Anyone have an ambidextrous child?

[CaptainSquidBones]

Hi

When did you know? Did they just never show a preference/handedness. Do they write with both hands/ swap hands while writing?
DS, 4 yo, seems to use the hand nearest to where he is drawing.writing on the page and swaps frequently . He hasn't fully mastered a pencil grip and I wonder whether this is related.
Should a parent intervene or influence at this stage or just see what develops?

Is your son at school yet? My son seemed ambidextrous until he started school, but as he started doing an increasing amount of proper writing he turned out to be left-handed. He will still swap with drawing, tennis and so forth though. I'd just see what develops.

I am still in bewilderment about this, My DS is three. Eats with his left hand and writes holding pencil correctly with either left or right. Maybe its a bit early, but i am not sure which to encourage!

I used both hands for most things until I was about 6. I am now right handed, but quite good with my left hand. My ds1 has a bias towards his left hand and is also left footed (age 6), but is happy to write with his right hand (and, oddly, appeared to know left from right at a very early age, although this had no influence on his choice of hand for various activities, whereas I think I had a pretty hazy understanding of what left and right were until quite late...). Being late to establish hand dominance did not appear to cause me any long term problems - I've always been very well co-ordinated, have a good sense of direction, spatial awareness, etc, although it took me a bit longer than it might otherwise have done to develop neat handwriting as a result of the swapping from one hand to the other at the beginning of learning to write. I think, basically, at age 4, it is not something to worry about if your child swaps from one hand to the other all the time, as it is considered within normal bounds not to establish a definite hand dominance until age 6.

Im from a family of left handers and I'm ambidextrous. Swapping hands when tired is extremely useful when writing long essays without a computer :o I keep getting told off for swapping hands in tennis to save me the hassle of doing backhand!

I was exactly the same as a child, would draw with either hand or even both at the same time. When learning to write properly I would start with the left hand (as you are encouraged to write from left to right) and swap to the right when the left got tired. as I got better at writing I didn't need to swap so I write left handed, but cut right handed as no left handed scissors in those days, play tennis right handed, table tennis left handed, can do most things with either hand.

I think I am quite ambidextrous, can often do things better with my right hand, but i wonder how much of that is learnt as so many things are set up for right handed people.

Was wondering if my 3 year old DS might turn out to be a leftie but now he's writing more he seems to be right handed. 18 month old DD seems definitely to be right handed already.

Thanks all. Will just see what happens. Really weird for me cos I am very very right-handed . Even breast-fed more from the right-side .

My four-year-old swaps his hands around for everything, including writing. He's just broken his left arm, so it may precipitate a move towards using his right hand more.

My son serves with his left and plays with his right for tennis!