Please do not mention Gina Ford to me, as she literally drove me stir crazy during my pregnancy. By means of pregnancy planning I invested in every book she wrote as follows and in no particular order:
The Contented Pregnancy
The Contented Mother's Guide
The New Contented Little Baby Book
The Contented Baby's First Year
The Contented Baby Goes to School
The list is actually endless, however dear Gina forgot to write about the “Contended Mother” as my experience was more like “Demented Mother”, upon applying the Gina Ford techniques to bringing up a baby!
After my brief brush with Gina, I decided to assume control of training from the perspective of a loving mother. It was then, I started applying some of my professional skills as a cruise ship trainer, coupled with the of teachings of my husband at Progress International www.progressinternational.info to my one and only son Alex :0).
In essence, Human Beings are 4 dimensional, meaning, there are 4 parts to our nature and this goes for kids too!
1. IQ Mental Intelligence: Mind
2. EQ: Emotional Intelligence; Heart
3. PQ: Physical Intelligence: Body
4. SQ: Spiritual Intelligence: Spirit
For simplicity, let’s focus on the first intelligence; our mind, which possesses the ability to be logical, think abstractly, count numbers, visualize, create, articulate, decode music and a million things besides. When you look at the brain from a physiological perspective, it’s clearly divided into 2 parts; which are commonly referred to as “Left Brain” and “Right Brain”.
The Left Brain acts like a serial processor within a computer; it’s logical, mathematical, procedural, functional, pattern orientated and it’s what most of us associate with the 2 letters of IQ, although this is actually a misconception. The easy way to remember the Left Brain function is “Left for Logical”. The Left Brain scans the present moment and extracts specific details and more details of those details, then organizes and categorizes the information, associates it with the past and projects it towards the future. This is sadly how we educate most of the children on planet earth today using a “Left Brain” academic style of learning, which is largely based on symbolic reasoning of letters words, numbers and other patterns or archetypes to facilitate so called “Logical thinking”. For now, let’s leave the symbols for the symbol minded!
Conversely, the Right Brain thinks abstractly, innovatively, artistically and reaches out with human expression. It joins human feeling with creativity and the easiest way to remember its function is by the phrase “the Right Brain Reaches out”. Incredibly, the Right Brain views the present moment as one big picture collage that is connected to our sensory receptors of what it looks like, sounds like, smells like, tastes like and feels like. It sees everything as one and dwells in the magic of the now.
When we as adults speak of the Right Brain and its amazing attributes, we are in a sense reminiscing of how wonderful life was in our youth or the inspiration of past creative or eureka moments! Our children start life untainted by the norms of society and expectations of culture. They see the world with a sense of oneness and wonder. They laugh, play, live life in the present moment and connect with other happy souls without prejudice, guilt or judging, until we teach them otherwise.
Yet sadly, in the words of the 1970’s song by Styx “The Logical Song” we send our children away and teach them how to be sensible, logical, responsible and practical. We show them a world to make them so dependable, Left Brain intellectual, cynical or perhaps to be a modelled after a certain size or colour of vegetable.
The interesting thing here is that when one of the world’s greatest ever minds “Einstein” ceased to exist, it was discovered that his brain was no larger in size, no heavier in weight, or greater in diameter than the average human brain. The neural pathways however between the Left and Right Brain were considerably more inter-connected than any other human brains experimented on previously. After all it was Einstein himself who once said “I never invested anything logically”.
Surely, as loving parents we can learn something from inspirational all of this this. The true essence of life requires thinking and feeling or logic and creativity to be truly happy, motivated and successful. The vast majority of our educational institutions however follow largely Left Brain curriculums and our children are taught not to reach out and question, but to copy templates, patterns and various forms of symbolic reasoning, which hardly contribute to critical thinking or living joyfully in the present moment. It’s no surprise then that most of us in the western world are suffering from some kind of stress disorder.
So as a humble mother of one creative little brain, I have learned to question more and balance his needs to counter the institutional way of thinking and to stimulate both sides of his emerging mind.
Sharon Holmes
A now contended Mother & Founder Larnaca Parents Network
