brain

The great debate occurs every year 

“Am I expecting too much of my child or not enough?"  
"Is this groaning and moaning about writing just a discipline problem, a character issue, or is there really a problem here?"

Common comments I hear from homeschool moms are:

"She can tell me the answers well orally, but then it takes her an hour to write it down!"
"When he writes his spelling words to learn them, he leaves letters out of the words."
"If he dictates to me, the story is great, but he can’t write it himself.”
“His dad says that he’s just lazy and unmotivated.  He can do his work if he really tries.”

One of the most common and most misdiagnosed processing problems in children is a blocked writing gate.  This is the number one processing glitch in gifted children.  Many of these children seem to be “allergic” to their pencil.  They break out in whining as soon as they get a pencil or pen in their hand.

Let’s look at what is...

God has a wonderful sense of humor, I believe.  He wants us to grow and stretch, and one of the ways He does this is to give us children who are very different from each other.  Just as it is very likely that a right brain person will have a left brain spouse, so it is that if our first born is left brain dominant, the next child likely will be right brain dominant.  This brain dominance affects both personality characteristics and learning styles.  

How do you determine if you are teaching a right brain child?  Children tend to display these characteristics at an early age.  All children are creative, but your right brain child will seem to be even more imaginative.  The right brain learns things in "wholes" rather than parts, so that child will get math concepts well, but may struggle with the "details" like the math facts or checking work.   In thinking styles, the right brainer often goes by "gut feel" whereas the left brainer prefers multiple facts before coming to a conclusion.  In test taking, the left brainer prefers the black and white choices presented in multiple choice questions,...

In the animal kingdom 50% of the animals are “right paw dominant” and 50% are “left paw dominant.” This has been observed when animals press a lever to get more food or water. Human beings are 50% right brain dominant and 50% left brain dominant, regardless of hand dominance.

As we know, the majority of school curriculum and teaching methods are taught in a left brain manner. This is particularly true of math curriculum. Left brain dominant children learn their math facts easily by repeating them orally, practicing them in timed tests, and working with flash cards. This is the sequential way that works for the left brain learner.  The right brain dominant child, however, likes and often requires a different approach both to memorizing facts and performing calculation procedures.

Let’s look at a model of the brain with its specialization of hemispheres:

LEFT BRAIN - AUDITORY
Details
Black & white
Data only
Repetition
Sequential

RIGHT BRAIN - VISUAL
Whole picture
Colors
Rhythm, pictures
...