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Behaviour/development

Talk to others about child development and behaviour stages here. You can find more information on our development calendar.

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Original poster

Anyone with a left handed baby? Or left handed adults?

87 replies

Reallytired · 09/08/2009 11:35

I think my daughter is left handed. She always sucks the thumb on her left hand. She uses her left hand to pick up things. The hand grip of her left hand is stronger than her right hand. My husband thinks I am nuts as she is only 16 weeks old.

When did you spot that your child was left handed. I think I was fairly sure by six months my son was right handed.

Is there anything that a right handed mum should know about left handed people? The only person in my family who is left handed is my father in law. He tells me not to punish her for using her left hand as it made no difference to him.

OP posts:

Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

spongebrainmaternitypants · 10/08/2009 09:05

5inthebed, I have also heard stats about left handers living shorter lives - apparently cos we struggle to cope in a right handed world!

Think tis likely to be bollocks .

spongebrainmaternitypants · 10/08/2009 09:07

Riven, oh I am glad I'm not the only leftie who is crap at art!

Interesting about the brain thing - I always thought we were right brain dominant which is why we were lefties. But I accept women are just great at everything .

spongebrainmaternitypants · 10/08/2009 09:08

Lol @ puppy!

stuffitlllama · 10/08/2009 09:09

also i once heard some story that the more scans you have in pregnancy the more likely it is that you will have a leftie

can this possibly be true

PuppyMonkey · 10/08/2009 09:14

Oh, oh... now I'm on a roll talking rubbish, I saw a documentary once which said people who are left handed were probably originally part of a set of twins. The other twin, who didn't develop properly, would have been right handed. Cos with twins, one is left handed, one is right handed.

Go on, tell me I'm talking poppycock!!

meandjoe · 10/08/2009 09:15

I'm left handed, the only thing I found difficult was (as someone else said) writing. We all had to use fountain pens at school but because my hand was covering everything I wrote it used to smudge it all. I just learned to slant my book at an angle so I wrote down the page if that makes sense? I still wrote on the lines and it was neat but I just had to put my book at an odd angle on the desk. Other than that which I figured out when I was about 7 I have never run into any difficulties.

twigsblankets · 10/08/2009 09:21

I'm left handed. According to my mum, my primary school did try to force strongly persuade me to use my right hand when writing.
I have never had a problem with being left handed. I find other people are the ones who think it is somehow more difficult. Not to me it isn't.
I use my left hand for writing, and drawing etc, but my right hand for alot of other things.
I have also come across alot of people who think it is rather strange to use my right hand for anything, hahaha, such as using a tin opener etc, and see being left handed as some sort of disadvantage.
I don't know if anyone finds it a disadvantage, but I don't and I have never used specific 'left handed' tools, although they might come in handy for other lefties.

Original poster

Reallytired · 10/08/2009 09:30

I doult that my daughter has cp, she has excellent head control and her physical development is fine. It is really quite a contrast to my son's whose physical development was considerally slower.

My FIL who is a left is extremely bright and had an excellent career. Certainly being a leftie has never held him back. As far as life expectancy goes, my husband had a great aunt who was a leftie and lived to be 96!

Maybe I should revive this thread in a years time to see if I was right.

OP posts:

5inthebed · 10/08/2009 09:59

Puppet monkey, I was just about to say that. Was it a programme about siamese twins?

REallytired, I knew from my DS1 being under 1 that he would be a lefty. He just thinks he is special because he is the only one in his class that is

19fran76 · 10/08/2009 10:03

I remember reading that statistically speaking left-handed people were on average likely to die 3 years earlier. They (ooh the mysterious they) attributed this to a greater no. of accidents due to living in a right-handed world.

JRocks · 10/08/2009 10:09

My DS is a leftie - and the only other person in mine or DP's family is my cousin, so not exactly hereditary here! I've known from quite early that he favours his left hand, but it's only been the last year, maybe a bit more (he's 3.8) that it's been obvious.

Waspie · 10/08/2009 10:12

I'm very left handed and I sucked my right thumb as a child. I think this is pretty normal - it leaves the dominant hand free to do the important stuff, like scribbling on walls

LeonieSoSleepy · 10/08/2009 10:13

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

stuffitlllama · 10/08/2009 10:19

maybe there are more first born left handeds because we all rush to be scanned as much as poss while with the others we're too busy

four scans.. left handed first born

but then two scans left handed third

posieparkerinChina · 10/08/2009 10:22

My ds1 is left handed. I watched a National Geographic program that talked about mirror and disappearing twin theory with regards to left handed people. My mother is left handed.

Incidentally 3 of the 4 gps have blue eyes and not one of my four dcs, did MIL play away?.

sleeplessinstretford · 10/08/2009 10:43

not read whole thread but my eldest dd is left handed and i've thought she was from very early doors,never bought her any special equipment as what's the point? through life there will be 'right handed stuff' and if she can't work that then what's the point?
the only special treatment she gets is to take the left handed desk so that if she's sat by a right handed person they don't collide when writing.
DD is also favouring her left but is too little i think to be 'fixed'
what's interesting is that neither i nor any of the fathers of my children (that sounds bad doesn't it?) are lefties although the eldest child on each side of my mums family is left handed, ie my grandmas eldest sister was a leftie,my eldest sister is a leftie and 4 out of 5 of my nieces and nephews who are the first born are lefties too

Waspie · 10/08/2009 11:05

The multiple scan possible link to left handedness is interesting. I had a scan every 4 weeks from 12 weeks on. I am a leftie, my son's father is right handed. Both sets of parents are right handed. Both our siblings are right handed. But both of my grandmothers were left handed so that is where I got it from.

I do not encourage my son (21 months) to use his left or right hand - I tend to offer the spoon, pencil, toy, to the middle and let him decide which hand to take it with.

I'm secretly hoping he'll be right-handed. Left handedness is has confused and irritated me all of my life.

bruffin · 10/08/2009 11:10

right handed DS I was scanned weekly from 32 weeks plus normal scans

left handed DD normal scans plus an amnio,

bean612 · 10/08/2009 11:36

We're pretty certain DD (8 months/35 weeks) is left-handed - always eats with her left hand, reaches for things with her left hand even when they're nearer her right hand, etc. Neither me nor DH are lefties, only my mum in our family...

Overmydeadbody · 10/08/2009 11:43

You don't need to do anything special because of left-handedness.

Your baby is only 16 weeks old, surely therer are other things to worry about at this age?

claireybee · 10/08/2009 11:51

16 weeks is very early, dd used to always take things in her left hand because she was mirroring me. She is right handed.

DH is left handed and ds seems to be but I still think it is too early to say really (20 months).

I did have a lot of scans with ds though...

LeonieSoSleepy · 10/08/2009 12:56

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

EyeballsintheSky · 10/08/2009 13:29

DD (19 months) is left handed and has been very obviously so since she first grabbed a muslin at a few months old. Just out of interest I put pencils, forks etc in the middle of the table but the left hand always comes out. We're riddled with lefties on both sides of the fmaily though so no surprise

mammamia25 · 10/08/2009 14:55

I am left handed, with no hereditary connection. One of the supposed links is with breach birth though, which I was......

spongebrainmaternitypants · 10/08/2009 16:33

puppy, I think the left handers being one part of a twin must also be rubbish - 10% of the population is left handed which would make an awful lot of disappearing twins ! My sister and I are both left handed and are singletons, my twin brothers are both right handed!

As for the scans, don't believe that for one minute either. Regular scanning in pg is a relatively new phenomema so how did all of us old people get to be left handed before scans were invented?

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