Remembered after 6 months break and Right Brain questions

Early Learning Early Learning General Discussions
1

A little background - I used YBCR, LR, and some of Doman’s bit cards with my son from about 5 months to 13 months or so. Somewhere around the 12-14 months mark, he totally knew all the YBCR flash cards (all the ones he was able to communicate with me using sign language - I didn’t use the “choose between two cards” method, I simply showed him one card at a time.). Then…for the next 5 months or so, I started researching other teaching methods (montessori, classical, etc) just to get some confidence in my teaching methods and make sure I wasn’t missing anything. During this time, I pretty much stopped all Doman style teaching - didn’t show any YBCR videos or show any flash cards (wasn’t exactly planned…just didn’t happen). Then, when I realized I let time get away from me, I whipped out the YBCR cards out of curiosity. To my TOTAL amazement - he knew almost all the cards!!! (and he could say them verbally to me this time!) This was a major shock to me (at the time). It went against everything I had read from other parents who had said they stopped. I did my own “experiment” and got questions answered! So…here I am - back in! (He did not remember the math dots and EK though…keep reading…)

Now…I’m trying to get some facts about “right brain learning” (compared to multisensory). There is so much on here about the Wink and Tweddlewink videos and other programs. My main question (which I know I may never have an answer)…Is it really “right brain learning”, or is it just teaching your child (child uses both sides of brain…)?? Is there really a “super power” that you’re tapping into? Here’s an article I found about the brain research where all these theories have come from - http://www.rense.com/general2/rb.htm. Basically…there is no solid proof - the study results have been totally conflicting. Please let me know your thoughts.

YBCR isn’t really right brain - they say it’s “multisensory” (things are repeated over and over, etc)…and my son remembered it just fine (Way above expectations). He didn’t remember math dots though (never did full program though), nor did he remember most of the EK bits I flashed. The only ones he knew were dots 1-3 and the animals, instruments, etc that we’ve talked about/ read about (ladybug, gorilla, violin, etc). Obviously - those are things probably any child his age knows - having those things flashed to him 6 months+ prior has nothing to do with him knowing them now. So…this is where I begin to question “right brain super power techniques”. Now…obviously…the Asian kids in the Youtube videos I’ve seen have done something to get their outstanding abilities - but I have a hard time believing it’s simply cards being flashed or Wink videos (everyone would own Wink if that was the case). I assume it’s some hardcore memory training I’m not educated about (and is beyond reach/ not practical for the normal person)?? And again, is it really “right brain” (linked article above).

Right now, I know my son can learn anything I teach him - no doubt. And I know it doesn’t take much to teach him (knew alphabet and their sounds in about a week or two). I just haven’t found that flashing a card, of say, the sign for Boron, with no further follow-up, to be teaching him. In one of Pamela Hickein’s videos, she says that doing this will give him a “sense of confidence when he finally studies chemistry in high school”…anyone believe this enough to spend hundreds on the videos? Anyone believe he’ll remember it after 15 years of not talking about it? I’d like to believe it. Anyone have actual experience or know of any research studies?

I really would like to believe in the “right brain theory” - I’m all prepared to go full force (have plenty of supplies…)…but I’m looking for either the logic or the scientific proof (or the parents of the Youtube kids - lol!). My son remembers and understands things I sit down and explain to him, show him, talk about…and he remembers for a long time afterward (after they’re not discussed for awhile). Random things that are just flashed a couple times and no more for months - sometimes he remembers (one or two examples), but usually he doesn’t. Doesn’t it appear I should focus on the first teaching method?? Some say to do both -but really, why if he already knows without it? Any explanations as to why my son didn’t remember the dots or EK?

I hope some of you have some magic answers out there :). I’m sure this has been discussed before, but I wasn’t able to find my answers searching the forum or the web. I got excited about teaching though after I found my son remembered YBCR after so long of a break!

2

well… my 2¢ is that you have to take your method into account. you really spent a lot of time on YBCR flashcards and videos and you didn’t finish the math flashcards. he knew the YBCR and not the other stuff… i think (and like i said my 2¢ take it for what its worth) he is getting mixed signals from you. you were consistent with one thing but not the rest… since it worked with YBCR, why not just keep going with the other stuff? he obviously wants to learn and is soaking it up!

why not start over with the math and do LM or the shichida 65 day math program. all the links/discussions are on this forum. dedicate yourself to that for 65 days and see how he does.
don’t forget that math is totally different from reading. math is a concept… very important to remember. it might also be worth looking into finding out about what shichida and doman say about right brain education and then decide for yourself.
TW is interesting b/c although you show the DVD 1-3 times before moving onto the next lesson, you keep repeating the program until they: make more or your child graduates to WINK. they also have study guides, lessons and the like to supplement the TW program, so it is not just the DVDs. also, the way LR and LM are set up you can just keep adding to expand your child’s repertoire. you can’t say that about any other program out there. you can even add foreign languages in LR and LM. a lot of bang for your buck!
one more thing…

don’t forget your child is not yet 2 and already recognizes words and amounts! i think that is a great success so why not keep going? you seem to be doing a great job!

also about the RB learning. please, please consider the source of articles that are against it. there are a lot of people on the academic side of education who do not believe in any of the things we believe on this site. they believe in a developmental approach (child led) no flashcards, no exposure to numbers, no reading until age 5 sometimes even as late as age 7-8. this seems to be the trend right now. i live in LA which is very trendy when it comes to education and if i went to a preschool or elementary school and told them what i was doing with my child they would call child services on me b/c they think flashing cards and early learning is a form of abuse and/or neglect Iletting my child watch DVDs/TV). i’m not joking! :frowning:

so… like everyone here says, go with your gut. if you’re not convinced flashing bits or watching TW or doing LM or LR would work, than don’t do it. i know for me i’m very comfortable and believe with my heart i am giving my child the best thing for her future.
again… this is just my 2¢. you can take it or leave it! there are a lot of mothers with much more experience than me who i think you should solicit their advice. i would trust a mother before i trusted some researcher any day of the week! don’t forget, researchers have a specific agenda and mothers just want what’s best for their child.

good luck and congratulations on your son’s success!
the doc :clown:

3

This is exactly what i was wondering before, in this post:
http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/'slow'-teaching/msg52282/#msg52282

I understand that when babies are tiny, flashing is easier than a picture book (because bigger, and more likely to hold attention)

However, if i play with my baby and tell her a baby cow is a calf (she repeats and learns the word calf), show her a tiny plastic calf, i know that later on she’ll be able to show me the picture of a calf from a picture book. She knows it after 1 time, and it did not need to be fast.

Also, i do not believe people will retain things they have no interest in. Babies loves animals, everyday object because those things are relevant to them. Because they’ll see them in books, in real life etc…Sure, you can expose them to many things (like chemistry symbols or keys on the piano) but unless those things make sense, they probably won’t retain them. I may be wrong of course. I just find the whole Doman EK concept overwhelming for parents and I’m not sure it follow the child’s lead.

4

DrPrimo - That’s actually completely my point - that I did spend a lot of time on YBCR. And I totally love the LR curriculum, it’s very multisensory and we have fun making the animal noises along with it :). There’s also very relevent info in the curriculum. I also agree that math is different - at least when it comes to the concept of adding and subtraction.

Where I’m questioning is the fast flashing of things my child has no interest in and can not relate to in any way (chemistry, etc). In the Wink video - she said the images are not erased in the right brain and it stays with them until they actually take chemistry in high school. So…I wonder…1) Is this true??? and 2) Why is this really beneficial?? Is it supposed to grow the brain more?

If you can answer those two questions - I’d be thrilled! Everything else, I’m a huge fan of! I’m totally into learning other languages, early reading, etc. Also - the article I linked isn’t related to early learning at all. It was a summary of actual brain tests. I’ve been trying to find articles from actual medical journals and not anything about people’s opinions on early learning.

hypatia - Great point about the tiny babies!! That does make a lot of sense that it holds their attention more and could them more excited!

5

I have been wondering the same thing too. My daughter seems to remember things more when I used the multisensory approach. For example with dog breeds eg. I’ll show her the words on flashcards/Little Reader, then every time we see the dogs on tv or when we go on trips, I reinforce them by pointing out the dogs to her and naming them at the same time. However, when I purely flash something to her, she doesn’t recognise them when we see them in real life situations and we have been doing flashcards since she was 6 months old.

I choose to not rely on one method as I believe using multiple learning methods will stimulate numerous neurological connections to the brain; however, I am hoping the ‘flashing’ of cards will be one of the pathways to gaining a photographic memory. When playing/teaching my child, I do place a lot of emphasis on gaining comprehension of the information I am presenting to her as I think it is extremely important for her to not only recognise what something is and how it is spelt, but the whys, hows, whens, whos. I think the more information you present that is linked to a chosen subject, the more chance of recalling the information. This is similar to the memory mapping approach used in accelerated learning.

On a different tangent, my husband as a child didn’t do flash cards but watched hours and hours of TV (even as a baby!!), and has excellent recall, word for word, of anything that he hears, even when he is not concentrating on the topic being presented. It is like he is constantly taking an auditory imprint of the information. I am guessing that the right brain flash card approach, does the same sort of ‘training’ for photographic memory.

6

After my post I read the studies you mention… Probably should have done that before I posted… lol
Anyway, did u notice that the study was done on adults and there was no mention of children/babies? I don’t thnk you can apply that studies to children…

I don’t know if you read a previous post talking about the way to flash, but someone saif they spoke to the TW gals and they saif to flash about 1sec. A card b/c any faster and it’s not good. I wS ale ays told to flash, for example, the word doll, show a doll, show the word doll in another language, etc. I had always thought the whole picture was the answer, not just flash cards exclusively. Don’t forget that doman began with brain injured children so the technique should be modified for normal kids.

As far as the other bits of information, I think it is a matter of sticking with it. For example the chemistry. We have flashcards of all the elements. Once we went theough them the I went back with more information… Like describing carbon makes diamonds…then the next time a bit more information like cRoon has so many protons and nutrons, etc. And we have a poster of the periodic table on the wall. So after about 6mo. We will have quite a bit of information from one set of bits. Ina few months I’ll be asking her questions about the elements. Granted, I’ll only be going I to depth about things I’m interested as well, but I think it is more than just flashing once, at least thAt is what I think. But the first time I did flash it was 1sec/card.
Maybe I missed something, but from your original post it seemed you were down all this right brain education thing. Did I miss something? Sorry if I did!
The doc :clown:

7

lol - I think I made it WAY longer than it needed to be and my message got lost! I definitely realized that after writing my second post :). So, bascially, you really are teaching chemistry and repeating the information (going more in depth than just flashing the element names - and keeping it up over time). Curious - why did you choose to teach periodic elements out of all the topics out there - languages, animals, geography, etc?

As an adult, after time, I forget many things that I suppose my brain doesn’t need (I knew all the periodic elements for 2 years while I took chemistry…but I’ve forgotten most of them now). Do you believe that after 10 years, your baby will still know the elements after not discussing them? Or do you plan to continue to review them in the next 10 years?

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hey there!
well… as far as chemistry goes you gave that example and i wanted to tell you what i was doing. science is important to me so i’m going to concentrate on that. so once i flashed the elements about 3 times, i put thhem away for a few weeks. when i go back, i’ll add a little bit more information as a flash and will probably add to the card in some way. i’ll just keep doing that until she can tell me about the cards i’m flashing, then we’ll do more advanced things with that information.
i have about 1,000 bit cards with all kinds of subjects. i wont’ do that with every subject, only the ones she seems to have an interest in. but i was always told that was the way to flash bits… just to keep adding information. its also good b/c you don’t have to keep making/buying new bits!

we are also doing other subjects including various languages: spanish(b/c of the nanny) italian (videos and 1 mommy and me italian class). i introduced phonics via a DVD and she is starting to put together the sounds with the words, which has been very rewarding. she is only 14 mo. and between our bits, LR, LM, the TW videos and the like, she is getting a great foundation for the future. and as far as music goes, i’m a composer to she is exposed to it all the time… and i do my own thing so i’m not worried about that.

for me, i just want her to be comfortable with certain subjects, like math languages and science. that is the most important thing for me. and if she is ahead of her class at school, i’ll get her a tutor to make sure she stays ahead and doesn’t loose her advantage. foundation is the key and making sure it is solid is the most important thing.

that’s just me :wink: hope i explained it well and it makes sense. personally i think you’re doing a great job and encourage you to keep it up!
with respect,
the doc :clown:

i not a true disciple of shichida (flashing once) nor am i a true believer in doman (repeat flashing). i think TW and LR/LM has is right. just enough repetition to stick but not too much to activate the LB too early

9

Think I’m jumping in a little late on this topic, but here’s my two cents…

I’ve been trying to make sense of right brain education ever since I heard about it and this is the gist of what I get out of it - although I’m not entirely sure if I got it all right. Much of this was taken in through conversation and you know how word of mouth has the potential of becoming a little like the game of Chinese Whispers.

My understanding from TweedleWink is that showing information to a young child does two things:

  1. Build neural connections and keep as many parts of the brain active as possible so they do not get pruned away. When a baby is born, he has the most neurons he will ever have in his life, but there are very few connections between those neurons. As he grows older, he begins to form more and more connections between the neurons. To make the brain more efficient, connections that aren’t used much are pruned off, while the ones that are used regularly get developed even further. It’s kind of like how we clean our computers regularly by deleting all the old programs we don’t really use any more so that it can run faster.

Take the language center for an example. If you teach your child a second language when young, the language part of his brain gets developed so that when he is exposed to a third, fourth or fifth language later in life, picking them up becomes easier. Apparently knowing only one language doesn’t count. That’s not to say you can’t ever learn another language later on, it’s just a lot harder than it would be for someone who is already bilingual or multi-lingual.

  1. Exposing your child to lots of different subjects and various bits of information when young is like populating the right brain with a library. When your child is older and is exposed to those subjects, the learning becomes easier because he can access the subconscious library he has in his right brain when he’s older. For instance, you may have forgotten the periodic table, but I bet if you had to learn it all over again, it would be much faster for you to learn it this time than it was compared to the first time you studied it.

However, when I listen to the theory from Shichida/Heguru, the understanding I get is that rapid flash card exposure (and all those other right brain development activities you do with a child) when young is purely to develop the right brain. It is the action more than the subject that you’re interested in. It’s like brain exercise - the more you work the right brain, the stronger it becomes and the easier it is to tap into its potential later in life. It’s less about the information you are given to the child than it is about exercising the brain. Does that make sense?

That’s basically what I understand from talking to people about right brain education. What I would really love is to get hold of a copy of Makoto Shichida’s book: “How to raise a superb child: How to develop an infant’s right and left brain hemispheres” - which is unfortunately out of print. I would be eternally grateful to anyone who could direct me to a bookstore that has it or sell me a second-hand copy.

Now here’s the personal part… I never did right brain training when I was young but there are a couple of distinct incidences in my life that I think relate to it. The first is a novel I once read when I was a teenager. In the novel was a song that one of the characters sang - “Jesus Loves Me”. It’s a common song that lots of kids sing in Sunday school but I have no memory of ever having learned it. When I read that novel, I started putting music to the words I read in the book and told my cousin I should consider a career as a musician because I’d just come up with a tune. When I sung it to her, she laughed and said, “You used to sing that song when you were little.”

The second incident was when I was learning piano. My teacher selected a song that I was supposed to learn for my exam and asked me to sight read the music. I don’t sight read very well, but that song seemed easier to play somehow (even though I thought it was more complex than the other pieces I had learned) - like there was something very familiar about it. My teacher asked me, “Have you learned this song before?” I didn’t even remember hearing the music before, let alone having played it. I still don’t have the entire answer to this one but I suspect I must have heard it before when I was little.

I think right brain development in early childhood is a little like that - your child may not remember exactly what he learned but that doesn’t mean it is all for naught. It may be as vague as a feeling of deja vu that makes learning at school easier.

Or think of it like this: When you’re learning something for the first time, it seems rather complicated and difficult to remember. But when you go through it a second time, more things seem to click and fall into place. You can consider your child’s later exposure to the subjects you expose him to as a child to be the second exposure. At the end of the day, even if he can’t remember having learned it before, he may find it easier to “learn” later on.

To add something to what the doc said about the speed of flashcards (1 card per second, or to match the pace of your child’s heartbeat) - I have been told the same thing by the staff at TW. They feel that to flash them any faster would be potentially harmful to the child. However, I would like to present an alternate view based on a discussion with Heguru/Shichida.

Heguru/Shichida believes that you should flash 3 cards per second. They believe that the timing is important if you want to activate the right brain. Secondly, it is difficult to maintain a young child’s attention if you flash too slowly. I find this to be true especially for my younger son who is 6 months. If I flash to slowly, he loses interest.

Regarding the potential for harm if you flash too fast, this is what they have to say:

Firstly, if you want to flash the cards at the rate of your child’s heart beat, that would automatically be faster than 1 card per second because a child’s heartbeat (especially a young child) is about 120 beats per minute on average. It varies from child to child and also depending on the age of the child. For some it can be even faster than this - it can go as high as 180, if I recall correctly.

Secondly, if speed is a concern, then you shouldn’t allow your children to watch cartoons because that would be the ultimate speed flashcards around. Think about how cartoons work - they are a series of pictures that are flashed so quickly that the eye cannot discern the flicker of individual pages.

Thirdly, (this is my conclusion) Shichida/Heguru has been around since the 70s. TW has only been around since the 90s. If there really was a potential for harm because of rapid flashing of flashcards, surely we ought to have noticed it by now in the numerous children who went through the program.

These are just my thoughts. Like the doc says - you have to be comfortable with what you’re doing. If you aren’t, don’t do it. Don’t do it because someone tells you to. Do it because it feels right for you and your child.

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My dear, that was the best explanation of rb education I have ever heard! Bravo!
Like I said on my other post, so go to the shicheda website and see if they have the books there. I would even email them and ask them if they have any copies that aren’t listed on the site. A word of warning: don’t buy the book by shichida,s son. A total waste of money as it is a cheap rehash of his fathers work…
The doc :clown:

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Thanks for the tip, doc. I’ll go check it out! :slight_smile:

12

Thank you so much for breaking down everything you’ve researched ShenLi!!!

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My pleasure. I’m still trying to learn more. I have Pamela Hickein’s new book, have put an order for a book called “Right brained children in a left brain world” by Jeffrey Freed, and am now looking for Shichida books on Right Brain. Hopefully after that I will understand more :slight_smile:

14

Hi ShenLi & All,

Its a really useful information. Especially for ppl like me who may not get
enough time / resources to understand these facts.

And its always easy to do the things if we understand why & what we are doing.

Karma to you ++

– kreena

15

Kreena - thanks. I find there are so many conflicting advice about right brain education which has spurred me to read the original books to find out what was really said by the leaders in right brain education.

16

Me too, I cannot thank you enough for this! I have just started to find out about right brain education through the right brain kids website but with my second daughter just recently born, I simply don´t find the time to investigate it profoundly. But with your “crash course” I have learned a lot. THANK YOU AND KARMA TO YOU!
ISA

17

i think you should teach all you can to your children
and expose them to a wide range of ideas
but i don’t obsess on right brain learning
for one there is not a great deal of proof of it’s value
and second like the study noted it’s better to focus on both sides of the brain working together

i do a lot of EK with my daughter
but the things she seems to remember the most
are the subjects that we talk about
and that she sees a real life application of
(multi sensory)

it’s important for me to keep things in perspective
what do i really want for my child?
that she can spit out a bunch of unrelated facts?
and has a photogenic memory?
or that she loves to read
and knows how to learn so that she can then learn anything she wants

i try to show her great art,music,dance,books, poetry,math and nature
then talk about them
she then decides what she wants to learn more about
we enjoy the discovery together

i really want her education to be about her interests
and not my goals or a desire for her to be smarter then other children
i think this way she will continue to love learning
and develop critical thinking skill (which is every bit as important as math)

learning is not a race it’s a life long journey
and i feel the goal of early learning should be seen as just the foundation