How soon can you tell if a child is going to be left handed?

[FionaJT]

Hi, I'm just curious about this as my dd is 18 weeks, and it's been noticable that she does everything (batting at toys, then grabbing, finding her feet) first and most confidently with her left hand. Now she's started sucking her thumb and it's her left too (I'm a right hander and I definately sucked my right thumb ) - do you think I've got a little leftie or is it too early to say?

My ds is completely left sided, writing, kicking balls everything.

When I went to the first parents evening they mentioned that is paper cutting was a bit scruffy, it wasn't until I got home I realised its because they have right handed scissors, however because they have no left handed ones he has had to use them and now he's very neat.

I'm left handed so its quite lovely that he's the same as me.

Same here, Essbee. My dd2 was 3 in March and still seems undecided. She will often draw half a picture with her left hand and then change to the right. Her nursery teacher doesn't seem worried and just says she'll make up her mind which to use when she's ready. Dd1 was completely right-handed from as far back as I can remember, so no comparison there. One friend, who's also a nursery teacher, suggested we encourage dd2 to use her right hand, since it'll make life easier for her in the long run, but as a left-hander myself I find it hard to do that consciously. Has anyone else out there tried to encourage their children to use one hand rather than the other?

My ds is 5 and swaps between right and left.. I am left and his dad is right. Somedays he writes right handed but then he swaps to left and then to right and then back again. Does the same when sucking thumb too.

My DD is 21 months now and we noticed she favoured her left hand right from about 6 months hen she started picking things up. She will do things with both hands as they are still fairlyambidextrous at this age but left hand is always the prefered one for drawing eating etc. I would say it is definitely possible to pick it up early if is strong.

Both of my girls are left handed (like me). We guessed from very early on - as soon as they could grab/hold something it was always the left from choice. Kept an open mind about it but felt 100% about it from 1yr. My 4 yr old writes with her left hand beautifully and can hardly scribble with her right, my 18 month old?s favourite hobby at the moment is crayoning and very obvious lefty preference.
I don?t understand professionals saying only at 2 or 3 or 4 yrs - so much evidence around to suggest that preferences often form sooner, even if occasionally children swap. Surely it is an individual thing. Judging from our local playgroup where children are at such a wide vairety of stages of development, some seem to have a strong prefence as a young toddler and other preschoolers seem still undecided.
I would say that it sounds likely she is lefthanded, Fiona, but wait and see as there is a slight possibility she will swap.

DD is 3 and has been a def left hander since birth she has shown no interest in swapping life is going to be fun as we are both right handed but apparently i had great aunts and uncles who were lefties.

My daughter favoured her left hand from the word go. Showed dominance in her left hand for everything - feeding herself, writing, reaching for things etc. She was like this up until 4.5 years old and suddenly changed to writing with her right hand. A year on, she hasn't changed back. So there you go, left-handedness is not always a certain thing!

My DD used both hands from the word go and looked at one point that she was veering more to her left hand. her theapists (she has Down's syundrome) said to try and gently encourage her to use her right more if poss.

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I think they just thought it would make life a bit easier for her to be right handed, I can't really remember as i choose to mainly ignore what they said, it got raised eyebrows from me. D is left handed but he was forced to use his right hand to write at school

dd has shown a strong left handed preference from before 18 months. ds was much later and in fact it was symptomatic of his motor and proprioception issues.

TC, they may be encouraging her to use her right hand to help her bilateral coordination (ie being able to use one side of the body independently of the other)- ds does exercises fro both sides and across the body for this.

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Thanks for the replies everyone, they've been really interesting. I guess I'll just have to wait and see! Having discussed it with my Mum, she says that I changed hands from left to right after I had started school and learned to write, so it seems there really will be no telling. On the subject of forcing children to change, my nephew was born with only a thumb and first finger on his right hand, but is naturally rightedhanded, so his teachers have had to make him change to the left so he can hold a pen properly.

I have not read the whole thread but with 3 little darlings and one who is a lefty (DD now aged 6) ( so is DH) I feel qualified to add a comment or two. I have found that most babies toddlers are ambidextrous but I never really noticed my DD's preference for left handiness and never thought about it since DH was left handed. I thought maybe one of my kids would be too (DH brother also left-handed). These days it is OK to be left handed. My father reckons he was left handed and it was "knocked out of him" at school, he stills plays better tennis to this day with his left hand.

As my DH is left handed at writing but actually is right handed at some things I don't worry about DD, she will find her own way, Ok her hand writing may be a little scrappy but of all my kids she is the most tidy and the most who is likely to strive towards perfectionist so I think it is Ok. She also sucks her left thumb and my other DD swill suck both of hers.