Left handed child struggling with writing. Advice needed.

[peachesandpickles]

My dd is in Yr R. She has an early winter birthday so is not one of the younger children.

She is left handed and is having problems with writing. Her letter formation is all over the place and she writes almost entirely in mirror writing.

I spoke to her teacher a few weeks ago and she is not very concerned as she says getting to grips with phonics/reading is the priority and she is doing really well with that. They seem to do quite a bit of writing in school though and she is clearly behind.

I have been helping her at home but the problem is when she writes in reverse she sees it the same as the correct way. When we do tracing letters etc she can do it but freehand it's all backwards.

She tries so hard and I want to help in the right way and not discourage her.

Has anyone any ideas?

She is really good at art by the way, loves to draw and is good at it and is the neatest colourer in her class according to the teacher.

Cheap nifty stuff

Children's writing aids

I'm left handed. I remember having trouble with handwriting when I was little but it sorted itself out and English ended up being one of my best subjects by secondary. I was tested for dyslexia once, in primary, but I think they just found that I was lazy when it came to copying things out and had bad handwriting! My handwriting still isn't great, but it hasn't really hindered my life. I didn't use any left handed pencils or anything but I don't think I suffered for it.

On a side note, OP, from my personal experience one thing you should consider getting for her is left-handed scissors. I remember my school/house didn't have any lefty scissors and I was a total mess at cutting until I got older and was given some later on, and then it was like learning all over again. I am fine with all scissors as a grown up, but I felt like I could have gotten used to them much earlier if I would have had the right scissors as a young child.

My DS is also in reception, one of the older children in the year and left handed. He also writes backwards and sometimes mirrored.

His teacher told me that it is so common with left-handers when they are learning to write and nothing to worry about. My DS is getting to the point where he does recognise when he's writing backwards or the letters are back to front, although I would still say it comes more 'naturally' to him to write from right to left. But we're working on it and I'm sure we'll crack it.

Every time he starts to write something I just remind him to think about which direction he's going to write it and with letters like 'a', which way he's going to go round. He does have to pause for a bit, but if he does think about it, he does know it and gets it right.

Tilting the paper a bit helped me to avoid writing in the "crabbed" style, it makes it easier not to smudge what you've already written. Left handed scissors are helpful as they're much more comfy to use neatly.
If it's still a problem once your dd is a bit older you could try getting a lefty with good writing (if you know one) to help her practice her writing. It all seems so much easier when the person teaching you is doing exactly the same thing (I know I'm struggling a little with helping my right handed dd learn to hold a pencil).