Could DS be left-handed?

[Karoleann]

DS1 (7) has always struggled with some fine motor skills. Piano playing fine, lego good, never liked colouring or writing.
He's year 3 and his writing is atrocious - his year 1 brother has similar writing.
Everything else is great, he's high for his year for most thing, he just struggles when he has to write a lot.

So anyway tonight he brought home one f these stress balls - he finds squeezing much easier on the left side than the right, his grip is also better on his left that right.

I checked his visual dominance and he is left eye dominant - cross dominance isn't that unusual - about 10% of the population have cross dominant. But still slight alarm bells are ringing.

He plays tennis and cricket with his right hand. But he's one if those children that likes to be compliant, so maybe we have got him to write with the wrong hand.

Anyway any experiences or suggestion?

what about teeth cleaning? just trying to think of something that he might have automatically have gone for left hand

i would have thought you would have found out much earlier. DD is left handed and she just displayed lft handed preference from the word Go.

I knew my ds was a lefty from the moment he started to reach out for things as a baby.

Have you asked him? Or roll him a football to kick in fun and see which leg he automatically uses?

No, holds a toothbrush with right hand and kicks with right too.

My other worry I suppose is ds was a difficult birth, I ended up having a placental abruption and he was in special care for a couple of days, maybe he just has a weakness in his rights hand.

Of course, he could just be bad at writing!

Thanks for the posts so far - any other experiences?

you coudl ask the school to check, see what they think?

My son is left handed for writing, but uses his right hand for scissors, throwing a ball, holding cricket bat etc.

Try chucking something at him a few times when he's not expecting it, he will instinctively catch it with his left hand every time if he's naturally left handed.

I am naturally ambidextrous and will catch with whichever hand i feel like/whichever ones free, where as someone who is naturally left handed will catch with their left and right handed will catch with their right even if they have trained themself to do everything with the other hand

obviously I mean something like the stress ball or a ball of screwed up paper... just realised how mean it sounded to recommend chucking stuff at your child!

I've have several children in my class who used both hands for writing at the start of the year and ended up being LH. Only one who did the same and ended up RH.

If you look at something like Lego - is he doing that LH or RH? Holding the model with the less dominant hand and adding with the dominant hand. Can he do a cartwheel? Which way? Or a handstand - which foot leads?

Whatever the case, it sounds like he may need some extra work on his right hand if you have noticed that weakness.

I'm left handed to write but right handed for everything else.
Perhaps try him out with some left handed mark making. Make it fun so he isn't aware of what he's doing iyswim.
Obviously he'll find it difficult at first because he's used to writing with his right hand, but if he's truly left handed he should catch on/feel more comfortable pretty quickly, I would imagine.
IME children in my class don't feel any pressure to conform to being right handed. The few lefties often only notice that they are left handed if I point it out.

I could have written the OP word for word.

I suspect that if we had encouraged DS to write left handed a couple of years ago he would have much much better writing. There is a strong family history of LH / ambidextrous-ness, so we think he has drifted into writing with his RH because his LH preference wasn't strong enough. He is definitely left footed, but bowls well with his right hand. Still deciding on his batting hand!

Thank you so much for all your comments.
We tried a little bit of left hand writing today and its not that dreadful.
We're seeing the learning support lady this week, so it'll be interesting so see what she says.

As a left handed person, for writing, throwing and holding a spoon for example, but right handed for lots of things, I hate the description of anyone being a "leftie". Whatever difference does it really make to anything? Why does every little idiosyncratic difference have to be given a label or a name? I am not a leftie or a rightie, I am just me.

My DD didn't have a 'set' hand until she was around 8yo.

One test to do is to get a sheet of A3 paper, and get him to draw 'waves', like a line of joined up 'C's' across the page, like this:

Ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc

See if he swaps hands when he gets to the middle of his body.

This can be a sign of his hand dominance not being very 'set', or of being ambidextrous.

(Too much experience with OT's..)

Does he cross his mid line much? So could you get him to move his hand across an imaginary line (going from the centre of his forehead through his nose, his belly button and between his feet) to pick something up or would he just use whichever hand was closest? DD had a difficult birth (forceps, oxygen deprivation, special care etc) and has not established a strong preference for either hand yet. She writes better with her left (although she is only four, so this is relative), but tends to eat with her right. My mother is left handed so DD could be left handed, but a friend of mine who is a physical therapist with children with additional needs suggested that I do midline exercises with her, so get her to touch her right foot with her left hand etc. Apparently this will help her establish a preference? DD also struggles with writing left to right, she tends to stop in the middle and place the rest of the letters at random places on the page. She doesn't really get that you read the left page first, then the right page either.

I'm right handed but there are a lot of things I do with my left. I play pool/snooker, the guitar and cricket all left handed. I absolutely cannot do it otherwise. My handwriting can be awful at times too but I was always in the top sets at school.

Dh is left handed and does everything with his left hand. His mum said he was left handed from the word go and had never even thought about doing things with his right.

Ds is 3 and is just showing signs of a preference, a rightie like me it's dd2 who I suspect to be a leftie.

"handedness" can often be on a spectrum - like ChoughingNora I write with my right, and always considered myself right-handed (with bad writing), but I actually do a lot of things with my left, including shooting a gun. I think it is possible to have leftie tendencies whilst being officially a rightie.

This thread is interesting as our DS showed early signs of being a leftie but has been taught to write with his right - poor grip, we are working on it - hwever in many things, including drawing on a blackboard he uses his left. It could be we have pushed him rightwards....?