Excerpts from the book ‘Your Child is Your Parent’ by Manoj J Lekhi.

Most people in the world operate mainly from the left brain. Their life is only about thinking, calculating and analysing. However, the real springs of life lie in spontaneity, love andall expressions of creativity like dance, drama, music, art, poetry etc. All these traits belong to the right brain. Ideally, both brains need to be nurtured. As it is, we are predominantly engaged with our left brain. So, a push is generally required in the direction of the right brain.

If you look at the electronic scan of your brain, you will understand how its different parts process different types of information. We gather information through our five senses: sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste.

In general, the left side of our brain plays a major part in processing words, sequences, numbers and logic, that is, the academic sort of learning. The right side of the brain deals with rhythm, music, pictures and daydreaming, that is, the creative activities.

The split between the two hemispheres is not, however, as simple as that. Both sides of the brain are linked by the corpus callosum. This is a highly complex switching system, with its 300 million active neurons. It is constantly balancing the incoming messages and linking the abstract holistic picture with the concrete logical messages. The left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body.

Many a time, we as parents, disallow our children from using the left hand, the so-called ‘dirty hand’. Whenever we see our child eating with his left hand or writing with his left hand, we invariably strike it so hard that the child will, probably, remember it for life. This comes to us more as a reflex action than anything else. From generations together, we have been conditioned not to use our left hand for good activities such as eating, writing, receiving prasad after a pooja etc., and the same reflects in our behaviour with our child.

Restricting a child from using his left hand is actually restricting the neuron connections in his right brain, thus disallowing the brain growth and curbing the development of the child to its full potential. The creativity aspect in the child’s brain thus gets hampered.

Always inspire and motivate your child to use both the left and the right sides of his body; only then is the stimulation of the whole brain possible.