Handwriting/OT reccos

[OnePunnyTiger]

According to his teachers & coaches, my son is ambidextrous. He does sports with his left and writes with his right but can switch. My husband was 'forced' into being a righty and my youngest is a lefty. I have no experience with any of this and have been recommended OT at Maximum Potential to sort it out. Does anyone have experience with this in general, or more specifically specialists at either Max Pot in Fulham or elsewhere? TY 🙏

Actually ambidextrous or mixed handed?

Ambidextrous means he is equally good at activities with both hands.

mixed handed means he has a different dominance depending on the activity. Although, in my experience, the less-dominant hand still seems to be better than other people’s less-dominant hand… IYSWIM.

either way I can’t see why you’d need to do anything about it? Unless it’s causing some sort of difficult? Otherwise I’d just consider it a fun party trick.

Yes, he's struggling with his writing and we're wondering whether he should be writing with his left hand instead.

Hi Tiger :) hope you're well?

Just an idea - when it comes to handwriting, children do better with it by looking at it like this:

All letters are made of basic shapes (circle, square and triangle) and so by asking your son what feels best when drawing shapes can help find the predominantly dominant muscle group (either left or right will just feel better.)

If you're thinking about if it affects his brain function, studies suggest that the missed step in going from shapes to letters is how the brain compensates for the missed information. Like going from a crawl to a walk - if standing was a missing lesson, it would compensate.

The ambidextrous side is going to make things easier for him as it helps him have fluid perspectives and will help with decisions and planning but trying to "make him a lefty or righty" is strictly for the teacher's benefit not his.

So yea - try asking him to draw shapes and then ask which hand felt easier to draw them with.

Just don't let him fall for the "go find a left handed hammer" gag - it is just too lame to subject him to ;-)