Encouraging Reading & Language- Rushing Left Brain Development?

Early Learning Early Learning General Discussions
1

I would like some clarification regarding left brain/right brain education.

I understand that LM & LR are primarily right brain activities (with the exception of the multisensory LR lessons), and TW is right brain too.

If YBCR is multisensory, then is that mostly left brain learning? Is it strengthening the left brain and therefore encouraging early “bridging?” As language develops, the left brain takes over more, then should we not encourage language and reading?

I think I’m confused. I thought YBCR & Little Pim were good programs, but I don’t want to rush my children’s left brain development. According to TW, ideally kids should stay dominant in the right brain as long as possible?

Please enlighten me! I think I’m missing something.

This was the web page I amreferring to.

https://sites.google.com/site/tweedlewinkmalaysia/faqs

TWEEDLEWINK—Children who are taught Right Brain Education from the earliest moments of life gain an incredible library of information that they will use throughout life. The presence of information allows more connections to develop within the brain, increasing intelligence and creative thinking power. And perhaps most importantly, because we teach parents right along with the children, the foundation of this program—unconditional love—creates a profound bond that accelerates a child’s sense of well being, pure joy and passion for life.

This is subconscious input, which a child cannot express when in the "right brain window" but will be seen as soon as the child bridges over to more left-brain thought.  This occurs at about 2-8 years of age.  Girls bridge earlier, boys bridge later.  But PLEASE do not rush to have this happen in your child.  The longer he/she is in the pre-bridging "right brain window," the stronger the subconscious library becomes.  And they happier they are when in this cycle, the stronger their access will be to the information.  Einstein himself was in the right brain window for over 8 years before he bridged to left brain thought.  And during that time, he was nurtured by his mother and given scores of science periodicals to sponge up by his uncle and father.  Once he bridged to left-brain thought, and began to speak coherently, his advanced conceptual ideas revealed that his mind had super-connections.
2

… and to continue with the questions… :rolleyes:

why wouldn’t you want to connect the right brain and left brain? why are we encouraged to develop the right brain to the exclusion of the left? don’t we want to develop both? the more connections, the better… right? if we are told that music is right brain, then what about physically playing an instrument? isn’t that the same idea as using a writing instrument, like a pencil? wouldn’t that be considered left brain? so music would be both right and left brain, right? and is that so bad, developing both?

i’m sure i’m totally off base here, but if someone could shed some light on this i’m sure we would all appreciate it!
thanks in advance and thanks for starting the thread Lilly And Owens Mom!
the doc :clown:

3

Hi Doc!

I have soken extensively to Pamela and Wennie about this exact topic, so here is what I gleaned from the conversations:

In the first 6 years of life, if you foster your child’s Right Brain, then your child has the potential to speed read, have photographic memory, tackle problems creatively (eg Math in the case of Einstein) and do on. The advantages of nurturing your right brain are endless. When the Corpus Collosum starts to form, and bridges the right and left bnrain, the left brain becomes much stronger. Without continually nurturing your Right brain, the left brain becomes dominant. Without the Right brain, we cannot have photographic memory, speed reading is challenging and you will not creatively be able to address problems et al. So, with that in mind, Pamela has put together a card of the suggested amount of Right vs left brain stimulation per age group. This is to try to get the Right Brain dominant, and keep it stimulated. I don’t have the card on me now (I am at work), but I will bring it in tomorrow and type it up for you.

She is not saying that LB stimulation is bad, but if you nurture the LB too much too early on, it dominates and the RB will not have the opportunity to develop anymore. So, when you show a child a word - if you flash it to them, one second at a time, then they will see it as an image. Then, as you show them more things related to that image, eg, apple, then red etc, the neural network becomes stronger, and that’s a function of IQ - so that’s what makes them more intelligent. So the more images you flash at them, the more they are able to build their neural network. The left brain is used to decode these images, and make sense of them. Doctors Sperry and Orenstein experimented and anaethetised the left and right sides of the brain, and saw that when anaethetising the left brain, the person was extremely creative, and could work out complicated maths, they could draw but could not talk. When aqnaethetising the RB, they could talk, but were not creative.

When you put the RB under stress, eg testing a child, their right brain shuts down. amela does not believe in testing a young child for that reason,. Hence, taking videos of your children reading and “showcasing” your children’s capabilities is really bad, as it makes the right brain feel tested and puts it under stress.

So, to answer your question, take a look at my initial review on Little Pim. I thought that it was going to be a speedy right brain program, but it was not. It is purely Left Brain. But there arte merits to the program, and I think it’s important to stimulate the left brain too.

My daughter does not talk or walk yet at all at the age of 16 months, and that’s totally ok for us (LB acitivities). We know she reads, as she points to objects that we are flashing at her. She is super alert, and blissfully happy in her fully right brain state.

I am not saying that it’s bad at ALL to talk young, and be able to do Left brain activities early. But it has been scientifically proven that if you nurture the RB as much as possible in the early years, it is extremely beneficial! (Einstein case in point).

I think Pamela’s card will shed more light as to the amount of RIght brain stimulation you should be giving your child. But, for examle, of you flash the images of a particular topic for your child, then follow it up with some live objects of the same theme - then you’re balancing the Lefvt and Right brain learning.

I hope I have shed some light and not droned on too much!

4

This is a very interesting topic and it is of particular interest to me as my daughter is severely speech and communication delayed and is possibly on the autistic spectrum. What I gathered from TW website is that her delay may mean that she may still be in her right-brain stage and, consequently, be very susceptible to the method. However, doesn’t that also mean that I need to actually put more effort into encouraging her left-brain development to ensure she catches up on what she lacks the most?

5

hi , I am new to all this so I am learning from all of you.Where can I find more info about left and right brain? I am a bit confused about what is what. Thank you all.

6

Did you have a look around the http://www.rightbrainkids.com/ website? There is also a free e-book on the subject.

7

There is also some good info here http://www.brillbaby.com/early-learning/what-is-right-brain-learning.php

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I will have to give it a more carefull reading but so far i found it very interesting what they recomend to parents or teachers about learning at the same time that your kid.
Thanks for this link.
karma to you

9

So here is the advice -
Prenatal - 100%RB Input, no LB output
Newborn (+/- 0-9mo) - 100% RB input, no LB output
Infant (+/- 10-18mo) - 90% RB input, 10% LB output
Infant toddler (+/-19-27mo) - 80%RB input, 20% LB output
Toddler (+/-28-36mo) - 70%RB input, 30% LB output
Preschool (+/-3-6 years) 60% RB input, 40% LB output

10

Thanks for the interesting post and karma to you Liliand OwensMom.Sometimes it’s good to stop rushing with learning and ask some questions.So thanks God we have people who ask questions.

11

I ve got a question on whether if we ask our baby to show us where is the nose, eyes, wave goodbye, give a kiss is it a left brain activity?What more if we ask the baby to pick the alphabetical blocks, whenever we name the alphabet.say ‘A’ and he points at ‘A’.
But if he points it out voluntarily and pronunce the word , do we consider that as a LB output? I m trying ot avoid having left brain activities with my baby. Please share your opinions on this…

12

Hi Hannah

You’re absolutely right - any form of testing is left brain!! As soon as the right brain has to make sense of something, it’s a LB activity. In the case of my daughter, she loves to point items out, so she does it out of excitement, and not cos we ask her to.

Primary RB activities include love, flash, listen according to TweedleWink

13

Thank you all for your input.I see there is no totally clear cut answer and I don’t think it’s possible to avoid LB activities 100% (at least for our family) but I will try to limit them.

Thanks for the feedback.

14

Appreciate the reply from you mothers!!
Do anyone of you allow your baby to watch TV? Or you limit the watching time?

15

Babies, well, as a baby we let him watch a few educational videos, and that’s it. Well, sometimes his mother was watching TV during the day and the baby was on the floor, and basically paid no attention to the TV. But we didn’t watch baby or kid’s TV programming.

Now, we generally don’t like him to have more than an hour of screen/video time per day (must specify “screen” because we’ve been using the iPad so much recently, as well as ed videos and such). We sometimes bend the rule for the occasional (like, once/week) movie. Toy Story most recently, just bought 2, getting ready to go to 3, our first screening of a movie on the big screen (if you don’t count the 3D feature at the local science museum, which didn’t go so well).

We still don’t get TV. Haven’t even seen whether we get broadcast reception where we live, and we don’t subscribe to cable.

16

My 13 months old girl is learning swimming everyday, does it mean it is a left brain activity? It’s 10 minutes long and she cries a lot but she is able to float on her own now after 5 weeks attending. She loves outdoor, gliding, swinging, swimming ( with her daddy), dancing…I’m also showing her the TW dvds but she doesn’t pay attention at all. She loves watching brainy baby dvds and LR and other musical dvds though. Lately she started saying “ball” and pointed to the ball. She waves her hand when we say “bye bye”, when she sees our phones, she picks it up and pust next to her ear and says “hi”.I am very proud of her but I’m wondering if she is more left bain or right brain dominnated, or I might have rushed her LB development with the swimming routine, or watching many hours of her baby dvd, or trying to teach her so many things…? I speak to her in my native language while my husband speaks to her in English. My husband and I talk with each other using a 3rd language and I plan to teach her that as well using LR. From what I read the first 5 years baby can learn 5 languages, then in this discussion, someone said rushing learning early means forcing left brain development early?

I appreciate your insights,

Thanks,