Motherhood taught Viriya Udomphol the Shuchida Method to bolster baby brains

Having a child is a life-changing thing. Just ask Viriya Udomphol, who was an adviser to a tourism committee and pursuing a PhD in environmental engineering when her baby came along.

And baby came first.

Viriya wanted to know the best way to put her little one on the road to knowledge, and believes she found it in the Shichida Method.

The concept was developed by Dr Makoto Shichida, who has founded more than 450 pre-school academies in Japan at which the "Image Brain" idea is used to lay the foundation for future learning.

Viriya introduced the Shichida Method to Thailand four months ago, setting up a school in the Phoenix Building on Sukhumvit Soi 31.

Now chief executive of Shichida (Thailand), she explains that the right and left hemispheres of the brain have different functions but are designed to work in tandem in solving problems.

The left brain is conscious and logical, takes in information slowly and works best with repetition.

The right half is subconscious and intuitive, quick to absorb information and requires no repetition.

"From birth to age three the right brain dominates," Viriya says. "Flashing information to a child stimulates the right brain. From ages four to six, the child starts to the left brain."

Dr Shichida was a teacher who "wondered why his students often forgot what they'd learned", says Viriya. "So he did some research and discovered how a photographic memory allows everything we've learned to be viewed in the mind as if it were a snapshot.

"Children don't think, they memorise. When the right-brain function is linked to the left, they can understand and calculate faster."

In the Shichida Method, toddlers are shown flashcards bearing images, words and numbers. If these sessions are kept happy, relaxed and brief and the cards are shown quickly, their rate of learning improves.

"At the school we normally show the kids 400 cards four times, and then it becomes the parents' job, since parent-child bonding is essential to this method."