Left-handedness, what do I need to know?

[MinnieMummy]

DS (3.8) is, I think, left-handed. He's not that keen on drawing or colouring but will always defer to using his left hand, and he throws left-handed. So I'm going to go out on a limb and assume he'll probably carry on that way and be left-handed!

Does anyone have any useful info/things I should get?? I'm aware of left-handed scissors but other than that...

I'm left handed and went to music college playing piano and violin - never had any problems. I also learnt to knit right-handed again without any problems - I think as a child you do things the way you're shown and if that happens to be how right handed people do it, that's OK.

I'm not great with scissors - have never tried left handed ones - and I hate the 'ordinary' potato peelers, but we've got one of those you just drag down and it works, so doesn't matter which hand you hold it in!

My handwritings pretty ordinary - doesn't slope either way and I don't move the paper around.

All in all fairly boring!

My 2 dds (age 6 and 3) are both left handed. We've bought them left handed scissors but haven't done anything else. They both seem to be fine at writing/drawing etc.

My friend taught me to knit lefthanded a couple of years ago and it was a revelation - I picked it up really easily despite several attempts learning righthanded (again, as in most things, I don't think it ever occurred to anyone including me that it was something that could be "handed").

I agree that different people are handed to different degrees. My left is very dominant - but living in a righthanded world I'm a lot more skilled at using my right than a righthanded person would be with their left.

I can play piano, oboe and flute but have struggled several times to learn guitar. Whether it would have made a difference to have it strung differently I don't know.

There are no rules, but I think being aware that your child may find something difficult and benefit from an adjustment is useful.

My advice (as a right-hander who has lots of left-handed friends/family and a high proportion of the children I teach are left-handed) would be to encourage your DS to actively seek 'left elbow space'. In the classes I cover I'm always swapping children around so they don't have elbow crashes - it's all very well the teachers being aware (which many are not) but if the children recognise that it's better for them to be on the left side of a right-hander there's a lot they can do themselves to make life easier whether that's sitting at the edge of the carpet (when using whiteboards) or at the left side of any paired table they are on.

I'm a lefty and remember my mum teaching me to use scissors with my right hand when I was about 4 or 5 - left handed scissors weren't so common then. I can't use scissors with my left hand now! It was useful though and I remember it was hard to learn but I didn't feel upset at doing so and it has been a useful skill. I'm now a teacher and would echo the advice to ensure your child has enough space to work. My handwriting is also dreadful but then so are many, many other childrens' - take it from one who has to struggle through reams of marking!

i am leftie and never had many problems i kind of trained myself to use right handed scissors and i write with my hand under the writing with my page turned 90degrees. people take the mick because i put things away in the "wrong direction" (perfectly right to me though) like the hoover or the kettle. my dd is 2.3 and she can use both hands at the minute so im waiting to see which she prefers but i like to hope i dont struggle teaching her writing as ive noticed i do form my letters differently to right handers.

i did struggle with piano at school as the tune is played with the right and the chords with the left. id master the right handed tune but then when i went to put the chords together my left hand would copy my right (probably just my poor coordination lol)

I'm a lefty. My parents never bought me anything special (I used right-handed scissors with my right hand, played guitar right-handed etc) and I was fine. The only thing I am glad of is that my nursery school teachers insisted I learned to write "properly" - they didn't want me to move my hand up and around so that it was almost covering my writing as I wrote (you often see left-handers writing this way). Though if he does end up writing this way he'll be fine!

Ultimately, don't be over-vigilant: he'll adapt and learn and may even end up being a little ambidextrous.

I love being a lefty if only for the amount of attention I've gotten when people see me writing with a left hand!

I forgot to add - I knit right-handed too.