My left-handed, right-brainer child

After watching one of those re-run episodes of Oprah w/Dr OZ on TV about the left or right brain dominate people, we did a test on Gemma to see which eye was her dominant side - and it was the left one. Mikael and I both did the test as well, and we were just the majority of people with the right eye as our dominant one. We tried repeating the test but the result stuck the same. Yeah, sometimes we liked to think we were the special kind...

Gemma has always been a left-hander. Now we discover her dominant eye is on her left side as well. Knowing that she's a right-brainer child helps us to understand why we often have hard times to understand her thinking process and behaviour.

During lunchtime, I asked her about her day in school. She told me as usual, "I don't remember." Before I could say how come you don't remember? She already opened her mouth and told me that she was still thinking. She tried not to look at me because she knew I was starring at her and waiting for the answer. She then said, "Mommy, you know? My mind doesn't always have school things. My mind has a lot of princesses and monsters, and that's what I am thinking."

What can I say about Gemma? She has a fantasy world in her mind. Both Mikael and I have found her thoughts interesting. We even join her quite often to create stories and scenarios.

It's all fun until on some occasions we get soft complaints from the parents of her friends. We got one yesterday. We went for dinner at our friend's place and Gemma was playing with their two boys who were 5 years old. She told them that if anyone touched her necklace, he would become a frog. The way she described the "magic" necklace and then chased the boys around with it finally made one of them cry. Later into the evening, the mother of the boys said that Gemma was telling stories about vampires, and it was just too frightening for the boys.

It wasn't the first time Gemma's imaginary stories scared her friends. We had two other kids who always had no problem sleeping on their own(since birth) suddenly had to sleep with their parents after hearing Gemma's stories about ghosts and monsters. The parents were not too pleased.  Gemma said that her friends might have been overreacted because those were friendly ghosts and monsters. Why were they scared?

Should I tell her not to tell anyone her imaginative stories from now on?

Other than the fantasy stories, Gemma is very good at dealing with feeling and emotions. She is always very understanding. She seems to have the ability to see the big picture better than I do.  I am surprised by the perspective she has at such a young age.  There, the right-brainer child.