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! 😳🤣

I’m like this. I write with my left but my right hand is dominant for most other things, I reach with my right hand, play tennis with my right hand… It’s a right handed world. I’m not ambidextrous it’s just what I’ve always done.

This is really interesting. DC1 is dominant right handed like me. DC2 is left I think but it's a lot more fluid. They write left handed, but none of this hunched round behind the pen you sometimes see in lefties, straight and lovely writing in an easy style. Eating eg with a spoon is left, but things you might hold in your hand - an apple/chocolate etc I've noticed both hands get used. Kicks a ball right footed. Tennis left handed but brings the right in frequently and generally looks awkward and conflicted (this could just be they've inherited my ball game skills, which are minimal). We played an archery video game a while ago and it was all over the shop, they kind of wanted two left hands I think but kept switching and generally looked very awkward, whereas DC1 also couldn't a barn door at 20 paces but at least looked elegant trying!
I'll have to check the dominant eye thing.

I've wondered before if the ones who are wavering on the edge when young do tend to fall left handed for basics like spoon feeding and writing, merely because they are mirroring an adult who is most likely right handed. You hand them the spoon with your right hand, they take it with their left etc.

I was secretly hoping it would give him an advantage in cricket as I’d heard it makes it harder to bowl for.

my sister and her son are proper lefties so I wasn’t surprised when mine was but the sporting side was!

I saw an interesting article about how the number of left handed people started to rise after the 1940’s because less people were being forced to write with their wrong hand. I have a friend who has the most appalling handwriting as he curls it over his paper when he writes. I think schools are much better teaching how to write left handed now even if ds’s writing is a bit illegible!