10 Rules for Developing the Right Brain

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Want to learn more about Right Brain Education and how to practice at home with your child? Head over to the Right Brain Child.

This is the continuation from the previous post on the Heguru parents seminar on Saturday.

Differences between the left brain and right brain

Left brain is the language brain. It is:

slow
small quantity
processes one by one

Right brain is the image brain. It is:

rapid
large quantity
automatic processing using images

In right brain education, there are a few points to take note of when practicing the activities that help to develop the right brain:

Relax! When practicing right brain activities at home, make sure you are relaxed and comfortable. If you feel stressed, your child will feel stressed and he will not be able to open his right brain when he is stressed.
Speed is of the essence – the faster you flash the cards, the better. Current pace in Heguru is three cards per second. The speed during home practice will be slower and that is fine. Do not increase the speed if it means compromising on the first point. One card per second is fine for home practice.
Quantity over quality – the right brain is an image brain so you need to stimulate it with lots and lots of images. Show each set of flashcards a maximum of four times then change the set. Aim to flash 100-150 cards a day.

Is it too late for my child?

This is a general concern from many parents who discover right brain education late. The idea behind right brain education is to begin as early as possible, however, it is not too late even if your child is already 6 years old. According to Mrs Henmi who teaches students in Japan all the way up to 20 years old, the window of opportunity to develop the right brain is open up until 12 years old. Beyond 12 years old, they don’t really see a lot more development. What they do with students after 12 years old is they teach them how to apply their right brain to their everyday life.

10 Rules for Developing the Right Brain

Believe – one can only produce up to the capacity of belief. In other words, you have to believe in your child’s ability or you’re setting him up for failure. You also have to believe in the program or you might as well not be there.
Attend lessons to open the right brain.
Read stories to your child – reading is one of the four conditions for bringing out your child’s genius. When you read to your child, read with emotion and lots of expression.
Stay beside the student whose right brain has developed. This is the theory of talent formation – there is a radar effect from the child who has developed his right brain (Shichida wrote about this in his book “Right Brain Education in Infancy”). The right brain learns by observation. The left brain learns on its own.
Do fun and exciting things – your child must be happy in order to open the right brain. When your child is not happy, what he learns does not enter the right brain and you’re back to left brain development.
Develop the left brain gently. The misconception with right brain education is that we want to suppress the left brain development. That is not true. The left brain needs to be developed alongside the right brain because left brain development strengthens the right brain. Right brain education isn’t purely right brain education, it is whole brain education.
Self-esteem – you need to develop your chlid’s self-esteem. Do not scold your child because of “lack of ability”, discipline because of misbehaviour. Set clear boundaries and rules so your child knows what he should and should not be doing. Some misbehave because they don’t know what the rules are. When you discipline, make sure your child knows that it is his behaviour that you disapprove of, not him. This sort of discipline should begin from 2 years old onwards.
It requires patience, suffering and worry. This state of heart is required for growth because it is difficult to develop the right brain if your child is spoilt. Children need to learn to endure some difficulties in life and learn to overcome them (see adversity quotient).
Help children fully absorb positive comments from parents, teachers, and their surroundings. Help them fill up their “positive cup”. This will help them overcome obstacles. “Don’t worry if you cannot do it now, next time you will be able to.”
Develop the heart – the right brain is strongly affected by the heart. If the heart is negative, the right brain cannot be applied. Mrs Henmi gave an example of a boy who discovered he was better than his peers because of his right brain development. After a while, he began to look down on his peers. As a result of his arrogance, his right brain ability started to drop.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the seminar was conducted in Japanese and translated. These notes are my understanding of the content covered.

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Shen-Li says

Yes, the seminar was very informative for me, too. When I wrote that article about outliers, I was trying to piece together an understanding of how right brain education worked based on what I have learned. Mrs Henmi talked to us about successful individuals and explained that their parents did not complete all the home practice exercises, but they did do home practice. So I think home practice is important, but don’t stress yourself because you feel you must do everything. My take out from what she said was that as long as you do what you can.

According to outliers, practice is important for success. And I suppose for left brain dominant individuals this statement still holds true because the left brain learns through repetition (lots and lots of it). You can still be successful without right brain education. It appears that right brain education makes your child more efficient. That is why they stress the importance of having right brain education from young. If a child can learn quickly and efficiently, they can spend less time studying, and more time enjoying life. A child who spends his entire day going from school to tuition classes and does nothing else is not living life. For me, that is exactly what I would like to avoid for my children.

The stories of those super successful individuals in right brain education was from an era before right brain education existed so it is hard to know what kind of impact right brain education would have had in their lives. However, it can be seen from the children who grew up with right brain education and have provided testimonials on how it has impacted them, right brain education has made a huge difference in their lives in terms of learning ease and efficiency.

Comments

ann says

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thanks for share!! it is very interesting everything …..cheers
gee says

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Hi Shen-Li. I attended the Heguru Parents Introductory Seminar on March 6th. We were shown the videos of children in Japan who attended the right brain class doing speed reading etc. One of the audience asked Mrs Henmi if we have to do a lot of home practice to achieve that level. She answered that we do not need to do a lot of home practice and most of the students in the video do not receive a lot of home practice, except as parents we may need to do a bit of activities like reading to our children. In one of your reviews about the book “Outliers” before, you did mention about the importance of having a lot of practice in order to be very successful. Do you have any comment about this?
Irene Ng says

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Wow, thanks for sharing. This is good reminder for me. Sometimes I feel it is not practical for me as I tend to scold and use very negative words…Sigh….
Shen-Li says

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I’ve come to the conclusion now that right brain education should be at the top of the list for early childhood development. If a choice must be made between right brain education or another activity, I will pick right brain education first. Music lessons, sports and all the other extra-curricular activities can come later. And because your child’s right brain will already be developed, those activities will come more easily so they can pick up quickly.

Yes, I, too am negative sometimes and I get angry and scold the kids. I’ve been trying very hard not to. I guess this is why they say that parents, too, should do right brain education because it helps us learn to be more peaceful.
Shen-Li says

at

Yes, the seminar was very informative for me, too. When I wrote that article about outliers, I was trying to piece together an understanding of how right brain education worked based on what I have learned. Mrs Henmi talked to us about successful individuals and explained that their parents did not complete all the home practice exercises, but they did do home practice. So I think home practice is important, but don’t stress yourself because you feel you must do everything. My take out from what she said was that as long as you do what you can.

According to outliers, practice is important for success. And I suppose for left brain dominant individuals this statement still holds true because the left brain learns through repetition (lots and lots of it). You can still be successful without right brain education. It appears that right brain education makes your child more efficient. That is why they stress the importance of having right brain education from young. If a child can learn quickly and efficiently, they can spend less time studying, and more time enjoying life. A child who spends his entire day going from school to tuition classes and does nothing else is not living life. For me, that is exactly what I would like to avoid for my children.

The stories of those super successful individuals in right brain education was from an era before right brain education existed so it is hard to know what kind of impact right brain education would have had in their lives. However, it can be seen from the children who grew up with right brain education and have provided testimonials on how it has impacted them, right brain education has made a huge difference in their lives in terms of learning ease and efficiency.
Dr. kumar k says

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i am child development. pl send me new information