This is a short article written by Jan Bedell of Little Giant Steps. I have used the neurodevelopmental approach with some of my kid's issues, and have friends who have done the full blown program and we have all ended up with totally different kids when it was all over. :-)
Where is all that information going that I teach my child each day?
Dominance determines where information is stored in the brain and how it is retrieved. In order to be neurologically efficient, you must be completely organized on one side of your body - one hemisphere must dominate and coordinate your entire system. You must be right eared, right eyed, right footed and right handed. To be right eared does not mean that you have better hearing in your right ear; it means that your right ear directs which hemisphere of the brain the information you receive is stored.
The determination for dominance starts with the hand. Hand dominance is genetically predetermined and should not be encouraged one way or the other. It should emerge by the time a child is 3 to 8 years of age.
If your brain is neurologically organized, your dominant ear will file information it receives in your dominant hemisphere, which is where reasoning, analytical and logical thinking take place. So, when you go to retrieve that information, it is there. If you are neurologically disorganized (mixed dominant), your sub-dominant ear will file information it receives in your sub-dominant hemisphere, which is where music and emotion take place. The child with mix dominance issues files the information in the wrong hemisphere and when he tries to retrieve it, this happens: "I know I put that information in a file drawer somewhere but I'm really not sure where and I can't seem to find it right now." This is extremely frustrating! When you have a child who is extremely frustrated day after day, you will have a child who has low self-esteem, problems with long and short-term memory, as well as emotional and behavior problems because he is living in the sub-dominant hemisphere of his brain.
Symptoms of mixed dominance include: long-term memory problems, inability to stay on task, reading difficulties, emotionality, spelling difficulties, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, doesn't test well, and inability to retain information (knows his addition math facts one day but the next day he acts like he's never seen an addition problem in his life!)
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