, however, was very, very tasty!

**Just kidding! I don't actually take ALL of the seats out of the van before backing it up to the nearest nearby grocery store.