Right Brain vs Left Brain Learning Style
There are very in depth methods of testing whether your child is predominantly right-brained, that of the artistic nature which has a difficult time adjusting to the conventional (predominantly left-brained) environment of the classroom…
The following questionnaire, which is a very informal measure taken from Jeffrey Freed’s wonderful book, Right-Brained Children Living in a Left-Brained World, will give you a fairly good idea as to whether your pre-adolescent child (ages five through thirteen) is more left/right or whole-brained.
1. Is your child extremely wiggly?
2. Does your child have difficulty with color or handwriting?
3. Was your child a late walker
4. Is your child extremely sensitive to criticism?
5. Does your child have allergies or asthma?
6. Is your child good with building toys, such as Lincoln Logs, Legos, and Tinker Toys?
7. Is your child good at puzzles and mazes?
8. If you read a book to your child two or three times, is he/she capable of filling missing words with almost perfect recall
9. Is it extremely important that your child like his or her teacher in order to do well in class?
10. Is your child easily distracted, or does he/she daydream a lot?
11. Is your child unable to consistently finish tasks?
12. Does your child tend to act first and think later?
13. Do you have to cut labels out of your child’s clothes? Does he/she only want to wear clothing that’s especially soft and well worn?
14. Is your child overwhelmed at sporting events, loud parties, amusement parks?
15. Does your child tend to shy away from hugs?
16. Does your child need constant reminders to do certain things?
17. Is your child extremely competitive and a poor loser?
18. Does your child have a good sense of humor? Does he/she have a better-than-average ability to understand or create puns?
19. Is your child a perfectionist to the point that it gets in his/her way of trying new things?
20. Can your child recall a summer vacation or other event from one or two years ago in vivid detail?
The more “YES” responses your child has, the more to the right he or she will be on the left-right brain continuum. In general:
0-4 yes answers indicate they are very left brained
5-8 somewhat left-brained
9-12 whole-brained
13-16 somewhat right-brained
17-20 very right-brained
Again, this is NOT a formal assessment, but it will help to give you a general understanding of your child’s brain dominance.
If you’re working with a preschooler or kindergartner who doesn’t yet have full letter recognition, you can use the following exercise to give you an early indication of his or her brain dominance. This is a fun activity that can give you a clue as to how right-brained and visual your little one really is.
On a piece of plain white paper, draw seven circles of approximately the same size in a straight line across the page. Randomly use three or four different colored markers or crayons so that the sequence might be: green, blue, red, red, yellow, green, yellow. Instruct your child to study the circles for at least twenty seconds, until he or she feels confident that they can remember them. Remove the paper and ask your child to name the colors from left to right, and then right to left. The results may surprise you! Most children with ADD will be able to do this by hyper-focusing and using their visual memory. Notice whether your child closes his or her eyes or looks upward, an indications that he’s getting a picture of those colored circles in his mind.