Which leg to put in your knickers first

Or: Don’t dismiss silly little instinctive things – they might become brain science one day.

Or: Everything kids do is for a reason – behaviour is communication.

18.12 – 18.41           #29daysofwriting

This might be total nonsense

I once taught to read a 6 year old who insisted on covering one eye as he read. He had had his eyes tested, so it was nothing to do with his vision. I would ask him to put his hands in the right place, sit up nicely and look at the book straight on with both eyes. The ‘sitting up nicely’ business is about the relationship between body language and mood – slumping in our chair often means we slump in our attitude or belief in ourselves. Children who do everything, including eat their dinner, with their head resting on one hand, are not always the happiest, I have noticed. This boy would try to oblige, but could not help his hand going up to his face, almost as a reflex, within the first minutes of starting to read.

We had the most brilliant Educational Psychologist working at our school, and I asked her about this boy,

“Is he covering one eye to try and subdue one half of his brain, the non-language side?”

I was thinking, in an armchair amateur psychologist kinda way, that one side of his brain was for language, the other for other stuff, and that he was trying to switch off the other stuff so he could focus on his reading book. The EP turned it on its head and said,

“Maybe he is trying to stimulate the eye-open side of his brain?”

“So I should just leave him alone?”

“Yes.”

Aaaah! After that, I never mentioned the eye-covering. I did ask him to sit up, but left him alone to stimulate whichever part of his brain he saw fit. I have had it proved to me many times that children know what they are doing and will invariably, if we let them, if we just observe and wonder, do what they need. He was covering his right eye which meant that maybe he was instinctively waking up the left side of his brain? I heard recently that we have a word receiving centre on the left side of our brains, that starts the process of working out what words, phrases and texts mean…

Once the boy had got some skills under control and was starting to read fluently, he stopped covering his eye. I said nothing.

So what about the knickers?

Time’s up, 29 minutes, no time to explain, but it’s got to do with our dominant eye, leg, hand, and having a go with the other one, just to keep us on our toes, crossing the mid-line, and wondering, as teachers, about what happens when we act counter-intuitively, and do the opposite of what we think we should.