Lefthandedness... Are they or aren't they?!

Ambidextrous perhaps

What was that all about?

Need an edit button.

I was watching my 6-year old granddaughter, drawing with her new coloured pencils yesterday. She is right handed, but was at least 4 before any dominance was clear.

Her mother put a drink down beside her. She transferred the pencil to her left hands picked up the beaker in her right hand, drank from it and continued her picture using her left hand.

What was all that all about?

Annie, I know, I am left handed too. Just think calling us “special” sounds a bit like special needs.
PS;Prince William and Paul McCartney are two more lefties
I can think of.

Alima for you -

Barack Obama

Marie Curie

Napoleon

Da Vinci

Aristotle

Hitler ?

Having read other posts, my left handed son was very good at art too and went through the phase when every teenage boy wanted to be in a band and coveted a left handed guitar which he eventually got and still has. He tells me that drawing and guitar strumming are still favourtite leisure pursuits.

D is left handed. She didn't have trouble at school as such but every new teacher she dad was fascinated by the way she turns a page sideways to write. After several years of atrocious handwriting she found her own way and now writes neatly.

We have quite a few left handers in my husband's family, father, sister, his daughter, a granddaughter, our son, having seen Obama sign a document, my son writes just like that it looks so awkward when it first became apparent he was going to be left handed I did wonder whether he would be able to write fast enough for exams when that time came, but that worry was unfounded. I'm right handed, but remember back in juniors breaking my right arm and having it in plaster and struggling to write with left hand at school and being told my work was a mess

OP, most of us just wing it with our kids' handedness. If a child is lefthanded it will become apparent before they start school. One doesn't need a book about it.

I though my middle daughter might be lefthanded when she was very small (a sitting up baby) because she would reach for something with her right hand and put it very deliberately into her left hand. Once she started kicking a ball I was convinced: she always kicked with her left foot.

We didn't have to do anything except leave her to get one with handedness naturally.

I'm surprised you've had angst with teachers. We only had to say that we thought DD should be able to continue to write in pencil for longer than her righthanded classmates when they started using Victorian dippy ink pens (yes, we wondered why too in the 1980s; it was a fad of the headteacher's) because we use a righthanded script and lefthanders will naturally smudge more as they are pushing the pen rather than pulling it. Teacher iffed and butted a bit. I told her I'd just written an entire postgraduate maths dissertation in pencil and no-one objected.

In short, stop worrying. The child will decide for itself by its actions if you don't interfere.

My oldest and youngest GC are left handed. The older one is artistic and has excellent handwriting; the ten-year-old is not specially artistic and has atrocious handwriting. DS1 is pretty much ambidextrous. I have seen him switch hands when playing tennis. My mother's handwriting sloped backwards and I suspect that she was forced into writing with her right hand as a child. I had a weird experience when I was standing in with a small class of day-release students. Having set them something to write, I suddenly noticed that all 7 of them were writing with their left hands. It wasn't a set-up. They really were left-handed and definitely not geniuses.

Annie, could you call us gifted or genius or something like that. “ Special”conjures up different picture. Ha, ha. Very surprised current teachers suffer angst with left handed children. They must be back in the dark ages.

DD1 used both hands pretty equally until she was 5 or 6 - then she developed as a left-hander but still does some task right handed.

My Dad had his left hand tied behind his back at school but it made not a scap of difference he still used his left hand and had lovely handwriting and that was 90 odd years ago
I really don’t understand how a book can be of any relevance, hopefully the original poster will come back and tell us, unless of course she is just doing some advertising

I was started school in the very late sixties, and had a teacher who tied (gently, with a soft scarf) my left hand behind my back. My mum had to 'go up the school' about her to stop her from doing it.

I don't think it is an issue nowadays. There are left handed scissors and tools available. A lot of the doctors I work with are left handed - often wondered why!

It is a sign of genius.

I'm left handed, one daughter is as is one granddaughter.

We are special BB?, I have 2 children , 3 grandchildren, four siblings, 25 cousins, 11 nieces and nephews plus a number of g nieces and nephews, not one is left handed , that is special

I think I might struggle to use some left handed gadgets, because I've never had access to them.

It has never been an issue for me. I use my knife and fork correctly , i.e. fork in left hand. I use a normal scissors. There were no left-hand ones when I was growing up. I pick things up with the left-hand so often have to rotate cups and mugs to access the handles. But not much else. Of course like a lot of left- handed people I am super intelligent and artistic. ?
My father was left-handed and forced to use his right in the 1920s/30s. It left him with a bad stammer.
Today, thank goodness , left-handedness is unremarkable

Isn't it obvious if a child is lefthanded early on? Don't they reach for things with their left hand, hold a crayon in their left hand, etc. as my dd did with her right?

Angst with teachers over lefthandedness? Really? What era was this? As Annie says, it wouldn't happen today, surely?

No one can make a decision on a child being left or right handed, I am left handed no problems in school with staff, my parents had a word with them , said I was not to be forced to use my right hand , but surely teachers now just accept a child is left handed

Not sure what a book would do doesn’t the child automatically write or do things with the dominant hand
Did you write the book Sue?

Although, why the right handers among us can't cut a loaf of bread straight, I'll never understand!

I don't see what difference it makes. Us lefties just blend in with everyone else in the family.