Handedness - wwyd?

[marjolaine]

DS is 4y2m. As a baby and toddler he was ambidextrous as expected, but as he aged I noticed an increasing slight preference for his left i.e. kicks a ball with his left foot, holds the fork in his right hand because told to use it but really just eats with his left etc. I've been thinking back to the earliest I noticed any kind of preference, which was age 2- since around then whenever we have done activities like painting/colouring/drawing/early writing at home he usually preferred his left.

My problem is that for the past couple of months they've started writing practice at nursery and he has been coming home and using his right hand instead. He used to be very sloppy and did a lot of letters backwards (and I've noticed that he sometimes still shapes his letters like a lefty) but it has improved as they've done more practice. I mentioned it to his key worker when he first started doing it as I was concerned and she sounded surprised and said that he uses his left hand at nursery and that he's left-handed... but he's still using his right hand for colouring and writing at home and last week I saw a couple of pictures of him on the nursery's online progress report website thingy using his right hand.

I'm assuming it's seeing everyone else be right-handed so he's copying/fitting in rather than the nursery encouraging it. DH shrugs it off and says that he must want to use his right instead and if he's the one switching then it's fine. That doesn't sit right to me for some reason. I don't know if I've left it too late to correct, or even if correcting it is the right thing to do?

Sorry so long, this is really weighing on my mind!

I remember seeing a picture that DS had drawn in nursery (aged 3+) and saying 'Oh, he's written his name at the bottom!' - the teacher and TA hadn't noticed because he had done the whole thing in mirror writing and in the normal very uncoordinated script that children master first. He now writes pretty well the right way round - we had to watch that numbers didn't come out backwards for a while. I think DS was probably more leaning towards L handedness but we encouraged ambidextrousness.

I thought my DD was going to be left handed as when she was young she seemed to prefer her left hand. She is 9yo now and uses her right hand for writing/drawing but uses scissors in her left, plays most sports left handed, and will use either hand for other activities - I think which ever is easiest at the time! If he is easily using his right hand for righting, and isn't looking as though he is struggling, I wouldn't worry. If he truly was left handed, I think he would find it very hard to use a pencil accurately in the 'wrong' hand.

Sounds like me, and DD1. We write and draw left handed but for various other things we're right handed. I would just let him work it out for himself - at his age he's not doing a huge amount of writing and no one is expecting him to be Michelangelo with a paintbrush. Once this sort of thing increases at school he'll probably work it out for himself.

Handedness isn't really black and white, he may have just a bias rather than a real preference. And some people really can write with either hand.

Seeline - I'm righthanded but when I hurt my hand (badly) I learned to write with my lefthand relatively quickly - its not as fluent or tidy as my right hand but its legible, and I think that if I continued I would be pretty good with it now too.

I was totally ambidextrous until I was 6 or 7, would write in whichever I picked the pen up in. I now would describe myself as right handed, but dm reckoned I'd have been left handed if it had been a left handed world. I can still write with my left hand, and do some things left handed anyway.

Dd1 was noted she was left handed on her leaving preschool form. She was definitely right handed by the end of reception.

Dd2 was born without her left hand. Through her charity we know a number of children who were born without one or other (or both) hand. Some of whom clearly are missing their dominant hand. I can't describe exactly how it is clear, but it is. They still get on fine with things like writing.
We also know a few who have lost their dominant hand, and they have all managed to change to using the other hand.

Mistle - I think I probably could too, as I also do alot of things with my left hand, despite being right handed. It's surely easier at this stage in life though because we know how to write. If you were having to learn from scratch with the 'wrong' hand would it not be harder?

My DS has just turned 5 and he still hasn't settled on which hand he wants to use. I always thought he was left handed as that's the hand he seemed to prefer for colouring. When he started to write his name he used to start with his left hand and swap over to his right halfway through. Now he's in reception and doing letter writing practice he's starting to favour his right hand - his writing is much neater with right than left.

I don't think its that unusual at this stage for them not to have quite decided which hand they prefer, but I am going to bring it up with his teacher at parents evening. The only thing I have to compare him with is his brother, who has always used his right hand and seemed to get the hang of using a pencil a lot quicker.

Interesting thread!

OP, wouldn't be surprised if it's your DS picking up on what everything else is doing. And, the world just pretty much assumes everyone is right-handed. I have to watch myself and make sure I set the table the 'right way' for DS (who is strongly left-handed, will not entertain the thought of using the right hand). He's 2.8 and looks extremely confused if the fork is on the wrong side!

I can write with my left hand, but it's not my dominant.

Thanks for the replies. mistlethrush that's really cool about the mirror writing!

I guess the thing that bothers me about it is that he used to colour, write, paint, draw almost always with the left since age 2 and only switched to the right after they started working on writing in nursery. Seeline, he used to write relatively well (for a 3yo) with his left but when he started with his right his letters were sloppy, backwards and misshapen until he got better with practice. Now they're on par with where he was when writing with his left a few months ago.

Reading other people's experiences it's more common than I expected. I guess I'm taking away from this that he's probably left inclined but prefers his right maybe because it's a right-hander's world and/or he wants to be like his beloved key worker, best friend and adored father (all righties).

Seeline - I think DS could well have learned to write as a LH rather than RH - but as so many things are so RH biased, its easier being RH so we have encouraged RH not LH for writing - everything else we encourage both hands to be good at (and, for instance, he can catch with his LH as well as his RH). I think if you're starting from scratch and are fairly ambi, you could do either. But the fact that I'm fairly ambi and managed to write fairly quickly with my LH is probably all part and parcel of the same thing.

I have one fairly ambidextrous child. His brain really didn't decide whether he was going to write left handed or right handed until Reception, there was definite hand-swapping until then. So long as no-one is forcing your child to do one or the other, he will probably naturally settle to one or the other in time and no encouragement or correction needed.