To be angry at DP's comment about lefthandedness

[Skoggy]

We have recently started DD1 on using knife and fork for dinner. She is doing alright with it but keeps having a problem when starting the meal as to which utensil goes in what hand.

Personally, I'm of the frame of mind that she holds them in whatever hand is comfortable for her. She is 2½. DP insists, point blankly, that she holds them the way righthanded people do as, and I quote "The other way is the wrong way. She needs to learn how to do it properly". This made me stupidly angry because I am lefthanded.

Are there some people out there who still think that being a lefty is wrong?

I am an accountant also and one of my interviews was a lunch one and I still got the job but then again my table manners are perfectly fine. In fact more than half out team are left-handed and all eat the wrong way.

Bad table manners is inexcusable though, it is very important IMO and my DCs know that.

Well, DH and I are both lefthanded and both hold our forks in our left hand (forks are fiddly and need a dominant hand, so I don't know why right handers do it that way). You DH is just being an eejit for being so dogmatic about it, though. Was he brought up in a particularly formal household?

And actually, when you think about it, the fork in the left hand thing is a bit weird, since there are may cultures where people only eat with their right hands (because the left hand is reserved for wiping arses). Now that, i would struggle with.

Ds2 is struggling with his left/right domination, he is right sided for most things (sight, hearing, right footed) but uses both his left and right hand (even though. I thought he was left handed). We have been told by his OT to encourage him to finish any task in the hand he started in, so if he was to eat left handed (no idea if he does, not something I have looked at tbh) and some on tried to correct him, they would be politely told to mind their own business! I can't believe some of the attitudes on here!

Half of my family are left handed and eat that way. FIL is left handed but was caned and had his hand tied behind his back to force him to write right handed - this extended to him eating. He wasn't allowed to eat at all if he used his cutlery in the 'impolite way'.
Nearly 70 years later he still doesn't hold his knife and fork in an easy manner whereas DS who would apparently make some people faint by holding his fork in his right hand has very good table manners. He's also learned to keep his elbows to himself. If he ate right handed I'm fairly certain most of his food would end up on the floor going off what happens when he writes with his right hand...

Some of these responses are making me think there are a lot of Hyacinth Bucket out there clutching their fake pearls.

Manners is in my opinion a whole other kettle of fish - and agree that good manners is something people should have. But swapping your knives and forks because that is what you feel comfortable with and means that you are not going to bang around, flick food and generally make a mess is not being ill mannered.

Most left handed people I know hold cutlery same way as right handed people. In fact left handed colleague reckons that most people eat left handed.

Being left handed is great - I use a mouse in my right hand, and can use a pen to write things down with my left - so it helps me a lot at work, as I can talk to people through a headset, click and make notes faster than the right handed people, who have to stop to pick up a pen etc. But weirdly, if I make a cup of tea, I stir with the spoon in left hand, pour kettle at same time using right hand - but hold the cup in my right to drink from, as I don't have any strength in my left for things like that!! I don't think anyone is right or wrong on how we "should do" things - it's just how we are brought up to think I suppose - I just do whatever is easiest, but would personally find it impossible to change now to an opposite hand, as it actually "hurts the muscles" if I try! OP, YANBU, your DD should do whatever she finds easiest for her.

'Seriously. Maybe I have issues..'

It sounds like it tbh.

'YABVU. This has nothing whatsoever to do with left or righthandedness, it's about the correct way to hold a knife and fork. And I am a leftie.'

No, you're an idiot.

And if that gets deleted, I will not be upset: you shouldn't discriminate.

I'm a leftie. I was brought up to eat 'correctly' by my dad, who considered being able to use a knife and fork properly was an important life skill - holding it in the right hands, not shovelling food in, pausing between mouthfuls, not speaking with your mouth full, chewing with it closed, etc, and that this would help me fit in with any class of company...

I still remember my disgust when I went to uni to find my peers (all the product of top english boarding schools) basically ate like pigs at a trough. Horrfiying!

I do still wince when I see people eat with knife and fork the wrong way round (both my DC, one leftie, one not, hold theirs in the right hands) and have been utterly put off men by them using their forks as shovels!

I'm amazed that there are still people left with these prejudices. There is no 'wrong' hand.

It's true that Americans generally cut each bite (one at a time) holding the fork in the left hand and the knife in the right and then lay down the knife and switch the fork to the right hand. But it is considered perfectly acceptable for lefties to do this in reverse.

This was also formerly the British method, brought to America in the colonial period and retained in the US.

There isn't a 'wrong' way to eat, some people are so thick.

Scone yes, that's how I as an American would do it, but in reverse, because I'm one of those sinister lefties. :)

Why in the world would anyone make a left handed person do something right handed? Absolute lunacy.

I'm a lefty (and an American). I hold my fork in my left, and my knife in my right. I'm confused about whether that's "correct" or not. It's how I've always done it, taught by my left-handed father.

My grandparents were very formal, and ate very correctly, three courses every night, get dressed neatly to eat, silver cutlery, fruit with fruit knives/forks, fish knives for fish, slurping for soup, linen napkins, adult conversation, no elbows on the table - the whole works. They still let my left handed aunt and my left handed brother eat with what were the correct hands to them because they weren't complete idiots and this is something that really really doesn't matter. To me it's very very Hyacinth Bucket to consider the 'right' hands as important.

But then they also found a school for my aunt that coped with her left handedness and dyslexia without hitting her, so perhaps they were just highly progressive.

I don't understand how people can compare shovelling food in, talking with mouth full etc with eating with different hands. Really? The first are clearly ill manners - the second, I really wouldn't notice and neither would anyone I work with, including external people we are taking out.

Maybe we just have better dinner table conversation than you

If he's so traditional, why hasn't he got married before having a child?

Good manners at tables should not be confused with people eating with whichever hand is most comfortable.

I am ambidextrous, can do most things, including write, with both hands. I prefer to eat with the knife in my left hand.

Now, going by what some posters have written, this would mean that I must elbow people at the table, shovel food in, drink from the wrong glass, etc.

I don't. I eat neatly, without causing problems for others at the table, so I don't give a flying fuck about which hand is "proper". DS eats the same way and he's clearly right handed. And has good table manners, no eating with his mouth open, doesn't interrupt inappropriately, is neat and tidy. That's good enough for me.

Dad is mostly right handed but uses his left, eg when playing darts he marks the scores on the chalkboard with his left hand. His dad had been beaten at school and had his hand tied behind his back to force him to write with his right hand.

I failed my NHS Conflict Management (or whatever it's called) Course several times as I am a leftie and refused to give the 'correct' answer to a question about which hand I would pass a pen to a Middle Eastern gentleman with(or something similar cant remember exact words). I repeatedly answered with 'my left hand ' as that is the hand I would use automatically as a leftie. I refused to change my answer and after failing three times and my line manager trying to steamroller me into answering it right next time 'or else' then I took it to the union. They had to let it drop and gave me a pass. I pointed out that I refuse to be made feel dirty because I am left handed and that my left hand was every bit as clean as my right hand and I wasn't going to go round as a white indigenous person of this country thinking twice before I do something as knee jerk and subconscious as putting my left hand out automatically as I had done since childhood. I had enough prejudices about it as a child (nuns knocking pencils out of my left hand with a ruler etc and being told it was a sign of the devil) and I certainly wasn't going to tolerate any now as an adult. So there !

I'm right handed and eat with the fork in my left hand but only if I hold something in my right hand, as soon as my right hand is empty my left hand won't work properly. DH thinks I'm a weirdo.

I would prefer left handers to eat with whichever hand they like, it might reduced the number of times I've been elbowed.

I find it really strange (ok, more than strange) that people associate eating left handed with bad table manners. Who are these people you eat with?? Were they dragged up? Eating with your fork in your right hand does not automatically mean that you eat with your mouth open or throw food around, what a weird idea!

I'm right handed, but eat in the 'left handed' way. It has caused me precisely no concern and no issues in my life at any point ever.

I think I was about 8 before DM even noticed