Steph at A Room of My Own shares thoughts about the book Upside -Down Brilliance as it relates to her own feisty three. Stephanie at Throwing Marshmallows has listed them here along with some of Cindy’s posts, so I don’t have to : ). I thought this was a great idea — applying what one is learning to one’s understanding of one’s own kids (whew, I thought I would be trapped in that clause forever!). I wanted to use the same type of plan to discuss Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World. I just read it and found it worthwhile and insightful and positive in tone, though the parts about ADD didn’t seem as applicable to my kids. Those traits would be impulsivity and distractibility. He says they are the hallmark of ADD. My kids don’t have ‘em, unless they take very subtle forms. My kids err on the side of caution, if anything, and they are very focused on what they WANT to focus on. It’s true they can be distractable in certain circumstances, and I’ll try to explain that in more detail as I go on.
Incidentally, though it seems a bit of a side tack, I don’t think it really is a left-brained world. I think the schools are left-brained in their approach and it doesn’t really suit the way our society is nowadays. I think the author’s reasons for WHY the schools are so left-brained are sound: he says it is because the kids that do well in the school system feel validated and rewarded by that system, and they tend to be the ones that go on to be teachers, and often end up thinking their way is the “right way”). I wrote about this on my other blog.
But, as to society itself: I think of my husband, who has a very right-brained line of work, though it obviously requires strong left-brained skills as well. He designs computer games and programs them. There are many many more who make their living in a right-brained way, particularly in our entertainment-oriented, fast-progressing society. Ideas and innovations and images are in many ways the identifying currency of our culture, for better or for worse. In fact, this is indirectly one of Freed’s points (the author of Right-Brained Children) — that the visual-media-saturated society has helped form a new type of kid, who relies much more on his (usually, his, if you are talking about ADD) visual processing to assimilate new information than kids in former times did. I see this as being a bit of a circle, though, because in turn there is more societal demand for a certain kind of quick, intuitive visual literacy than there was in earlier days. If these kids can survive school with their creativity and self-confidence in OK shape, they usually have several advantages out in the “real world” as it exists nowadays.
Another side point: I notice whenever I read one of these books describing a “type” or a certain type of syndrome, that you can fit almost all children into the characteristics to some extent, and none fit exactly. That sounds like a truism, but I just wanted to bring it out. So what I find fascinating about the visual spatial learning categorization is not so much that I can “label” my kids, as that it helps me understand and in a way validate some of my kids’ traits. It gives me some strategies and insights that I didn’t have before, or that were vague intuitions that were difficult to express.
Now, to start with, I think Steph made an extremely perceptive point:
“I have a hunch that time management, and other organizational skills, may be more a matter of communication (emphasis is mine) between the two hemispheres being a little off. For this kind of executive functioning to work, you need the logical, sequential left brain and the right brain, which can visualize the steps in a process and put it all together, working harmoniously and efficiently together.”
I guess that this is where I usually bump up against my childrens’ traits — when it leads to a disconnect between standard teaching methods and their preferred methods of learning, or when it leads to some difficulty of executive function. When it’s all working together, it’s not a problem, it’s a delight. So that’s another reason for my interest in visual spatial learning — it gives me a different framework. The problem, if it exists, may lie with the teaching, not the learner. And perhaps that’s not really a problem, but a challenge — and the resolution would be to find the balance, the best modes of communication, so the child has as many tools as possible to work with and a confidence that these tools are at his disposal.
There’s another point that struck me as interesting in Steph’s point about the communication between the right and left hemispheres. Freed mentioned a couple of times that the right brained child is often hyper-sensitive and hyper-perceptive. Many are acutely aware of touch, sound, sight, and smell and taste. He gave extraordinary examples, like the one of the teenager who could tell what word Freed was writing by the sound the pen made. They are also extremely intuitive. Two of my sons in particular are quite acute about sensory input. They notice smell and sound and have a very narrow repertoire of clothing they can bear to wear. Both also are quick to pick up on moods and react to them, though in very different ways. Freed pointed out that this level of awareness is actually a plus in several ways. This may be the reason that visual-spatial learners are more often “gifted” than the general population; many of them observe and perceive more and with more richness than most of us. However, the challenge is that many ADD/right brained children have trouble filtering all the input — the sensations come in a barrage and the emotional intuitiveness overloads them. They will miss a whole lesson because the teacher had a bad day with her husband and the kid is picking that up, or miss a whole class because they dislike the teacher. So many times, the child will be physically clumsy and seemingly awkward and clueless about the social cues everyone else picks up on clearly. But in fact, it is an embarrassment of riches — perhaps somewhat like the way Thomas Aquinas was labelled “the dumb ox” by his classmates — he seemed stupid and slow to them, though in fact his mind was the best of any in his time.
If this theory were true, the extremely acute and intuitive child doesn’t need lessons in social skills per se, because he probably already knows them, perhaps only too well. He needs strategies to help him filter, to focus on what’s significant and move past what isn’t. Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking. Just to give an example on a small scale, I know that certain types of environments completely overwhelm me — a crowded stadium, or a shopping mall, or some kinds of parties. It doesn’t work at all to focus on what I SHOULD do, because I already know that only too well, and that I’m not succeeding. The only thing that helps me is to use filtering techniques, and acknowledge how much energy it takes, because it really does take a lot of energy to shut out things that are barraging your perceptions and still keep awareness of the things you need to be aware of. This experience, which was horrifying strong when I was a child, has made me sympathetic to the difficulties of my children. What I have to be careful about is that, again, I don’t let my acute perception of their state of mind actually intensify their own difficulties.
This sensitivity takes different forms in different kids in my family. One of my sons has extraordinary situational awareness and reflexes to match — he is a talented athlete for that reason. Another one has probably equal situational awareness, but has more trouble matching up his reflexes with the awareness, so he gets awkward in situations that are more than normally complex. However, he has a superior sense of direction and can visualize spatial details with extreme accuracy. When he was hardly three, and was barely even starting to verbalize, he built an immense model of a Star Wars star destroyer with his duplos. It was logistically breathtaking the way he placed those blocks for maximum stability (he called the square ones “dots” and the rectangular ones “lines”)
I’ve written a whole post and not even gotten to the actual traits that Freed lists, beyond a cursory mention of sensitivity. But in writing this, it became obvious to me that this communication and filtering issue was an implicit trait — I think it has a lot of importance in day to day life of the VSL. It’s probably particularly crucial in the “stress” moments. My children get more acute in times when a lot of new input is coming in — when they’re in new situations or when they’re being called upon to learn something. Obviously this trait has its positive side — perhaps it’s one of the reasons why they can pick up things so quickly when all their systems are working together. But it’s hard to describe how uncomfortable it can be when the systems aren’t quite clicking together. We took Brendan to a musical concert when he was an infant. He loved the music. But when the audience applauded, he became extremely disturbed, though the clapping was discreet; it was the quality of the noise that bothered him. This pattern has continued through his childhood, and taken different forms at different times.
I’ve written an entire long post and only barely mentioned a couple of Freed’s listed traits. I guess I can see the Right-Brained Learner operating here — myself. I find myself grasping for the big picture and clicking the details into place as an afterthought. This obviously can be a good thing, but sometimes handicaps me in daily life since I can see what I am TRYING to do but can’t always see my way through the trees of daily life towards actually IMPLEMENTING my vision. And it makes for rather vague posts — sorry! Next time, I’m going to strive for specificity, since I really enjoyed reading the details in Steph’s posts.
