Left/right handed

[Lydwatt]

I was surprised that my dd's year 1 teachers felt that she was still undecided as it seemed to me that she does use now her left hand almost all the time. however, she has been undecided for a long time in the past, eg kicking footballs with her right.

I am aware that stats have shown lefties make up about 10% and I am also aware that the numbers of lefties have been increasing and i have put this down to a change in policy to stop forcing left-handed children to write with their right (so that all but the very left handed used to be counted as right-handers).

The point of all of this is that am curious as to what causes left/right-handed (is it genetic?). i also heard once that stammmas could be cuased by forcing lefties to be right handed (is this really true??. What exactly is the philosophy about hand choice in school??

Anyone know??!

[Saracen]

The subject in general is an unknown area for me, but here is a factlet which might interest you:

I once read a book published by AIMS (Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services) called "Ultrasound? Unsound." It questioned the increasing popularity of routine ultrasound scans in pregnancy, and the increase in power used with more modern techniques. The book cited a study showing that a significantly larger proportion of children who had been exposed to ultrasound before birth turned out to be left-handed, compared with children who had no antenatal ultrasound exposure. I don't remember details of the study.

The book is listed here under "Publications": www.aims.org.uk/

[YourCallIsImportant]

I'm left handed, as is my DD, my aunt, my MIL and my gran.

I always thought I was a little bit special as a child for being left handed

This is from Wikipedia....

In his book Right-Hand, Left-Hand, Chris McManus of UCL argues that the proportion of left-handers is increasing and left-handed people as a group have historically produced an above-average quota of high achievers. He says that left-handers' brains are structured differently in a way that increases their range of abilities, and the genes that determine left-handedness also govern development of the language centres of the brain.

In a 2006 U.S. study, researchers from Lafayette College and Johns Hopkins University concluded that there was no scientifically significant correlation between handedness and earnings for the general population, but for college-educated people left-handers earned 10 to 15 % more than their right-handed counterparts

[prettybird]

very important: your dd can be right footed but still left handed. Don't be confused by that.

She can also have a dominant right eye and still be left handed. The brain is a complicated thing!

For example, dh is left handed but left eyed.

I am left handed but right eyed.

I am also a "hook hander", ie I "break"/bend my wrist, as opposed to having my hand in a line to my elbow. I think that is linked to being right eyed.

Hook handers'/right eyed brains are not normally as "swapped over" as left eyed left handed brains.

In general left handers are forced/able to use more of their brain (ie both halfs) - and have better/stronger links between the hemispheres.

it also means that left handers are naturally superior

Interestingly, ds is left handed!

[musicmadness]

I'm left handed, and I think there must be some genetic component to left/right handedness but I don't think that is the full story.
your DD can be left handed but right footed by the way! There are quite a few people who are right handed but left footed as well.
I'm left handed, left eyed and right footed. Go figure. The brain is a wonderful and complicated thing.

[Runoutofideas]

My dd1 is in yr1 and is definitely left handed. Luckily for her, her yr1 teacher is too. She said her teacher was showing her how to write without smearing her hand over the top. Neither DH or I are left handed, but MIL is. How do you work out which eye you are?

[MaryBS]

DH is left handed, right footed and plays all sports right handed.

I am left handed, left footed, left eyed (which eye do you use, for say, a telescope?), left eared (put the phone to my left ear

Of the kids, DD is most definitely right handed. DS is right handed, left footed.

[mrz]

Some young children do swap between hands for different tasks a few swap hands half way through the same task so it is possible your daughter is doing this.
I was predominately left handed until I broke my arm when I was 7 and just swapped to writing with my right which I still do but I do most other tasks left handed - I can't pour with my right hand or use a screw driver [odd]
Incidentally my father was left handed in the days schools discouraged . He recalls his left hand being tied to make him write with his right and yes he did develop a stammer which stayed with him until his 20s...

[shongololo]

think handedness has a genetic component, but it is a recessive gene. my whole family - parents cousins, aunties etc are righties. Ditto my husbands. Then suddenly - 3 cousins born as lefties. There is no social stigma to being a lefty now, so maybe that accounts for the perceived increase?

ALso, yes, there can be mixed dominance in eye/hand/leg. It can cause issues such as clumsiness and poor hand/eye coordination. amoungst lefties.


I find that there is little or no help with eg handwriting for lefties. My son really has struggled throughout infants, as he was the only lefty in 3 years in the school! Now he is in a class with 8 lefties, and they are running special workshops for the lefties to help them - have you ever seen a lefty try and do a finger space between words...? try it. Commas are back to front and he still transposes letters like J and S, so its all very difficult for them.

Plus we have found the most ridiculous things to be difficult - sharpening a pencil for example. I am tempted to buy stuff from the left handed society, but I don't know if its a gimmick or really worth doing.

[Runoutofideas]

I agree shongololo - I think my dd is very lucky to have a teacher who understands the issues - She has told her to "imagine a finger space", which works for dd. They are also trying to teach them to join up their writing, which makes it harder still, and seems very early (Yr1).

[MaryBS]

The left handed society's products are really good, I would give them a try. They have some stuff on offer atm too!

[Lydwatt]

Its really interesting, isn't it!

My dh is left handed but so are 2 out of 4 nephews on my side of the family. i have noticed that dd finds learning left from right harder than her younger (very right handed) bro. I have wondered if it is easier to remember if you can feel the dominance within you. So if the genetic recessive thing is right then it is in both families. Could there be a degree of co-dominace going on? I agree that this is more complicated than that

Getting together with Dh made me more aware of how many devices around the home are right handed biased. And also how language is used right=dexturous (sp!!) left=sinister from the latin

Interestngly, DD teachers mentioned that there were a number of lefties in her class, so the proportion is quite high. I find the ultrasound interesting but am still more convinced that, if there is a spectrum of dominance we are all on, the imporved attitude to left handedness must account for more people like my daughter being allowed to develop leftedness.

brains are wierd old things...who was it who said 'if the brain was simple enough for us to understand, we would be too simple to appreciate it!'

[prettybird]

Dh is 51 and when he was primary school he was nearly forced to write with his right hand . Fortunately his mother was a teacher at the same school and one day when he was waiting for her and doing his homework, she came across him writing with his left hand behind his back . She read his teacher the riot act! ... and she can be a very scary lady when she is angry

There is a recessive genetic component but it is not a simple as that, vz: ds being right handed when we are both left nhanded, albeit different "types" of left hander. I red somewhere that instead of the "normal" one in then chance of being left handed, the child of two lefties had a one in three chance of being left handed, ie an increased probability but not a certainty.

To work out which "eye" you are, point to a distinct point in the medium distance, eg the far corner of the room, where it joins the ceiling. Now cover one eye and see if your finger is still pointing to the corner. Then cover the other eye and see if you're still pointing to the corner. Whichever eye you are looking with which keeps your finger pointing to the corner is your dominant eye. If I cover my left eye, my finger is still pointing to the corner, which means I am right eyed.

[IndigoBell]

On another thread people were saying that everyone was Aspergers is left handed.

No idea if it's true or not (my DS with Aspergers is left handed, and everyone else contributing to the thread said the same) but if it is, then it is truly fascinating.

(Mrz - is your DS left handed?)

[ShrinkingViolet]

DD1 is left handed and right eyed - she really struggled during PE if there was a ball involved as her hand-eye coordination was spectacularly rubbish (unless, oddly, it was rounders,that's the one ball game she can actually do).

She had left handed scissors when she was younger, but prefers to use right handed stuff as much as possible "as everything is right handed so I might as well get used to it". The Left Handed shop (way back when it was in Woucester) were incredibly helpful when she was starting to write - they spent about half an hour with her discussing pencil grip, how to slant the paper (at a 45 degree angle) and so on.

[ShrinkingViolet]

oh, and i had many more scans with her than with her sisters - she's the only leftie in this house, although one GP and one great GP were also left handed (from different sides of the family).

[prettybird]

I agree with yuor dd1 Shrinking Violet - you may as well get used to it.

Interesting about slanting the paper: my mum does (who is also LH/reight eyed) but I don't - instead I "hook-hand". I'm not as bad as some I've seen, in that I don't actually "break" my wrist (contrary to waht I wrote earlier) as some do, but my pen/pencil, instead of aligning along my arm, points *away( from me. That way, I can see what I am writing.

I do struggle with flip charts/black/white boards though.

I don't remember struggling at PE - although my hand-eye coordination wasn't terribly good until I learnt to clay-pigeon shoot in my late 20s. (Off my right shoulder 'cos I am right eyed )

[emptyshell]

I think from what I remember from my A-levels... there's a genetic component to it, and also right-handed children of lefties have their brains wired in a slightly different way to right-handed children of righties.

I'm the only righty in a family of lefties so I do do some things left-handedly through learning by observation. My mum's so dominantly left-handed that she still fights pulling the car to the left when she drives, and managed to learn to ride a bike fairly recently - but only in a left handed circle. My grandad, further up the line, was ambidextrous.

My mum has a T-shirt she proudly wears sometimes declaring only "left-handed people are in their right minds"... goes well with the "typical mother or ruthless dictator - future historians will decide" and "who needs men when you can have chocolate" that also live in her wardrobe.

My step-cousins are identical twins, apart from one's left-handed and one's right-handed which I think I recall hearing somewhere was due to the point where they split from each other in the womb.

Never heard the stammer thing though - I have quite a severe one when stressed and upset, which started fairly randomly after I had my breakdown and is very strongly stress-linked.

[GettinGhoulish]

My ds is left handed, dh and I are right-handed, my bro is left handed, dad is right-handed but does some things left handed.

ds dislikes handwriting and has to make a big effort to make it legible and hates ball games. We've just done that test Pretty, and ds is left handed and left eyed.

I read somewhere (no idea if it's true) that a higher proportion of schizophrenia sufferers are left handed, would be interested to know if there's any correlation.

[prettybird]

The stammer can be casued by being forced to write with the "wrong" hand.

[Lydwatt]

I believe that the identical twin thing is that... many are mirror image twins due to the way the ball of eggs split and developed at an early stage. By splitting like this, it is as though the two twins develop form the ball as though they were looking at each other. Like you would be identical to your mirror image.

Which means that in many identical twins one is left and the other is right handed. What that would mean about brain development is interesting...


My sister in law told me that her pre-school teacher said if you want to know which handed the child would be, look to see which foot they kick a ball with. Nice to see that this was a load of poop and is has been confusing me with dd!!

[prettybird]

Yup - it's a load of tosh. I'm pretty sure that I am right footed (not that I play football ). I play rouunders right handed.

[KnackeredCow]

There is a link between language and handedness.

The left hemisphere is dominant for language in about 95% right-handed people

In about 60% of left-handed people the left hemisphere is dominant or highly involved language.

Cerebral dominance is futher complicated by mixed dominance throughout the body - eg if a person is left-handed but right-footed.

Stammering is a fluency disorder BUT there is no clear evidence supporting its actual causes. Mixed cerebral dominance may be a factor, and I suppose it follows that this could be exacerbated by making a peron who is right-hemisphere dominant for language and naturally left-handed write with their right hand (this would force the left-hemisphere to have more involvement in language). However, this as a theory isn't conclusive.

Left-handedness fascinates people but nobody really understands it and those who were left handed, in the past were viewed with suspicion.... The English word sinister comes from the latin meaning left!

That said being left-handed, right-footed and right-eye dominant has never caused me any problems in life (although the only thing for which I am truly left-handed is writing).[hsmile]

[sarahfreck]

I am a lefty (the only one in a family of RHers)and had the usual problems with handwriting and teachers not understanding my needs growing up.

If you have a lefty in the family please be aware of all the things that can be difficult.

I had my first pair of LH scissors (properly LH rather than the usual "suitable for both" which just means grips are ambidextrous rather than blades reversed) and a LH vegetable knife for my 40th birthday! What a difference! I'd never even thought about knives but serrated ones are only ground on one side -the wrong one for lefties. No wonder I've never been able to slice bread straight!

Also think about rulers( At school I got really good at subtraction because of drawing lines from R to L but having to subtract to see how long my line should be), tin openers, vegetable peelers, round door knobs (turn instinctively the "wrong way). Lever handles on loos always being on LHS,(so suitable for right handers facing it), CD covers (I broke the first one I tried to open because I instinctively wanted to open it the "wrong" way), Some (usually older but may still be in use in schools) laptops that have the integral mouse in top RH corner, any things with a thread (screws, jar and bottle tops) turn instinctively the "wrong" way, electric jigsaws and drills where the emergency stop faces the palm when used by a Leftie, college chair/desk things where the writing pad is on the right...etc.

For some things like scissors, knives, chair/desks and peelers I think it is essential that Lefties have special equipment. Of course you can't change everything but I think that Lefties' brains have to work harder on an everyday basis to manage all the things that are counter-intuitive or awkward. Lefties are not necessarily as clumsy as we may seem; it's just we have to use a lot of tools and equipment that is not deigned for LH use. Sometimes I feel so strongly about it that I think we are a hidden discriminated against minority! Do most right-handers ever think about the situation, or feel that it is much of a real problem, or even care?

[bruffin]

My dd is left handed and so is my sister. My mother eats lefthanded so not sure if she was a leftie that was forced to use her right.

I always thought I was righthanded until recently when I was getting pains in my left arm and realised I use my left hand for heavy stuff, ie lifting pans or undoing bottles, whereas for writing and small motor skills I am strongly right hand and am not really ampidextrous.
I do archery when I go to CP, first time I was told I was right eyed but last time I went I was apparently lefteyed so used a left bow.
Interestly I do have word finding difficulties and although I have a good vocabularly I often can't remember the word I am trying to say Ie there is a word I want to insert in the paragraph above and still can't think what it is.

Actually it is two word "motor skills" but it has taken me minutes to think of it.

[auntevil]

Just to let you know the 'making you write with the 'wrong' had is alive and well and exists where i live. It used to break my heart watching my DS doing work at home sitting on his hand that he wasn't allowed to use. He too showed no hand dominance - tested by OT department and agreed - although both OT and myself had a 'feeling' that he preferred his left. School decided that he was right handed and that stopping him using his left would improve his fine motor skills. What a crock. Moved schools - re-learnt how to write. He now uses his right hand, but has learnt to write his letters in an unusual style - often starting the letter at the wrong point (for a right hander). When he is tired - he switches hands - to not very much difference in style.
Strangely, DH writes with his RH, but according to his mother, had a similar experience, which is why he plays golf, does DIY etc with his left hand. Me, i'm a RH, who sews with LH - taught by mother, who didn't teach me to write. Just found out i am a left eye as well!