What does having laterality anomaly mean for an LD student?

I hear and read a lot of stuff about this topic. “Stuff” is the right word — there is little or no real research and a lot of far-out theorizing.
People state stuff as absolute fact when in fact there is no proof whatever of their hypotheses.

I happen to be ambidextrous myself, use tools such as screwdrivers and paintbrushes with whatever hand fits better in the corner. I do misplace my car in parking lots and occasionally take the eastbound exit when we needed the westbound, but it isn’t exactly a major problem. As far as storing information, I have an Honours math BA, a languages BA, a BSc from an engineering school, an MA in Education, and two years in grad school in math — ‘Nuff said??

I read very early at age four and wrote quite late at age eight; however, my daughter, who has been distinctly right-handed since before the age of ten months (I observed) *also* read early at age two-three and wrote quite late at age seven — in our case, the hands are the last thing to develop and stay baby-sized well into the teens, so it is hand development, nothing to do with dominance.

I do write consistently with my right hand; simce there is no preference, I might as well go with the majority. And since the right hand has been trianed for decades, it is favoured on average. But I can switch back and forth whenever the task demands it.

You can teach your child to write and do other school tasks right-handed, and you can encourage moving around in three dimensions and learning spatial judgement. Other than that, being able to rotate images in your head is a great skill both for testing and for engineering, so enjoy.

Hi victoria,

It is me again. I had an early post about my son choosing the correct hand. Still trying to find answers of why things are hard for him. I have been doing some web searches and found an article about being left eyed and right handed or both handed. What I was wondering about is the effects of being left eyed and using your right hand to write.

Does it make thing more confusing?

Is he right mind or left mind? Does it matter?

The articles I have found give examples similar to my son but no explaintion or solution or advise what to do about it. Is there anything to do about it?

I can use both hands but my dominate eye and hand have always been the same side. If it makes a difference when they are different I would like to give him the tools to work with it. If it does not make a difference then I have ruled it out.

Victoria I laught when I read your experience with the window. Down here we do not open windows. I miss that fresh air feeling. I am from the North but I do not miss the winters.

Oh we do not use pencils at home anymore. I bought a pen with a triangle grip. It was fun the first few times he tried to erase but now he does not mind xing out. We use it even for math which he like because at school you not a loud to use pen. I do not know about the rules in using pens in second grade is? The use of pens might not start until 3rd.

Well got off track. Any more advise on left eyed and right hand working together or does it not matter?
Thanks.

Well, as I said, the problem is that there is a bushel of junk published to every thimbleful of actual research and fact.

The research about brain dominance is very subtle and nuanced and tends to speak of statistical averages. Things like about 80% of men are right-dominant 80% of the time or some such, and much less for women — not exactly hard and fast. Then certain people take these general and on-average statements and build a whole theoretical castle in the air on very little foundation.

I do not know of any real research about mixed dominance. Doesn’t mean there is absolutely no research, but it sure isn’t mainstream.

What we do know os that trying to force a switch in handedness is a very bad idea; rarely really works and causes stress and psychological problems. This has been tried for centuries and is a well-know pattern.

Taking that as a basis, I prefer to work with what the student has, not try to force a change. OT type exercise and visual training exercises and vision therapy are all things that can;t hurt and may help, so get information and do what you can at home, plus with a tutor when possible.

I agree with Victoria, as usual. We use both eyes, not one, so I can’t possibly see eye dominance as a valid issue. I would not mention this to the teachers. Instead, you need to seek a reliable psychoeducational or neuropsychological evaluation for your child. The symptoms you mention of disorganization, poor writing, and sometimes knowing an answer and other times not are also ADHD symptoms. Or he certainly could have some kind of visual motor problems and that can be screened by an OT.

I am also afraid I do not see the logic in calling mixed dominance a gift.

Janis

I plan to discuss visual perception with his school and doctor in aug. He is getting good at reading but if he does not use his fingers to follow the lines he skips lines, and rereads lines. I took him to an eye doc in July. He has 20-20 and 20-15. I forget which is near and far sighted but it is all good.

I do see a differents with his eye and hand dominance with skills outside of education. Obvious things like playing pool, lasor tag with his friends.

I am not going to switch his hand use.

I see it effect him outside of school, just wanted to make sure it would not effect him inside of school.

I was very interested in dominance and how it effects LD kids about 7 years ago and did alot of reading on it. What I discovered is that from a neurodevelopmental perpective is that all the studies agree that your brain does have a dominant hemisphere(right or left). After that, there is alot of differences of opinion. What makes up dominance? (arm, leg, eye, ear), should you have left or right? should you switch or just make hemispheres talk better.

Here’s a couple views from a few different organizations:

NACD - Robert Doman believes an individual should establish a completely dominant side (IF you’re funcationality is not there - i.e. have learning disabilities). He believes in total dominance from leg, arm, ear, eye, but believes that there are people who are naturally left dominant vs. right. Again, if your functionality is not there, they recommend on switching dominance and believe you can switch dom. at any age. He also believes in developmental stages and good cross-laterality.

Alfred Tomatis - Dr. Tomatis believed that the ear was the most important dominant trait and you should be right dominant in ear. His sound therapy program works the right ear to strenthen it’s dominance.

PACE - They don’t really call it dominance or talk about needing right eye dominance, but when I went to the training class, they discussed their own theory and observations that kids who had reading difficulties or reversal issues would tend to want to lead themselves from right to left vs. left to right. Many of their training exercises try to re-train an individual to ‘move’ left to right. This struck me as dominance because my dd is left eye dominant (everything else is right) and I see her doing this. She does not lead with her eye going from left to right. (and she has reading challenges and reversal issues). I’m completely right dominant and I have a natural tendancy to ‘move’ from left to right and and I can feel that it’s my right eye that is leading me.
P.S. we did PACE and it helped her alot and she does much better with ‘blending’ and decoding a word, but it did not change her dominance. I can tell reading with her that moving left to right is not a natural tendency for her.

Handle - they also believe that your brain has a dominant hemisphere. However, they don’t try to switch -rather their exercises are suppose to make your left and right sides communicate better to each other. (sort of like brain gym).

Anyway I could go on and on with this topic, but won’t bore you with it. What I did find interesting was that over the last 7-8yrs on this board, whenever this topic came up - everyone who had a child who struggles indicated that their child had some kind of mixed dominant issue. I know of other people who also are mixed in some way and they don’t have any issues, but I have yet to know an LD child who is completely dominant? So makes me wonder.

I agree with the previous poster. It does seem that LD children tend to have mixed dominance but not all people with mixed dominance are LD. My husband, for example, has mixed dominance but is not LD. We have done Neuronet which, like Handle, believes in improving communication between the different spheres of the brain. What is interesting is that I have seen my son switch from being left foot dominant to being right foot dominant, as his brain has become better organized. It used to be that he kicked a soccer ball, for example, with his left foot. He is right handed, although any preference took him a long time to establish.

I have found this all interesting because I am totally right side dominant and am a total klutz with my left side.

Beth

My son reverses his number. He writes them backwards and reads them backwards. When he toke the color blind test he saw all the numbers within the colors but he said the numbers wrong meaning if it was a 35 he said 53 for all but two.

did you do any Brain Gym exercise with your daughter?

A friend of mine recently asked me what hand he used as a baby. I did not remember so I looked at his baby pictures. He held his toys, bottle and reached with his left hand until just about one. Then he started to use both but more the left. By three from the picture you could not tell which he was. By the end of K he chosed his right hand write did some stuff with left now at 8 he is mostly a righty.

This friend (no formal training just opinion) said that he is a lefty and lefty are visual learners and since he had the option to chose his hand preference chose right because that is what he visually saw and minic. MY son is left eyed and left foot I do not know which ear he is? Most definitely a visual learner no doubt.

Any advise to help him?

What is Neuronet and Handle?

Thank you

NACD has told me (right or wrong?) that reversals are because of left eye dominance. My dd has experienced reversal tendancies, esp. when she was younger.

You should consider taking your son to a good developmental optometrist. Tracking, convergence and other visual perceptual abilities are not checked by a standard eye exam.

You can find Handle at Handle.org. They do alot at the ‘visual’ level, so it may be of interest to you. You may want to post a question on this board as I recall there were some posters here that have some experience with Handle and what to expect.

Beth can give you info on Neuronet.

If you are interested in learning more about dominance, bi-laterality and how missing certain developmental stages can effect you, then I recommend NACD.org site. There is alot of information and articles on their web site as well as a parent education audio tape series - particularly one titled “Guide to Child Development and Education’. I found it very interesting.

Personally, I believe there are some advantages to being mixed dominant. My dd has some ‘gifts’, that I don’t think would be prevelant if she were not ‘mixed’ in some way. I mentioned that I am very right dominant. I did very well in school and am fairly organized and think sequentially. But I have zero creativity, no music abilities, no artistic capabilities and my motor athletic abilities do not nearly match my dd’s. (my husband has same profile as my dd and struggled in school same way - she is like a clone of her father).

My son is completely right dominant and is alot like me. However, he missed a couple key developmental milestones - could not roll over, could not pull himself up and went straight to walking at 9.5mo. He struggles athletically as he just has no timing and he also has low processing speed (although is gifted in visual and auditory processing as well as visual and auditory memory cognitive abilities). So I took him for an evaluation for Interative Metronome. Overall he was in the average range, but there was one area that he scored in way below average - it was a cross laterality exercise. Where you had to touch opposite sides of body to the metromome. They had recommended some brain gym exercises for him vs. doing the whole IE program. As my son is a typical teenager, I couldn’t get him to do any of the exercises. So he continues to struggle with his sports!!

Well, the whole NACD system has a lot of good exercises, but the theory is on shaky foundations. Worth looking into as practical things to do but don’t believe everything they say is fact.

I’m curious on why you think NACD has no facts behind their dominance and laterality information? Their information on Neurological development seem to be very similar to other readings I have done on it(including Handle)? I found it to be a good source of information (very easy to understand in laymans terms) if one is interested in understanding more on how these developmental aspects of our brain can effect our function.

The Doman family has long time history of brain and neurodevelopmental research. There is an institute the family founded back east(I think Bob Doman’s father or grandfather). The work Bob Doman’s uncle(Glenn Doman??) did is part of the foundation that the folks from Audiblox used in their program.

Bob Doman’s overall program is unconventional and I’m by no means recommending that this is a solution to people who are mixed dominant. But I do believe that the information they provide on Child Development is very interesting and a good source of information for people who are just wondering ‘Why is my child struggling’ from more of a holistic view. One can read their articles and even order their parent education tape series (it’s not very expensive) and NOT have to do their program. Most of their work is with the severly handicapped - Down Syndrom, CP, brain injury, autism etc. These families look to the unconventional as they don’t want to accept the ‘conventional’ alternatives.

I personnally felt more comfortable with organizations that were looking at the child as ‘whole’ and trying to address the root cause of the issue, vs. trying to address a child’s issues at a ‘symptom’ level.

When my child was first diagnosed with LD, I became literally obscessed over WHY and HOW do I ‘fix’ her. I read everything I could get my hands on. I just happened to have that holistic mentality. Overall, I was able to find a ‘pattern’ and those facts that you say are unfounded, I discovered in more than one place. I have learned I can’t ‘fix’ her, but I sure can help improve her functionality. I felt personal comfort in obtaining any information I could so I understood her better.

I’m not an expert and really can’t tell you if their ‘facts’ are true or not.

There is a huge gap between interesting, holistic, many years of experience, have written a lot, supportive — and scientifically proved fact.

I find the Doman and Handle stuff interesting, and a lot of their exercises are grounded in pedagogical experience and what is called empirical testing — if it works, good, keep doing it.
But their whole theory about brain dominance is only tenuously connected to the scientific research community, and they tend to make overblown claims and sweeping generalizations that are not supported by the research.

As far as their programs, good, try them, do what works
(except that Doman used to have babies memorize words by sight from flash cards, a dead end and not recommended, far better to do sounds first and then words, both experience and research show this.)

But the statements of how the brain works need to be taken with large grains of salt.

There is an occasional poster here who claims (a) to have his own test results below the first percentile in analytical reasoning, and (b) to be able to inform us all about science. If his posts weren’t so mean-spirited it would be hilariously funny; he reports mixtures of fact, opinion, fringe theory, out-and-out wackiness, and political spin all in the same mishmash — he has no judgement at all.
The whole discussion about dominance is the same kind of goulash, a certain amount of fact, mixed with a lot of opinion, a lot of looking at the past with rose-coloured glasses, a lot of overgeneralizations, and some stuff that is just plain wrong.
If you really want to find out about brain dominance, read some serious scientific articles; a good place to start would be Scientific American, which you will find in library files and reprints. You will find that there are NO simple, pat, easy answers; it is a complex question with complex results.

My son was so far off on the cross laterality exercises in IM that he was actually closer to the next beat!!!

He did IM and it had a major impact on his sports’ ability. He is now above average while he used to be below average.

Interestingly, for him, the more he has done to address his learning disabilities that have involved motor movement (IM and Neuronet), the better he has become at sports. Last year when he was playing basketball there was this huge impact on his dribbling when he got his balance down enough to do a headstand for Neuronet.

These kind of improvements have been better for his self esteem than even the academic improvements.

I have not studied any of this but I live with the daily proof that there is something to it.

Beth

Victoria - I agree with you. You make a good point (you always do). I have never claimed that anything I posted was scientifically accurate - I have only stated the very high level general views of different organizations had on dominance. And yes, I found it all ‘interesting’ and I had to make my own conclusions and decisions about what I wanted to believe or didn’t believe. Based on what I know about my dd, I do have to wonder if there is something to it all? That is all I’m claiming!!!

I do however, believe that there IS scientific evidence that the brain has a dominant and sub-dominate hemisphere. I think it’s the ‘switching’ vs. ‘communicating’ that you are probably questioning as well as how it relates to our learning capabilities. My hunch is that if you were to call NACD and asked for research articles on brain dominance, they can probably provide that to you.

I don’t think it’s fair to discredit NACD on the fact that they believe in switching dominance. NACD(Handle, Neuronet, PACE, LMB, Audiblox, FFW etc.) all use exercises on the basis that the brain has plasticity and can create new neuronetworks with the proper stimulation. There is LOTS of research that supports plasticity in the brain and many articles on child brain development (my articles I have saved are very old, but I have a couple in my file. There are some really good ones from Newsweek in 1996 era - there was even a whole special edition on brain development from Birth to Three. sites a number of research done to support the articles).

NACD’s primary philosophy is not switching dominance(it’s just one of many factors they look at). Rather, it’s creating a learning environment such that their exercises relate to stimulating the brain in the best probably manner considering where the child’s profile falls. Really no different than any of the other programs that are on the market today. - they just take it to a different level. I do find that they look at more ‘areas’ than most of the other programs. Such as health or allergy aspects, sensory, tactile, motor, processing, memory, academic, etc. They seem to put the pieces together better than any other ‘program’ I have come across - whether they are correct or not - I don’t know. One would have to decide for themselves what value and effort they want to put toward it. I know of people who have had very negative experience with NACD and others who have had positive ones. Again, no different than any of the other programs including LMB which seems to be so popular on this board. (we did not have a good experience with LMB, but like ANY program I believe the success of the program is related to the effort and implementation).

Again, I’m not advocating one program vs. another. I’m only trying to provide AnneV another resource to look if she is ‘interested’ in learning more on dominance and developmental aspects of child development.

Too many times I see on this board where posters are quick to claim ‘bunk’ because of lack of peer reviewed research. If I waited for peer reviewed research, I would not have a happy, self-confident, honor roll 12 year old ‘neurologically disorganized’ daughter, but rather the opposite and many more gray hairs to my collection.

Victoria, I in NO MEAN want to debate you on this - you will kick my butt everytime, but wanted to make a comment on your comment about Doman teaching babies sight words.

First let me state that I have never agreed with NACD’s reading program and unless they have done something NEW in the past 8yrs, 8yrs ago they would even have told you that they were missing something in their reading program too (ah ha - we probably know what that is).

However, the reason they had used sight words/flash cards to start their clients is because they believe a person’s ability to do sound/symbol is limited by their digit span. Remember that a good majority of their clients are down syndrom, severely handiapped etc. and these children tend to have only a 1-2 digit span. Once they would build their digit span up to a 6, then they would put them on a phonics type program (of which again 8 yrs ago they agreed they had yet to find the a reading program they liked). They are very much into positive success .

When my dd was in kindergarten, she had severe auditory memory deficit. She could not remember sound/symbol for the life of her and in the meantime her peers were all starting to read those early readers - like the Bob books. She HATED school and getting her to read was a horrible punishment to her. I saw her self-esteem crumble every day. We were doing LMB with a private tutor and were getting zero progress after 4mo. She was only experiencing failure and smart enough to know it.

In the meantime, of course not knowing anything about teaching reading, we had those flash cards that had the common words on it. Well of course she couldn’t remember any of those either. That’s about the time I stumbled on NACD, ordered their tapes and tried their flash card technique. I was truely amazed that she rememberd them(and in a VERY short time - like minutes) and was just absorbing like a sponge. She was now able to ‘read’ and I can’t tell you how this boosted her confidence and attitude. This was a critical milestone for her and although not the scientific researched way to read, she was one of the top readers by the end of her K year. She now LIKED school. We also tried the digit span deal (because I could not find any other program at the time that addressed memory). I DID see a coorelation between her digit span and ability to blend words. She IMMEDIATELY started blending sounds at digit span of 5. (she started at a 3).

Note: The reading program in Audiblox taught a similar reading technique. Which we did also.

I felt both programs, however, reinforced a look and guess habit and this was hard to overcome later on. It was really PACE/Master the Code that helped her read what some would call the ‘correct’ way. However, I still contend that reading left to right, blending, decoding left to right is not a natural tendancy for her. It’s like she wants to decode from the middle and go out. She is very high visual spatial and I have read that this type of kid sees words as whole or in pictures- they don’t see things sequentially. I REALLY hate to admit this, but I think whole language is more her natural style (and I am NOT an advocate of whole language). Just makes me wonder.

Thank you all for your advise. I have been waiting to see his ped. today before I posted. His opinion is that I can spend a lot of money and look into places that say they can change things but he says it is all about maturity. Talking more than just about the dominance here. We can take to all the places we want but it is not going to happen until he naturally clicks. He said it is a slow processes and just be patience. He said if I need to take him to places that work on his weakness to do so but he suggested I spend the money and take him to places to work on his strengths.

I do not know what his strenghts are other than a visual learner is his strongest method of learning. He has a lot of weakness. I am having a hard time seeing past them to see his strengths. He has been asking to play the guitar?? He is only 8. I am looking into prices. I asked him at the beginning of summer if he wanted to be in a play. He said no way. An actor I think is a strength of his. I do not know how he would do memorizing lines but he can put on a show:0)

After three years of neg feedback I am ready for some more positive.

I find out who his teacher is tomorrow. I am excited and nervous. My son is so looking forward to school this year because he gets to go to second this year. It is a good way to start the year.

Anne

Well we set our son up for guitar lessons. He is so funny. The man handed to him to receive in his right hand. He played with it for awhile in his right hand. We brought it home. He has been playing with it on and off all day. But he is holding it lefty. I was playing with it lefty so he was copying me.

One thing I have definitly learn here is that he is so a visual learner. Here is something very new to him so no definite way to hold it and each time he held the way the last person he saw.

He is very excited about his new adventure and I was told this will help build his fine motor skills. His first lesson is next week and his is telling everyone he knows how to play the guitar. It is definitely nice to see him excited.

We meet his teacher for this year yesterday. It was the teacher I wanted. I do not know if you all read the emotional rollcoaster post and the end part of the why is always the teachers fault but that was his story. It was a hard negative year. This year he will have a caring male teacher. We are very pleased. We do have a new resourse teacher but she seems very nice and has been teaching special ed for several years. This monday is the big first day back.

There is hope for a better year. This right / left thing is still confusing but I guess it is nothing to worry about. I do wonder if he every got a left handed teacher if he would switch his writting hand like he switches other things? :0)

Anne