Left handed DD - anything I need to know?

[camdancer]

DD1 (3) looks like she is going to be left handed. She is pretty ambi but seemed to have settled recently on writing left handed. Is there anything I need to know to support her? Anything I need to know? Do we need to buy things like left handed scissors etc?

You can get lots of things from mail order and lots of advice. Don't over think it. Cutlery is fine, fork in the left is the best position anyway I find as a left hander. I was taught to knit right handedly.

The paper being diagonal in writing is a good tip - my sister is left handed and didn't discover this until adulthood. Her handwriting looked like a small child's writing until this point - she had been forced to write with the exact mirror position of a Right-handed person and so she was never able to see the shape of the letters she made - paper angle can help a lot with this, and holding the pen a little further up the shaft so that the fingers aren't blocking her view.

It's good to celebrate her left-handedness (once she's old enough to understand, get her things like this) - because no matter what you do she will always come across people who think being left handed is "wrong" (even if it's just fellow classmates who don't undertsand yet) and she needs to confidence to know that she is lovely as she is.

Thanks for all the advice. She is very ambi, so sometimes colours with one pen in one hand and another in the other hand! It just seems that at the moment, she is favouring her left hand for writing. The tip about demonstrating opposite rather than next to is genius!

Thanks all.

Bear in mind that not all left handers are the same- I don't slant the paper. Don't over think it, it isn't a handicap.

Thanks :) I am the left handed child of a right handed Mum, so the mirroring tip is the benefit of my years of misery frustration!

Took us a while to work it out but it improved my learning abilities for things like knitting no end...

I am the left handed child of a right handed mum and IMO right handed mums are the main handicap! It is completely normal to be left handed and not 'arkward' - my mother can't stand watching me cut bread - I say 'don't watch'.

Thanks for that link.
I have 3 lefties.

My DD is also 3 and left handed- she uses right handed scissors in her left hand though

I've been putting cutlery the wrong way for her... Is this wrong? She's not really using it properly yet.

Some of their things are really good, some a bit unnecessary but they also send out newsletters.

When I was little I used just a spoon or fork in my left hand so it was natural that the knife went in the right.

yy to left handed scissors and pencil grips to encourage best pencil grip - often tricky with lefties

I'm a leftie as are DH and DS1.
Tbh, pretty much the only thing I do with my left hand is write and I'm crap at that (oh, I do chop veg as well). I discovered the slanting page technique only ten or so years ago when I was looking for ways to help DS. He was then about 8 or 9 and refused to have anything to do with any of the props as he said there was nothing wrong with him .

Sorry to be the one saying this but I actually wish I'd been encouraged to use my right hand. I have had bad handwriting all my life which caused excruciating embarrassment when I was studying and training to become a designer - but, try as I might, it just wouldn't come out as anything other than random scribble (I do maintain it's perfectly legible, though).

Reason I regret my southpaw-ness is it actually causes me physical pain- it literally goes against the grain to be pushing the pen away from you, working against the natural motion of the body. Comfortable writing for a left hander would be right to left (mirror writing, obv), which just can't be done in our society.

I have scoliosis and constant shoulder pain, aggravated when I use the arm to write (or chop!). Feel free to write me off as a crank - just wanted to put the other side.
Fwiw, I'm really glad I learned to do most things right-handed; it's not difficult to learn to knit or play an instrument by mimicking the actions. Never even occured to me to get DS to play guitar left-handed.

Tethers, there's absolutely no need to teach your DD to eat the wrong way round - it's easier for lefties to hold the fork in their left hand!

allBelly - I think I developed a way of pulling at the food-to-be-cut with the fork and knife.

I don't think I had to cut much hard stuff on the plate until I had mastered it anyway.

I have a left-handed computer mouse.

I can use a mouse either way, but on my computer, if I click ctrl+ F12, the mouse buttons swap round (useful if you've got more than one handedness using the computer) - best thing about this programme is that it changes the direction of the mouse pointer too, so it looks the correct way for the hand that's using it (so it's easy to see which way it's set up)

tethers - I can use right-handed scissors in my left hand - it's okay, but it means that you are pulling the blades together with your thumb, rather than your fingers. That means it can be stressful on your thumb (and hurts after a while), and it also means that if you try to use left-handed scissors in your left-hand, you can't!
so, it might be worth trying to get her to switch to left-handed scissors in her left hand.

I would always encourage anyone to get them to eat with fork in left hand.
(the right hand and the knife ends up as an accessory until there is the strength to cut)

ShotGun - I am very glad I was never encouraged to use my right-hand.
being left-handed is so much cooler! and the more of us that fight for left-handed implements, the more normal it will become.
(it's very dangerous, for example, to use a power tool with your right hand if you're left-handed, mainly because you just don't have the strength or coordination to do it safely. Most power tools are now ambidextrous - the only ones that aren't are the ones with "safety switches" - and the manufacturers really have to start listening on that one, because those "safety switches" can easily be overriden by a leftie (says the one who quickly learned how to do so and wield a chainsaw with one hand)

i think most musical instruments are easier for lefties as they are - recorders, clarinets (wind instruments and brass instruments too) - most of the easy notes are played with left hand (left hand at the top)

violins, guitars, the notes are made using the left hand - you have to practise harder to use the bow or to pluck, but it's quicker to learn the notes (as my violin teacher was impressed at me being able to make notes other than open stringed ones quicker than my right-handed friend)

I am left handed and have never been able to use left handed scissors (I just use right handed ones in my left hand). DS (aged 3) is a leftie too and I have just bought some children's scissors which can be used either right or left handed. It might be worth offering your DD both types to see which she finds more comfortable.

I also remember the frustration of my mother and grandmother (both right handed) as they tried to teach me how to knit! They never managed it!

That's a good point Nickel - and might partly explain why I'm scared of using power tools! Have no desire to wield a chainsaw, though, so that's okay .
DH is a leftie who manages to do rhat stuff - never noticed which hand he uses for drilling etc.

nickel I'm a lefty and thanks to your post have just discovered that you are meant to use your fingers to pull the blades together!! Thank you!!

I slant my paper and still remember a teacher at school who used to come along and turn my paper upside down because "it was funny". Not to me, it wasn't. Being the only leftie in the class did bring me a certain amount of success in sports tho, like tennis, simply because no one had played a leftie before.

I also hold my cutlery the "correct" way and couldn't imagine holding my fork in my right hand. She'll pick up whatever comes most naturally to her, and will no doubt curse corkscrews in 16-odd years... Definitely get the scissors though.

ohmygosh - I can knit and crochet, but lead with my right when I knit. It's actually pretty easy. I had loads try and teach me left-handed as I grew up, then last year someone showed me right-handed and I picked it up striaght away!

Crocheting I can only do left handed though, but there is plenty on youtube to show you how

you need this cork extractor

(the one that says "spy's tool" - a corkette - absolutely brilliant)

Haha fab! Following a stint working at a wedding venue behind the bar where we had to have our own pocket corkscrews(!), I have trained myself to use one but I screw it in right-handed and then lever the cork out left-handed! It's always wonky sigh. Thank God for screw-tops!

My Dd is left handed, and we don't do anything special for her. I did once but her left handed scissors, but she wasn't too keen on them, and now they're about somewhere in the house, but she prefers right handed ones. She uses cutlery as normal, does slant her page, but has got very neat handwriting.

The only issue I do sometimes see is that at gymnastics, she can cartwheel, spun etx the other way to some of the other girls and is when they're practising a routine together, she can crash into everyone else .

Other than that, it's not noticeable and she is quite strongly left handed. She never uses her right hand, she just adapts naturally.