I’ve just discovered my son is ambidextrous!

[CatchIt]

So in nursery, my son (9) used to write & draw with both hands, by school he’d settled on being left handed. No problem.

The other day he was practicing his cricket bowl (without ball thank god!) in the kitchen but he was doing it with his right hand. It’s the first time I’ve ever noticed 🥴 so I asked if he’d always done that. “Yes” he says in all my sport. And he does! He kicks with his right foot, bats to the right, bowls with his right hand etc and I’d never noticed!

Obviously I don’t care, it certainly makes his life easier in sport but I did feel a bit crap in 5 years watching him play sport, I never caught on! 😳🤣

Ds is the same. He was made to make a choice which hand to write with in reception and decided on his left hand. When he broke that hand a few years ago, he just started writing with his right hand. I was gobsmacked!

My father was like that. I suspect he was just left-handed (my sister is,) but he was of an age where he'd have been forced to use his right hand at school. He used tools left-handed though.

We recently discovered that DD (now 13) does Maths and Science with her left hand, and English, humanities etc with her right hand. Apparently its easier to think that way.

She can switch hands in tennis etc depending on her partner

Don’t beat yourself up about this! It’s much more common than you think. My mum didn’t notice I did this either (I’m right handed but do certain things with left hand, and I can write reasonably well as I discovered when I broke my arm). Quite a lot of people I know do at least one thing the other way to their writing hand.

DS - now late teens - is the same; he writes with his left hand always has done, but he plays sport (cricket, rugby, squash badminton, even frisbee) with his right hand dominant. I keep telling him he needs to learn how to spin bowl with his left hand because that would be more difficult to face ;-)

(but then I'm also weird - I'm right-handed, but I wear my watch on my right hand where apparently I'm supposed to wear it on the left!)

My Dad is left handed for anything that needs 1 hand (writing, squash etc) but right handed for 2 hands eg cricket batting, golf etc. Very specific!

I am and my son is. We both write with our right hands but do most other things with our left hands. Both struggled to choose a hand at nursery age. (Ds started school still unsure.)

It isn’t that surprising for me as I have one left handed and one right handed parent. And each of my parents do too. No wonder I am a mess!

I sometimes reckon that I am actually “no handed” in that my handwriting is awful.

I came on here to say I write with my right hand but everything else I use my left for. But when asked if I'm left o4 right handed I always say right....because I write with my right hand 😅

Wait, you have me questioning my entire life now! I’m left handed but literally the only thing I do with my left hand is write, I can’t think of a single other thing I do with my left hand. Am I actually ambidextrous!?

I'm neither handed for sport really, as both are equally bad, but tend to throw left handed and bat right handed. Not always though so I was fun in PE lessons trying to work out which way felt right - neither! - before disappointing regardless.
Lots of lefties have a fair amount of right handed skills with no logic about what they are or why.

Dh is right handed but eats left handed so knife in left hand.
Ds is left handed but eats right handed

Very few people are actually ambidextrous.. writing with one Han d using a racquet in the other is not ambidextrous.its just"hand dominant".I write with my right,use knife to cut veg with the left. To be ambidextrous,you have to be able to write, and do all basic life skills,play sport, instrument with both hands equally.

I always thought ambidextrous actually meant you could use both hands for everything. The definition is being able to use both hands "equally well."

So a truly Ambidextrous person would be able to write with both hands, and play sport with both hands, equally well - I think that's much rarer!

Imhe, more left handed people also use their right hand for a lot of things,t Han other way round

imhe, babies and toddlers that switch between holding spoon or crayon in left or right hand at first, almost always end up left handed as dominant hand

not saying it’s a exclusively left handed trait…it’s just way more common, and way more common left handlers do lots of stuff right handed

i think some of this is more tendency to ambidextrous, but some is learnt behaviour…they’re watching predominantly right handlers and mirroring that…then later a lot are faced with just having right handed equipment and have to lean right handed approaches

eg my school ( admittedly in 1970/80s) did not have left handed hockey sticks- I played right handed and was truely crap. I n ver had proper left handed scissors..I can cut out with both hands as stiffer thicker stuff hurts like hell to use right handed scissors lefthanded. But I have less control in right handed cutting. I can’t use veg peelers- I use pairing knife. I knit and crochet right handed. I use knife and fork right handed. I have ven paint my nails ( oddy) right handed . I play guitar right handed as left handed instrument way too expensive

My adult son insists he is right handed & does most things with right like sport... but he writes with his left hand. I just let him get on with being whatever he is.

My youngest son writes, does archery and uses cutlery and tools with his left hand, but uses a computer keyboard with his right. When we play mini golf he swaps which hand he uses depending on his shot.

I was so pleased when he learnt to do things like feed himself, play with a shape sorter etc when he was a baby that I never paid attention to which hand he used. I did not know he was left handed until his teacher told me at his first parents' evening.

I think left handed people are often a bit ambidextrous.

My dh is strongly left handed, but plays hockey, tennis, squash, golf etc right handed as he says it was just easier to follow what others showed him. He does bowl and kick from the left.
I otoh am more 'no handed/ footed' and could happily use either hand (well, I could before disability) or foot. I used to be able to write respectably with both hands, but when we had a left handed corkscrew, dh couldn't use it wheras I preferred it.

Ds switched between hands until he was abiut 9. Then his teacher said his handwriting would improve if he chose one and stuck to it, so he chose left because he had a classmate sitting on his right and he found he had more space writing with his left hand.

His tennis coach when he was little also said he should use his right hand all the time instead of switching between both.

i wonder what would have happened if he hadnt been encourgaed to choose. Would he have been a superstar tennis player confusing opponents by switching hands 10 times during a match? He could have made millions.

Or probably one hand would have emerged as the winner sooner or later anyway.

I'm ambidextrous.
It seems when I was in the infants I was writing with my left hand and the nuns didn't like it so made me use my right hand. I have awful handwriting.
I eat left handed. Write either hand. Tenpin bowls it's left handed. Do my hair right.
Make up right. Iron either way.

I started a similar thread about my DS a while ago, asking how common is it not to notice your child is ambidextrous. In my case, I found out when I signed him up for Padel Tennis classes. During his first class his instructor was talking about how well he did and said something like “…his serve is stronger with his left hand but obviously he can serve with his right as well..”

That’s how I found out. I didn’t believe him until he tossed a few tennis balls at DS and I saw he was equally comfortable catching them with either hand. DS was 8 years old.

I slammed my thumb on my right hand in a car door when I was 10, so had to do a lot of things left handed.
Years later, I can still write with both hands, I always do the crossword and Suduko left handed so I don't lose that ability. I use my left hand for the left side of the screen on the till at work, right hand for the right side. I wear my watch on my right hand, but twiddle my hair left handed.
I have difficulty telling left from right, might have something to do with it?

I’m like this. I write with my left hand, eat left handed, use a spoon or a chopping knife with my left hand, as well as most other stuff. However, I was right footed when I played football and held a racquet in my right hand when I played badminton, plus a few other things I can’t think of right now. I didn’t think it was being ambidextrous though ..just left hand dominant with the odd thing being done with the right hand.

I’m mid 50s and left-handed, but do lots of things with my right hand as growing up, I had no choice. I remember having to try and knit/crochet right handed – this was in the 70s – as the teachers couldn’t work out how to teach me to do it left-handed, and the same with some sports in the 80s at senior school… I always wanted to do it left-handed/footed, and apparently they could only teach me how to do it right handed! I still cut things with my right hand as I’ve never had any left-handed scissors, and I’ve always eaten in the right-handed way. DS2 is left-handed, but he can do lots of things right handed. He just goes with whatever makes more sense to him.

I remember my mum telling me that when I started to show signs of being left-handed in the early 70s, my then 80 odd old grandad said to her, ‘well you’ll have to knock that out of her’!!

Not having a strongly dominant side is correctly called being cross lateral, I think. Ambidextrous is being able to do the same thing equally well with both hands.

It’s interesting to check whether your eye dominance matches. (Imagine yourself aiming a gun, and you will automatically close your non-dominant eye.)

My eldest is left handed but does everything else with his right hand (I thought this was quite common for left handed people).