(Comment on this article)Laterality, LD, and Genius ?Article Topics: Dyslexia, Self Esteem, Giftedness, Learning Disabilities, Mental Health,
Article types: Personal Experience, Editorial, Point of View, General Information,
Submitted By: Ann Thompson View Submitter's Profile (annja) | <p>For months I wandered around the halls of the International School muttering about 'mixed dominance'. After more than thirty years in classrooms in two Canadian provinces and one developing country, I had finally landed the job of my dreams - working one-to-one with children who had learning difficulties. 'My' fifteen kids came from seven different countries (US, Canada, Australia, Korea, Finland, England, Saudi Arabia) and ranged in age from five to eighteen.</p>
<p>In addition to the students assigned for daily assistance, there were others who were referred for assessments. The written work of two such referees was done in printing, all b's and d's capitalized, spelling difficulties evident. I suspected the condition we called 'mixed dominance', a physical mismatch of dominance between eye and hand. It was a condition that, over my long career, had surfaced without exception in children who, try as hard as they might, simply could not print between lines and had great difficulty with reversals in the early grades. They typically learn to avoid reversals by capitalizing b's and d's as they print; I had accommodated this difficulty by requiring less paperwork in more time.</p>
<p>There was a third referral early that year. I had met a very articulate, bright ten-year-old on the playground. He had been anxious to tell someone about his upcoming trip to a soccer match in England. Not only did he have copious amounts of information on team statistics, but he was familiar with the make and model of the plane that would fly him to England. I could see that his peers considered him a 'nerd'.</p>
<p>It was with some surprise that I discovered that this was the same Bob whose work was so deploringly below standard on their class bulletin board. His grade five work was done in a strugging print; sentences were very simple and short. The erasing indicated reversals and spelling problems. The contrast to the glib handwriting and copious information in the work of all the other samples on display, was so striking that I wondered why the teacher would have humiliated him by posting this effort. (Perhaps having his work excluded would have been worse. But why not allow him the help of a computer?)</p>
<p>There had been some talk of having Bob on my schedule, but his teacher felt his oral skills were sufficient to see him through. He had been academically, psychologically, and neuropsychologically assessed. The reports basically corroborated that he did have the difficulties described by his teachers. No further diagnoses. Bob had also seen a physiotherapist for co-ordination difficulties and a therapist for self-concept problems.</p>
<p>His teacher asked me for ideas and I called the young man in. He wrote with his right; he held the kaleidoscope to his left eye. I phoned the mother. She was elated. This made "such good sense" to her; she was ambidextrous herself and had always had difficulties in school. "I can remember crying as a child because I couldn't write neatly," she told me. "I write with my right and draw with my left." Her son was obviously much relieved that there might, after all, be a neurological basis for his difficulties with paper.</p>
<p>His teacher was less receptive. She claimed some degree of ambidexterity herself and had, after all, just received her Master's degree in education. No problems. Late in the year she returned to me saying she had reconsidered; her daughter obviously had some subtle difficulties with speed in reading and with completing written tasks within time-frames. This mother was considering having a psychological assessment done to gain extra time for exams.</p>
<p>Bob made it through his year, given credit via oral assessments and multiple-choice answers.</p>
<p>I was not looking for laterality anomalies in the remainder of my clientel. With them I simply followed the LD rules of high structure and frequent review. I now had the luxury of being able to confer with each child about his/her difficulties and learning style.</p>
<p>The five-year-old was a particular enigma. This youngster had been in a play-school which reported him to be a popular leader on the playground. His parents were confused and disappointed by reports that he was experiencing significant difficulty with cutting and printing activities in kindergarten. It was well past Christmas and this lively, but increasingly unhappy little boy, could not recognize any letters of the alphabet, and could not print his name.</p>
<p>But he could consistently beat his classmates at 'Memory' - a picture card game. He also excelled at solving mazes. I noted that he solved the maze visually first, then tracked haltingly with a pencil, started with the right hand, then sometimes switched to the left hand at the middle of the page. I checked his eye-dominance with a kaleidoscope. His right eye was dominant. No 'mixed dominance' in this case.</p>
<p>Knowing that this child was too young for most psychological testing, and realizing that any testing I did would be inaccurate, I used a quick 'culture-free' test of geometric patterns. As I suspected, the results indicated average intelligence. I was stymied and simply continued with our program. There was some improvement, but the child was losing faith in himself; his paperwork simply did not come anywhere close to that of his peers. The parents, I suspect, were losing faith in me.</p>
<p>The senior student came in just after the five-year-old on some afternoons. We were working through a rigid grammar program that this young man had chosen as being appropriate for his difficulties in getting his ideas down on paper within a given time-frame. Again, here was a frustrated, self-doubting student who worked very hard but was disappointed enough with the results to actually allow himself to be seen coming to my 'Resource' room.</p>
<p>His parents could see no point in psychological assessment.</p>
<p>I was feeling inadequate. We completed highly-structured tasks and filled in some gaps related to noun-verb agreement and repaired dangling participles in his essays. But I couldn't really help him. His hand-writing continued to be miniscule and he continued to express disgust with his work.</p>
<p>His reading ability was good. His insight into Toni Morrison, Fitzgerald, and Solzhenitzyn was impressive. He constantly and consistently blew holes in any ideas I provided as possible essay topics.</p>
<p>The day came when the five-year-old had left unifix counting cubes on the desk. The IB student was toying with these while I conferred with someone just outside the door. When I walked in he had fashioned a crude telescope and was looking through the window, holding the square tube to his LEFT eye. The telltale arm across the middle-line of the body immediately registered.</p>
<p>"What are you doing?" My voice was louder than I intended. I needed to freeze the moment.</p>
<p>"Nothing!" he retorted in guilty surprise, quickly casting the telescope aside and reaching for his grammar books.</p>
<p>"No!" I couldn't supress my excitement. "Wait. No. Do that again!"</p>
<p>Now he was totally confused.</p>
<p>"What?" he asked, looking at me rather oddly.</p>
<p>"Show me what you were doing with the cubes!"</p>
<p>He smiled, still confused, probably surmising that my problems were far in excess of his own, but retrieved the toy and studied the neighbourhood again, again holding the telescope to his left eye.</p>
<p>"You're cross-dominant!"</p>
<p>"What?" Poor confused young man.</p>
<p>We spent the rest of the class talking about lateral dominance and I learned that he had always had difficulty handling a camera; he always had to take a vertical shot because his 'nose got in the way' if he tried the horizontal view. Some pocket cameras assume right-eye dominance. I could not explain exactly how this fit into his learning difficulty, but I promised to do more research.</p>
<p>I made contact with a psychologist who informed me that yes, "mixed dominance and dyslexia often, but not always, coincide". (Where is the research to support this opinion?)</p>
<p>With this information I was able to meet with parents and managed to convince them to have the psychological assessment done. Eventually their son's intelligence was measured to be in the 'above average' range. At the end of the year his mock exam scores were second in the school. When I asked him how he had been able to manage this, his response was "...because now I know I can!"</p>
<p>There is no social life in a foreign country for a middle-aged widow. I spent my evenings reading the British Dyslexia Journal and scouring the internet for anything related to laterality. I discovered Robert J. Doman whose 1987 article seemed to have hit the nail on the head. I made copies for distribution to parents and referred colleagues to the website. In our school library I found Roland Davis' 'Gift of Dyslexia' which eventually led me to think about laterality issues separate and distinct from the schooling process.</p>
<p>I continued, also, to familiarize myself with both British and US curriculum and tried to keep up with all the material to be covered by my students. No shortage of things to do to occupy the time.</p>
<p>One afternoon, my kindergarten lad walked in holding an action figure in his hand. We chatted about this briefly before we got on task. I asked him to write his name "really big" on the board. He took a piece of chalk in his left hand and scrawled a large 't' . Two things were significant. The 't' was the middle letter in his name, and his right hand was preoccupied with the his toy. I asked him to put the figure down and then continue with all the letters he could remember. He put the figure down, but continued with his left hand. He had been distracted by my interference so I decided to let him continue. He was not sure of whether to go right or left with the next letter. He did remember six of the nine letters, not in order.</p>
<p>Next day we repeated the activity. Both hands were free but again he picked up the chalk with his left to begin. I let him complete the letter, then suggested he try with his other hand. He transferred the chalk to his right, held the chalk to the board for a second, then put it back into his left hand, turned to face me squarely and pronounced very sternly: "No. When I write on the board I use this hand. When I write with a pencil I use this hand!" He lifted his right into the air to mime the pencil.</p>
<p>Ah! I thought. Fine motor on the right; gross motor on the left.</p>
<p>Until I had done more research I was not about to discuss this with the parents.</p>
<p>Meanwhile I had had a chance to become familiar with the files of all my charges. The 'math/spelling diffiulty' boy in third grade had been noted to have 'undetermined' lateral dominance in kindergarten and grade one. Brian had been taught to read one-to-one with a highly structured program and was quite capable in this area - not speedy, but capable. The 'undetermined lateral dominance' was brushed aside with the usual vague comment about 'maturational lag'.</p>
<p>Peter was in grade four, had been diagnosed as bi-polar at age eight and gave me a clue about lateral learning styles. His records reported 'early ambidexterity'. He, too, had received highly-structured progamming in reading; his literacy was now halting, but satisfactory. His wit was quickly evident; no pun or subtlety in conversation escaped him.</p>
<p> I asked him how it was that he never seemed to have difficulty remembering right from left.</p>
<p>"Well," he told me, putting his feet up on an adjacent chair and folding his arms across his chest in theatrical wise-old-man style, "when I was in grade two, the teacher had a cut-out of a hand with the word 'left' on it just to the left of our classroom exit door. Now, every time someone says 'left' or 'right' I see that hand."</p>
<p>This young man was our actor; extremely comfortable on stage. A 'ham', capable of perfect timing, and an astute mimic.</p>
<p>Like many people, Peter had devised a 'trick' for remembering. But there was something more to be derived from this. Visual imprint. Peter carried the visual imprint of that hand in his head as a survival tool.</p>
<p>I took this idea to the grade three math student. With him I had tried Cuisenaire rods, dominoes, and his self-made plasticine array of 100 (a la Davis), and a set of drawn frames of twenty, tens clearly divided. All in an effort to master addition and subtraction facts to twenty. When I asked him if any of these made any sense, he chose the two-dimensional drawings.</p>
<p>These I had devised because of the distractibility factor. Every manipulative became 'the message'. This boy needed to touch everything new in the room, and turned every manipulative into a toy.</p>
<p>I had seen enough of 'mixed dominance' now to begin to wonder about perception. Given that dyslexics sometimes report that letters seem to move about the page, is it just possible that this boy's perception caused something similar? Did he need to rely on touch to give new things 'constancy' or 'preservation'.</p>
<p>I believe it was Cruickshank (et al) who proposed a grey room to minimize distractibility. He was wrong, I think, but close. It is just CHANGE of which we must be careful. And perhaps some children simply must be allowed to touch.</p>
<p>This boy constantly stated that he hated school. I allowed him to vent. His artwork was insightful and this was the only area in which he excelled. He spoke little, but one day surprised me with a clear and articulate tirade on the unfairness of the principal taking away someone's Pokemon cards. He proposed alternative means for controlling the Pokemon fever that was sweeping the school.</p>
<p>Here was another square peg we were trying so hard to fit into a round hole.</p>
<p>Our type of schooling, I had long ago realized, is simply not for everyone...</p>
<p>This young man's older sister was also one of my clientel. She had similar difficulty with math facts, but was a schoolyard leader, talented soccer player, with excellent self-confidence and a delightful sense of humour. It was only on the eve of her psychological assessment that I decided to check out her laterality. I knew already that she occasionally threw our 'koosh' ball with her left, but not particularly well. And I had been reluctant to make generalized assumptions based on those I knew to have laterality anomalies. Now, as she was leaving for England and we were saying our brief good-byes, I handed her the kaleidoscope. Without hesitation she lifted it to her left eye.</p>
<p>The father of these two contacted me shortly after, claiming that he had just rolled up a piece of paper and looked out his office window. He was somewhat amazed to discover that he, too, was cross-lateral. Then came the relevations of his own schooling difficulties in math ("I bluffed my way through!") He worked as a 'trouble shooter' for a large international company and reported that he had always known that he could conceptualize differently than most people; he attributed this ability to his professional success.</p>
<p>In addition to corroborating what I was beginning to suspect, this man searched the internet and provided a number of helpful sites. Particularly helpful was a study out of Bergen, Norway, that found eye-ear crossed laterality to be significant in a group of five hundred LD students. (Eikelund, 1998?)</p>
<p>I had never solicited personal information from parents, but now I had enough confidence, and enough genetic history - usually supplied by mothers re their own levels of ambidexterity and their own early struggles in schools - to discuss my observations readily with others.</p>
<p>It turned out that the kindergarten boy had a mother who was ambidextrous and a father who, hesitantly, told me he had detected a "mild degree of dyslexia" in himself based on his inability to retain a second language in spite of his high academic achievements in scientific areas.</p>
<p>My mumbling about 'mixed dominance' was becoming a dull roar as more and more evidence surfaced.</p>
<p>Our grade four teacher came to me with a child who, on a school outing, had declared "Sir, isn't it funny that I write with my left hand, but I can't skate on my left foot!" This child was an avid reader and talented creative writer who could not understand math. I observed her copying math examples from the board and was amazed at her lack of spatial awareness; the tidy order presented by the teacher became a maze of misplaced information on her page.</p>
<p>I spoke to the distraught mother about her daughter's laterality profile. This American woman was a trained teacher who for two years had repeatedly and tearfully asked the school what was wrong with her child. When I mentioned Robert J. Doman as a possible source of understanding, she looked at me somewhat suspiciously. "Yes, we did Doman in school, " she said. "But he was controversial..." She took the 1987 article I had on hand and promised to give the ideas another look.</p>
<p>A few days later she found me in the library and told me that she and her husband had discussed, again, the difficulties their daughter faced and had decided, after all, that "Doman's opinions were the only ones that made any sense - so far".</p>
<p>A confused legal professional now came to me about her grade two son. "He does not seem to perceive the world the way I do," she complained. "He seems to need structure. He doesn't want to be told to come to conclusions on his own; he wants to be told exactly what to do and he'll do it! I was always 'artsy'; I loved to explore and create."/p>
<p>I did not know her son. I went into the grade two classroom and had the students roll up pieces of paper to look out the window for birds. Four students crossed the midline (i.e. right hand to left eye, or left hand to right eye). Two of these students seemed to fiddle and use either hand/either eye. (One of these two, I later discovered, was the ambidextrous brother of my kindergarten enigma; the other, the reportedly very-bright-but-hyper" son of one of our staff members.) The third was a shy little girl who, the teacher reported, had some difficulty with spelling and with speed in handwriting. The fourth was the lawyer's son.</p>
<p>When I reported to the mother about her son's laterality profile and the possible implications for structured learning, she was skeptical. She reported that she herself wrote with one hand, but drew with the other. (Both fine motor tasks!) She accepted the Doman article but did not return.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the grade two teacher who's class I had been in, came to me to say that he was confused because he himself would certainly cross the mid-line in the 'telescope' activity I had done in his class, but that here he was, competent and sucessful in teaching. When I asked him about his early school career, he said he could still quote his grade two report-card comment from England: "It is a shame that David, otherwise a good student, should have such poor penmanship which is a sign of bad manners"! The comment has stayed with him, verbatim.</p>
<p>Oh the implications for self-concept!</p>
<p>As teachers became aware of my thinking, so did their assistants. One was a professional basketball player who had made it through his university studies with the help of numerous tutors. He listened carefully to my theories of the possible role of his ambidexterity, but remained guardedly skeptical. He did inform me, however, that he had seen a tv documentary clip (by CBC, I think) that asked whether ambidexterity had anything to do with the uncanny talents of Wayne Gretzky and one of the Globetrotter members.</p>
<p>My own head was working overtime. What if all our old assumptions about 'dumb jocks' were wrong; what if excellence in many sports and that unusual talent of being able to 'read the game' while it happened, was somehow related to the three-dimensional perception that seems to accompany degrees of ambidexterity?</p>
<p>I was meeting ambidextrous adults who claimed to perceive music "three-dimensionally" or "in space". All had had difficulty with pencil-and-paper tasks in school. One 'saw' vowels in colour; another 'saw' numbers in colour. One could knit in both directions so she never had to turn her work around. Some could switch hit in baseball; others could play tennis with either hand.</p>
<p>One female teaching assistant expressed dismay that no one had ever told her that there even MIGHT be a link between her ambidexterity and her difficulty getting what she knew she understood in her head, down through her shoulder and down her arm and fingers onto a piece of paper within the time allowed. She, like my IB student, had always assumed she was 'a little slow' in an intellectual sense. This personable young woman played guitar and wrote music.</p>
<p>How closely are 'giftedness' and ambidexterity linked?</p>
<p>When Michelangelo was painting the Cistine Chapel ceiling he switched hands when one was tired; Leonardo da Vinci could write Latin and Greek simultaneously with two hands! (Different thoughts, I want to ask?)</p>
Einstein, Churchill, Bell, Edison, Ford, Lasorda, Larry Bird, Navratilova, Truman appear on 'Ambidextrous' websites. ("I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous!")
<p>And what a strong link to multiple intelligence theory.</p>
<p>There was also the strange case of Kim - our outstanding scholarship student in the IB program. She came to me early one morning to introduce herself and to explain that, although her results were excellent, her success was linked, she felt, to working so very much harder than everyone else. She insisted that she had always recognized that she was still the last to finish reading a passage in class; in grade one there had been difficulties completing written work and with speed in reading. Now, at eighteen, this student could look back over her career and state unequivocally that her effort had been greater than that of other 'bright' kids.</p>
<p>I eyed this girl carefully. Was she just panicking about upcoming final exams, possibly looking for the right to have extra time to complete these? There was very little I could say, and time was short before class so we made an appointment to continue our discussion after school.</p>
<p>At four she returned and I could not help but notice that the pupil of the right eye was significantly larger than that of the left. I asked about glasses and discovered that she had been reassessed six months prior and that she used her glasses appropriately. She had not noticed this pupil anomaly herself, nor had anyone else.</p>
<p>Professional assessments had earlier established an 'LD' profile (visual problems and eye dominance were not mentioned) and she was actually already entitled to extra time. She did not want this; she insisted she just wanted to understand herself better.</p>
<p>Because this late-day difference in pupil size persisted throughout the weeks we met, I decided to persue her laterality profile. Her early educators had changed her writing hand from left to right. The only trace of cross-laterality now showed at the dining table; she reported her mother wanting her to stop using the knife with her left hand; she has been unable to comply. In a phone interview her mother turned out to be one of those "Oh-that-makes-such-good-sense" parents who was ambidextrous herself and had had numerous difficulties in school.</p>
The neuropsychologist who had assessed Kim a few years earlier and found nothing significant or helpful, was receptive to my observations. Kim was thoroughly re-assessed by this fascinated professional and diagnosed, finally with a 'neurological executive function' disorder; simply put, a delay in processing that caused a 'stall' in undertaking specific tasks. This was a 'new' type of diagnosis and, although it satisfied Kim and her Mother, was met with some skepticism by some administrators.
<p>Kim went on to excel in her final exams and to progress to her university of choice in England.</p>
("Neurological executive function" websites are available and deserve attention.)
That June, via an education chat-room, I had "met" a retired army officer, who had, at one time, been assigned to a group of ambidextrous recruits. He claims that, in his militia, ambidexterity was labeled "a classified medical condition". He drilled his men with both hands, both feet, both eyes, and claimed they became "the best shots in the regiment".
A school counsellor/psychologist e-mailed the chat-room to say that "mixed dominance" was one of the first things she had been trained to look for; she just wasn't told what to do about it.
<p>By the time I returned to Canada I knew I was on to something. I also knew that laterality theories had been discredited. But I knew, above all, that lateral dominance has much to do with perception and cognition, and everything to do with self-concept and self-esteem.</p>
<p>I often think of the students with whom I had failed in my Quebec past.</p>
<p>I remember Chere at age nine who could reem off all the details of her mother's upcoming hysterectomy but simply could not read. She would struggle with a sentence, come to the word 'wonderful', sound out carefully "won...der...f..." and shout out "fantastic!" which would have been contextually appropropriate (she was highly intelligent, after all) but was wrong for assessment purposes. Was she ambidextrous? I don't think so. I would not have checked because her penmanship was good.</p>
<p>Many years ago a middle-aged instructor once told us "When you find a child who cannot print no matter how hard he/she (usually 'he') tries, check for cross-dominance." In a stage whisper (as though she should not be saying this) she added, "Don't kid yourself, this laterality thing is very significant."</p>
<p>So I always checked. But only when sweat appeared at temples trying to print/write between the lines. She was right - at least about the penmanship problems.</p>
<p>It held true in rural Jamaica, in Kingston Jamaica, in inner-city Montreal and in Hull Quebec.</p>
<p>I therefore knew that Steve was 'crossed'. Delightful Steve who knew how to throw the circuit-breaker at 20-below when we were winter camping. Steve who knew me well enough to tell me that he had attempted suicide twice already (he was only 12 then!) Board rules gave me no way of checking his stories. But I know he really did blow up that truck and light up that gallon of gas in someone's swimming pool; other people could vouch for those events. I attributed only his poor penmanship to his mixed dominance. I wish now that I had known so much more... After two years of my fine tutelage Steve finally produced two unsolicited printed words on computer: "FUCK OOF"
"<p>There were so many others over those twenty years in Spec Ed classes. My husband would meet my students in social situations and would always remark: "Why are they in Special Ed? There's nothing wrong with them!"</p>
<p>I never had an answer. They had already been labeled and I was not even provided with the individual codes (lest I should become aware of what funding they should receive...?).</p>
<p>I returned to Canada and for the next eighteen months walked my Mother through breast cancer and gave up on my alternative career as a day-trader of plummeting stock-markets.</p>
<p>Here in Ontario I picked up a group of thirteen students ranging from age 10 to 15. This time I made it a point to check out my 'mixed dominance' suspicions. Twelve of the thirteen had easily-identifiable laterality anomalies. The oldest, a fifteen-year-old artist, I did not assess. He seemed too fragile and I was afraid he might interpret a 'crossed' profile to mean there was something wrong with him. I need not have feared; during one of our impromptu class discussions about strengths and weaknesses he (who is a man of very few words but many startling images) interjected with "So that's why I can throw a ball with both hands, but I can only draw with my right!" He subsequently made huge strides in reading, reminding me of the IB student's "I can because now I know I can".</p>
<p>I discussed laterality with parents and again had some volunteer their own laterality profiles and schooling difficulties.</p>
<p>Twelve of my thirteen were labelled 'MID'; the exception was the 12-year-old dyslexic who tested in the average range on the WISC. (If you have a learning disability and can score within the average range on a WISC, shouldn't your IQ score be boosted? I know there are places in England where this is done.)</p>
<p>This year I plod on. I have many of last-year's students. The dyslexic boy is thirteen now and is making some small gains in reading. His is a long and fascinating case study of physical writer's cramp and binocular tracking difficulties. He has expressed the sensation of his eyes "going suddenly crossed" and of a word "lifting off the page" as I work with him. I asked him yesterday after his arm cramped just below the elbow for the second time this year, whether what happens with his eyes could be described as an "eye-cramp". I took the chance of this savvy young man laughing in my face. Instead he looked at me very steadily and responded "Yes, yes, that's pretty much the same....</p>
<p>Now I could ignore all this. It would be so much easier to label this teenager "lazy and stupid" (as a fellow Spec Ed professional would have me do: "Those kids just have to accept the fact that they are stupid!"), but intelligence shows in the eyes as well as in a WISC score. Ben understands scientific concepts very clearly. He can repair the engines of his skidoo and old truck sometimes "better than Dad". He is no more stupid than ten-year-old 'Newbie', Ken, who can handle scissors with either hand, can problem-solve with alacrity, speaks with sophisticated vocabulary, but who has difficulty encoding ideas into language on paper. Moreover, is plagued with reversal problems in both reading and math.</p>
<p>The British Dyslexia Association, who stated they "had long been aware of a link between laterality" but could not define that link, suggested I aquaint myself with the work of Dr. Stein at Oxford Univeristy.</p>
<p>Dr. Stein's "Monocular Occlusion" experiment, using yellow-tinted glasses with left eye covered for reading/writing activities only, had glowing success (I had thought I was being original when I had proposed "Pirate Reading" to a reluctant new Principal). But Stein et al, (Oxford University's Dyslexia Research Trust ), in response to my query for more details, insist that this should not be attempted with children over the age of ten. My youngest is ten.</p>
<p>Is anyone anywhere using this approach with children under ten?</p>
<p>Last year the mother of a cross-lateral ten-year old (the only boy I have ever known who took only two hours to master juggling three balls) brought in a book titled 'The Learning Disabled Child: Ways That Parents Can Help' by Suzanne H. Stevens (J.F.Blair 1980). Ms. Stevens gives some attention to 'Mixed Dominance'. Although she goes on to give some helpful insight into the difficulties posed by this condition, she states near the beginning of the second chapter:</p>
<p>"It used to be thought that this one symptom could separate LD individuals from all others. This has been found to be wrong."(No research quoted.) "Many LD students do not show any sign of mixed dominance."(Why would they if we don't even check? Note my five-year-old...) "And although it is unusual, mixed dominance is occasionally seen in those who are not learning-disabled." (Yes, some learn to cope. Note all these parents who managed to get through school somehow, but who quickly identify with the problem and have never heard of 'mixed dominance' or been made aware of the 'laterality factor'.)</p>
<p>Such is our reasoning; some exceptions, therefore pitch the baby....</p>
<p>The idea of a laterality link to 'word-blindness' - as a diagnosis established in the late 1800's - was made early in the twentieth century by Orton. 'Mixed dominance' and 'midline' issues were included in my training in the sixties and seventies. When did we drop the ball?</p>
<p>Dr. M. K. Holder at Indiana University is beginning to mention dyslexia in his laterality studies.</p>
<p>Answers will eventually come from neuro-biological science.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I lament that laterality anomalies, which are so easily discernible in even the very young child ('asymmetrical tonic neck reflex' and 'crawling ability'), are not even considered when children are 'screened' for kindergarten. It can do no harm to signal that these children may be 'exceptional' in some sense. They may turn out to be our 'three dimensional thinkers', the ones who can think 'outside the box', our talented artists and musicians and athletes and leaders. We may even identify a genius or two.</p>
<p>But I KNOW that during their early schooling years they will be described as the ones who seem to"march to a different drummer", as "daydreamers" (one International School TA told me she daydreamed to escape - her new environment was so foreign, the expectations so removed from her reality...) as those "square pegs" they are trying to fit into round holes. There will always be a pejorative tone to these descriptors. (Not one of my current colleagues has ever heard of 'mixed dominance' or of laterality studies.) Theirs are the parents who will be bewildered and confused at their off-spring's new-found shortcomings; their children "seemed so bright" until the schooling years began. So much unnecessary heartbreak and disappointment.</p>
<p>Many will end up being sorted out into oversized Spec Ed classes along with those who are lacking in intellect. I, who consider myself a dedicated teacher of many of these classes, have long accepted the harsh fact that the longer a child stays in my class, no matter how hard I work, or how hard he tries, the further behind he falls. His self-image will have been pulverized by the time he is in grade three; his parents will blame him for being lazy, his teachers will label him as 'stupid' (no matter what the going politically correct jargon), and he will drop out as soon as he can.</p>
<p>What to do? How can we avoid...? That is another whole book. But we can start by questioning ourselves and taking a fresh look at why the same expectations are placed on every child . Is every child neurologically equally equipped? Brain studies say no. Do those who excel in elementary school go on to become our outstanding citizens? A quick scan of famous/exceptional people will reveal a group of individuals who often struggled in the early years of schooling (search under 'famous dyslexics' or 'famous letfies' or 'ambidexterity'). Clearly we are making some very wrong assumptions.</p>
<p>Neuro-biological studies will take time. There is sufficient evidence now that we need to reconsider the role of laterality screening and of educating both teachers and parents about the possible implications of this condition.</p>
<p>Many, much dumber ideas have been given credence in the name of 'sound' pedagogy.</p>
<p>Ann Jaansalu -Thompson</p>
|
Related Links:These links open in a new window.
|
About the LDRC
