Reading · Raising Good Humans with Dr. Aliza Pressman

Albert Einstein once famously said, “”Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” It sounds like something you’d hear at a convocation ceremony, or maybe a Hallmark greeting card, but like so many things we take for granted, it turns out that imagination really does matter.

This week, I spoke with Dr. Cassandra Vieten, director of science programs at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego and author of the forthcoming book Imagine That: How You Can Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live Through the Science of Imagination. She has spent decades studying what imagination actually is, what it does for us, and — most urgently for parents — how we tend to train it out of ourselves and our kids right at the moment they need it most. Our conversation focused on the magical inner lives of children, and how we’ve lost touch with our own.

It sounds obvious, but even among scientists, the definition of imagination is surprisingly contested. Dr. Vieten and her team reviewed all the published literature they could find and landed on this:

“Imagination is the mind’s ability to simulate reality and also to transcend it.”

Both halves of that definition matter. Simulating reality (i.e picturing the house you live in, imagining what’s around the corner, predicting what someone else might be feeling) is what gave early humans a survival edge. Before we could simulate, we couldn’t anticipate. But transcending reality (i.e. imagining a spaceship landing on your lawn, or an automated machine that styles your hair) is what allows us to innovate, create, and find our way forward. What science tells us is that imagination isn’t a luxury. It’s infrastructure. Memory uses it. Planning uses it. Empathy uses it. Decision-making uses it. It is, as Dr. Vieten puts it, “a fundamental feature of cognition.”

It’s also important to distinguish imagination from creativity. Imagination is the field of all possibilities, including the impossible ones. Creativity is what happens when you bring something back from that field and make it real. We praise creativity a lot. Imagination gets less attention because it can look like daydreaming, like wasted time, like nothing. But that mind-wandering state is exactly where the raw material comes from. Spending time in the impossible space first can lead to creative inventions in the real world.

The irony is that we celebrate imagination in our young children, and then, somewhere around adolescence, we quietly start shutting it down. We call it “getting serious.” We call it “being realistic.” We stop asking them to pretend and start asking them to perform. But like any skill, it atrophies without practice. Many parents I’ve worked with over the years feel genuinely uncertain about how to engage in imaginative play with their kids. It’s a muscle that stops getting used. We’ve grown rusty, awkward, and maybe too absorbed in our own realities to remember how to play. But underneath that adult exterior, the pathways to imagine were already laid down in childhood. They’re not gone, but they just need a little reactivation.

And surprisingly (I love it when this happens) practicing imagination benefits you as much as it benefits your child. You get a richer relationship, a child who opens up more, and, as a bonus, you get to spend a little more time in a part of your mind that deserves more real estate. Remember how good it once felt to look out a window and play make believe?

So, where do we begin on our imagination journey?

5 Ways to grow imagination at home

Ask better questions. Instead of “How was your day?” try: “If there was a villain at your school, who do you think it would be?” or “If today were an animal, what would it be and why?” Kids have a naturally more porous boundary between fantasy and reality, and these prompts help them to access information where they are. They often tell you far more truth about their inner lives through metaphor than through direct questioning.
Try imaginary time. Set aside half an hour (maybe after dinner) where screens go away and you build a world together. You live in a castle. Who are you? What happens next? It doesn’t need materials or a plan. Dr. Vieten points out that this is essentially a DIY version of what Dungeons & Dragons has been doing for decades (and if you didn’t know that women in their 50s are having a full D&D revival, now you do).
Use “what else could you have done?” as a discipline tool. When a child acts out, instead of only focusing on consequences, ask them to write down three other possible responses they could have had in that moment. At first they’ll say there weren’t any. That’s the point. Stretching to find the three forces their mind to generate new possibilities (what imagination actually is).
Meet them in their fandom. If your child is obsessed with Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or any universe you know nothing about, that’s not a barrier, but instead your new doorway. Ask genuine questions: Who would be your Sam? Who’s the wizard in your life? This is essentially what “geek therapists” (yes, that’s a real certification I learned about) do with kids who won’t open up any other way. They enter through the imaginative world the child already lives in and find all kinds of real things waiting there. Watching or reading the content your child loves is also a way to find real connection. Don’t be the grownup who easily dismisses the joy in a kids series. Force yourself and you may be surprised.
Redirect screen use from slot machine to exploration. The research is mixed on screens and imagination, but the distinction Dr. Vieten draws is between passive scrolling (dopamine hit, dopamine hit) and using a phone or computer with curiosity and intention. For example, ask your kid to find three different ways to build a paper airplane, or to find a poem online that describes how they feel right now, and then share it with each other. Yes, they’ll roll their eyes, but it is working to bridge technology to imagination in a real-world way.

In my obsession with temperament (stay tuned for exciting news on that front in 2027!) I have to think about imagination in the context of more sensitive or anxious children. Dr. Vieten explained that anxious people often have vivid imaginations, and vice versa: the brain does not cleanly distinguish between what is imagined and what is real. If you let yourself fully imagine a terrible day (traffic, an argument, bad news) your cortisol will actually rise. Your nervous system is already responding to something that hasn’t happened. This is why unmanaged imagination feeds anxiety. But it also means that imagination can be deliberately redirected. Dr. Vieten talks about what she calls the “reality tapestry” where two threads are woven together to form our experience. One is what’s actually happening. The other is what we imagine about it. Mindfulness doesn’t ask us to cut the imagination thread; it asks us to notice which thread is which, and then to make intentional choices about how we want to imagine. Assuming good intentions instead of bad ones. Offering benefit of the doubt instead of suspicion. This is using active imagination to change your physiology and your relationships.

There is also room for neurodivergence in the way we imagine. Some people are vivid, visual imaginers. Others (called “aphantasic”) have no visual images in their minds at all. Some kids are embodied imaginers, others are storytellers. When you notice what kind of imaginer your child is, you can play to their strengths and gently stretch them toward the others. An embodied kid who always acts things out? Ask them to tell you the story of what they just acted. A storyteller who shuts down when you say “let’s pretend”? Use narration to get into it first.

The conditions for imagination to flourish, according to Dr. Vieten, come down to three things:

Value it. Make it clear, out loud and by example, that imagination matters. It’s not frivolous. It’s not a waste of time. Ask follow-up questions about the pretend worlds your kids build. Let them know you take those worlds seriously.
Create internal conditions. Spaciousness. Quiet. Unscheduled time. The things most parents feel they can’t afford are exactly what imagination requires. Your best ideas have never come during a packed agenda. Neither will your child’s.
Create external conditions. For some, it’s color and texture and whimsy in the environment. For others it’s order and space. Notice what works for your particular kid. Then notice what works for you.

There is something quietly countercultural about taking imagination seriously in a productivity-obsessed world. Let’s try it and see what happens.

Your Kid’s Imagination Isn’t a Phase. It’s Everything.

Comments