alphabet reversal in 3.5 yr ld--need for worry? please help

[Princess5]

my 3.5 yr old daughter is showing great interest in writing letters. She goes to preschool 5 days a week for 2.5 hrs- montessori style. she is writing her C, S and G in reverse. she does start at top, but instead of curving to left in C curves to right. and so on for few letters. is it common at this age? i keep telling her to do correctly and she does correctly 1 of almost 5 tries. is that normal? i think she is too young and am not worried but my husband is worried about it. also one reason he thinks is that she still messes up her shoes and wears them on opposite legs more than 50% of the time. he is worried? should he be? please tell me your experience. i got some Handwriting Without Tears tools to work with her, but they are all so overwhelming, I dont know where to begin.. thank you

[jar7709]

:grouphug: this is very very common at that young age. Heck, my kids still write letters backward all the time. My son is just now starting to get his 's's right most of the time, now. I think letter direction looks very arbitrary to young eyes. As far as shoes go, she'll probably figure it out when she notices the right way is more comfortable.

[momsuz123]

I would not worry. at. all. Seriously, my bright 8 year old, on occassion reverses her letters, and still gets her right and left mixed up some! I remember in kindergarten, she wrote apples completely backwards on some craft she was doing. She was so proud and showed it off to me at parent teacher night, and I had these big eyes - like what? The teacher just reassured me this is totally normal. Don't push her too much at this young age. Just my 2 cents worth. :)

[EthiopianFood]

Um, no. This is coming from a mom who leans toward the "too pushy" end of things.

[kiwik]

I would be surprised if she didn't at 3.5 and older

[FairProspects]

At 3.5, absolutely nothing to worry about. And I say that as a Mom of a diagnosed dyslexic.

[thebacabunch]

This is SO normal and will be for a long time.

[Dory]

I tend to push my kids pretty hard with anything academic, but I expect at least some reversals into grade 2. In kindergarten and grade 1 I have seen very few kids that don't reverse at least a few of their letters.

[twoxcell]

She is 3.:001_smile: It is 100% normal and will be for a few more years to come.

[serendipitous journey]

It's not only normal, it is really adaptive, biologically speaking. Children, humans in preliterate societies, and non-human mammals have visual systems designed to recognize objects regardless of which way the objects are facing -- whether something is facing left, right, or is upside down, it's the same object in real life, and that's how the brain codes it. This is actually an awfully difficult task for computers to do: to identify something no matter which angle it's seen from.

 

It takes years of training to overcome this bias, and to teach the visual system that "b" is not a "d" that's turned around. Don't fret unless she's 8 or older; she will improve gradually until she performs at adult levels.

 

Interestingly, some research suggests that the visual processing we literate humans devote to eliminating letter reversals has a cost: literate humans seem slightly deficient, relative to non-literate humans, at reading subtle emotions on faces.

 

-- on a more practical note, the Phonics Pathways program had us make a "bed" card, with the word "bed" on it in large letters(and the Phonics Pathways mascot, Dewey the worm, laying on said bed). We laminated it. Then the child can refer to the card, and the word "bed" which she knows, and figure out which way "b" goes and which way "d" goes.

Edited October 3, 2012 by serendipitous journey

[boscopup]

Nothing to worry about. My oldest still reverses the occasional letter at age 8. I would expect a 3-6 year old to have reversals. Most 3 year olds probably aren't writing many letters anyway.

 

As far as shoes go, my 3 year old went through a phase recently where he reversed his shoes every single time. I worked with him on it, and it seemed like forever, but now he is putting them on correctly. Just this week, I've had to remind my 5 year old when he was about to put a shoe on the wrong foot. Though he's at the age where it hurts if he gets it wrong. At 3, it's harder to tell, as their feet still have some baby fat and their shoes don't have as much of a curve.

[Holly]

She will reverse letters and numbers less often over the next few years. My 10yo has quit doing this, 7yo does on occasion, and 5yo does it fairly often.

 

My 5yo always put her shoes on the wrong feet at that age. I always thought she should get it right at least 50% of the time, but she didn't. :lol: She always get them on correctly now. ;)

[Hunter]

It would be abnormal if she wasn't reversing. :lol: Seriously abnormal!

[alisoncooks]

My kids could barely hold a pencil then. Seriously.

 

:iagree::iagree:

[Tidbits of Learning]

my 3.5 yr old daughter is showing great interest in writing letters. She goes to preschool 5 days a week for 2.5 hrs- montessori style. she is writing her C, S and G in reverse. she does start at top, but instead of curving to left in C curves to right. and so on for few letters. is it common at this age? i keep telling her to do correctly and she does correctly 1 of almost 5 tries. is that normal? i think she is too young and am not worried but my husband is worried about it. also one reason he thinks is that she still messes up her shoes and wears them on opposite legs more than 50% of the time. he is worried? should he be? please tell me your experience. i got some Handwriting Without Tears tools to work with her, but they are all so overwhelming, I dont know where to begin.. thank you

 

It is still normal at this age. I think 3rd grade is the point where you should start to be concerned if there is still reversals regularly. The shoe thing is really common too. Handwriting without tears is really great to use if you do some of the extras. The wet-dry try was the most beneficial to my kids. I would invest in the little chalkboard and buy a cheap sponge at the grocery store and cut it into triangles.

Finger tracing, sandpaper letters, and more will help. I found after Montessori that my child had picked up a lot of bad handwriting habits b/c it was child led so much. They would demonstrate it to him, he would do it correctly, then on his own he just didn't do it properly. We still love Montessori, but my son got sloppy when he was working on his own and really needed oversight on his handwriting.