Needs some advice re. left handed children... how do you know?

[MascaraOHara]

I suspect dd might be Left handed but how do you know? dd doesn't show a strong preference either way.

When we were doing art at the weekend she drew with her right and cut with her left.

I've always thought she was a lefty but at one of her checks the HV said she was showing a preference to right (which I disputed)

she's 3 and I want to encourage her to make shapes of letters but don't want to encourage her to hold the pencil in her right if she's left handed.

says you

My ds is left handed. It gradually became more and more apparent. Genius and mental illness are both linked to left-handedness. Different brain-wiring.

Always knew my DD was a genius!!

My understanding is that you can't make children right or left handed - it is decided before they are born. Apparently, they favour left and right hands and then swap around for ages before settling on one.

I'm right-handed and dp is left-handed - he would love dd to be left-handed and gives stuff to her left hand - in a knowing way I add - he is not obsessed with it! On dd's birthday cake, he even put the candle in the fairy's left hand.

Dp uses scissors and rulers etc the 'right-handed' way as he never had 'left-handed tools' at school IYKWIM.

my granny used to tell me that they tied her naturally left handed left hand behind her back and caned her knuckles til they were blue if she used it in school

But then that was in the North

suedonim, it's not the case that everybody has varied dominance. There is considerable evidence that being RH is the 'default setting' for want of a better expression, which will involve left-hemisphere dominance for most fine-motor skills and left-hemisphere specialisation for language processing.

The picture is complicated by the fact that left-handers are not mirror-images of right-handers. Because the brain is so plastic in early childhood a child who ends up primarily left-handed may become practised at a particular skill using his/her non-dominant hand. So although they may have right-hemisphere dominance for particular fine-motor skills like writing, there may be anomalous patterns of lateralisation for other types of processing, eg. language skills.

There is a strong association between left- and mixed-handedness and delayed language acquisition for example, because the patterns of control in a left-handed person will generally be more complex than in a RH person. Obviously there will be exceptions to this, but the association is there, though not fully understood. On the upside, left-handers have a much better prognosis for recovery from brain injury, as the hemispheres are less specialised.

Ds1 didn't show any real preference until he started school. He is right-handed.

Ds2 is nearly 3 and has always preferred to use his left hand. He doesn't seem to have any problems with scissors (unfortunately for me!) but then most of the scissors at pre-school tend to be those ones that are suitable for right-handed and left-handed children.

I'm not sure about the ultrasound scan theory. I had far more scans with ds1 than I did for ds2 yet ds2 is the one who is LH.

I write/draw with my left hand and always have done. However, for cutting with scissors, throwing things, playing tennis etc. I use my right hand and always have done. Maybe she will be like me in reverse.
I'd try to let her use whichever hand she likes at the time, and not let the nursery encourage right hand only - I can just remember being told that I 'should' write with my right hand - but my mum told them to get lost! And don't think that she needs to everything with one hand or the other - seems that for me I do anything that needs detail with my left hand and anything that needs power with my right, so I'm a bit of a mixture.

My dd didn't show a real preference until age 5, using both hands equally until then, but settling on the right for pencil work eventually.

I am quite good with both hands & so is she, so that made it hard to tell earlier which hand she would go with. 3 sounds far too early to tell judging by my own experience!

I understand that not everyone has varied dominance, Frogs. What I'm saying is that, ime, people assume that lefthanded people are left-handed all over(!) when in fact variance is common too.

Just cought up with this. Very interesting! didn't try the telescope test as dd shattered.

ds was obviously left handed from an early age...(almost so much that his right hand seemed almost like a unused appendage). He is left footed...left eyed ...left everything i think.

With dd the jury was out untill really recently. She seemed to use both and slightly prefer left for the first 2 years i would say. Then about six months ago (at 2 and a half ) it was like she suddenly just decided she was right-handed. It was wierd. Also i thought that her fine motor skills were a bit behind the rest of her development up untill that point (as if the indecision with which was her dominent hand was delaying her and sort of confusing her) As soon as she got it sorted it was like she absolutely just took off with her motor skills.

I am left handed when I write. I sew, use scissors and every thing else with my right hand. Was hoping that DS was a lefty but he is a RHer.