You need to teach your child to use his right hand, otherwise he will have big problems when learning to write.

[justaphase]

My ds is only 16 months so it is probably too early to draw conclusions but he seems to prefer his left hand when holding a spoon or a crayon or whatever.

I mentioned this to another mum and she reckons it is really important to teach a child to use one hand, preferably the right but could also be the left if there is strong preference. She said it was really bad to leave him to it as she has seen children really struggle too write and get completely confused about which hand they should be using.

Never heard of this before.... any opinions? All our family is right-handed so we have no experience of this at all but I was thinking of just letting him be to be honest.

Apparently if children don't have a dominant hand the only problem they may have is that they might not build up the hand muscles enough, if you think... when they are using just one hand it makes it stronger.. it'll help if they do lots of activities to build on their fine motor skills, ie, lego, playdough etc....

No you should never teach you chld to use thier right hand. Just let them find their own preferred hand.
I used my left hand a lot when I first started school and the teachers made me use my right hand.
I do use my right hand for most things now but my writng can be vey untidy.

Agree with the 'let it be's'.

I would add though, given you've no experience of left-handedness, that there are some people who do everything with their left-hand and need all those special gadgets. And there are others, like me, that only write with their left - I use my right-hand for knife, scissors, tennis, trigger-pulling, etc. Neither is unusual. And my hand-writing is very neat!

when my dd was under a yr the health visitor said she was left handed as she would use her left hand 1st to grab things. But she is now 2 yrs old and is very much right handed. So they all vary. My mum and uncle and my dh sister are all left handed. I wouldnt worry, your ds will work out how he wants to be

can't believe this debate still on.
Why on earth would you want to CONTRADICT a natural inclination??????

They do say that left handed people are naturally creative. Left handers also make excellent sportspeople.

Both of my parents are/were left handers
My DS1 is a LH
My DD is a LH

None of them have problems writing/learning to write

Absolute full and utter complete unequivocal bullshit.
My son learned to write earlier and neater than all his contemporaries and at 13 still continues

Ds also exists in a family totally comprsed of right handers

But we struggle by...

my ds however is the sporting exception
He is a galah on the sports field
He is however very creative
it's to do with left brain right brain
Very complex, studies show curbing a natural handedness can be emotionally damaging as well...

DD was showing her 'handedness' (is that a word) at 18 months, before that she would use both but seemed to prefer her left hand, it was prob 60/40. By 18 months she was probably 90/10 left handed. Now at 4.5 she is exclusively LH

When my mum was at primary school they used to try and make her change hands, but that was 40+ years ago ! I don't think it happens in schools nowadays