The Whole-Brain Child

Instead of details and order, our right brain cares about the big
picture—the meaning and feel of an experience—and specializes in
images, emotions, and personal memories. We get a “gut feeling”
or “heart-felt sense” from our right brain. Some say the right brain
is more intuitive and emotional, and we’ll use those terms in the
following pages as a helpful shorthand to talk about what the right
brain does. But keep in mind that technically, it’s more accurate to
talk about this side of the brain as more directly inɻuenced by the
body and lower brain areas, which allow it to receive and interpret
emotional information. It can get complicated, but the basic idea is
that while the left brain is logical, linguistic, and literal, the right
brain is emotional, nonverbal, experiential, and autobiographical—
and it doesn’t care at all that these words don’t begin with the
same letter.
You might think of it this way: the left brain cares about the
letter of the law (more of those L’s). As you know, as kids get older
they get really good at using this left-brain thinking: “I didn’t shove
her! I pushed her.” The right brain, on the other hand, cares about
the spirit of the law, the emotions and experiences of relationships.
The left focuses on the text—the right is about the context. It was
the nonlogical, emotional right brain that prompted Katie to yell to
her father, “I’ll die if you leave me!”
In terms of development, very young children are right-
hemisphere dominant, especially during their ɹrst three years.
They haven’t mastered the ability to use logic and words to express
their feelings, and they live their lives completely in the moment—
which is why they will drop everything to squat down and fully
absorb themselves in watching a ladybug crawl along the sidewalk,
not caring one bit that they are late for their toddler music class.
Logic, responsibilities, and time don’t exist for them yet. But when
a toddler begins asking “Why?” all the time, you know that the left
brain is beginning to really kick in. Why? Because our left brain