Handedness in Children

[Whitney]

Here's some back story for my question -

My 5 year old daughter has consistently used both hands for all things - drawing, coloring, writing, eating, throwing a ball, etc. - since she was tiny. As we progress with her kindergarten year she still has not picked a dominant hand to use. Sometimes she will finish a complete worksheet using one hand and sometimes she will switch several times doing one page. I do not care which she uses, or if she uses both, but I do not want to be doing her a disservice by not focusing on one for school time and handwriting training. What would/ have you done?

[Ellie]

I always put spoons and crayons and whatnot into their right hands, and then just made sure that they knew how to properly hold spoons and crayons properly, whichever hand they were using. This included showing them how to turn the paper depending on which hand they were using to color/write with.

Both of mine turned out to be righties (Mr. Ellie is a leftie), but if they had been lefties I would have made sure they knew how to form their letters correctly, because that shouldn't change based on which hand is doing the writing (they do need to turn their papers in the opposite direction than righties, though).

[hollyhock2]

My 3rd son did this, too, and he eventually picked a hand when he was about 6. I just let him do whatever until he decided. I think when I read up on it at the time, what I read said that children do eventually pick a dominant hand by the age of 7 or so. I hope I'm not wrong on that, but it did work out that way for him.

[alisha]

I have one like that. He's 8 now, and I think when he was 6 is when he got more dominant and is now a right handed writer and a left handed thrower and other sports things. Give it another year (maybe 2) letting her do whatever feels right and she'll probably get it figured out on her own.

[Kuovonne]

My DD didn’t show a hand preference until she was older. I don’t remember the exact age.

When I was teaching her handwriting, I let her pick which hand to use each time. Sometimes she would get frustrated and want to switch hands, but I wouldn’t let her switch hands mid-stream. For example, if she started writing with one hand, I told her she couldn’t switch hands in the middle of the word. If she had multiple worksheets, she might do one worksheet with one hand and the next worksheet with the other.

She tended to use her left hand for things on the left side and her right hand for things on the right side.

Eventually she settled on using one hand for handwriting, and the other hand for pretty much everything else.

[sweet2ndchance]

Four of my kids are righties and two of my kids are lefties. (All parents and grandparents are righties in case your were curious). My older kids' great uncle scolded me and insisted that I needed to "correct" my lefties less they be doomed to a sub par life by being left handed. My honest opinion is that is a silly position at best and harmful at worst. The vast majority of people, in my experience, are hard-wired to be dominant with one hand or the other. This isn't a flaw to be corrected or something to be controlled any more than you can control whether your child is an introvert or an extrovert by nature. Some people are naturally ambidextrous, some people can teach themselves to be ambidextrous, some kids show their handedness from infancy or toddlerhood, some kids take their time, sometimes well into elementary school, experimenting with what feels most comfortable to them. All those scenarios are normal. 

[Whitney]

Thanks for all the replies. I was thinking that would be the consensus but I wanted to make sure I wasn't off base.

[Plagefille]

My youngest DD didn't pick a dominant hand till like 7? I just taught her correct letter formation, and let her use whatever hand she wanted. She will be 10 next week and although her right hand is her dominant hand, I still see her color or do other things with her left hand sometimes. 

My other two had a dominant hand before school age. 

[Lecka]

Does she switch hands at the midline (the middle of the paper) when she changes hands on one worksheet?  If so you can google “crossing the midline,” and there are recommended activities.  

[RootAnn]

On 1/27/2019 at 7:03 PM, alisha said:

I have one like that. He's 8 now, and I think when he was 6 is when he got more dominant and is now a right handed writer and a left handed thrower and other sports things. Give it another year (maybe 2) letting her do whatever feels right and she'll probably get it figured out on her own.

Yep. I have one like this. Picked one hand for writing and one for sports.

My sister was forced to be a righty  (slapped/punished if she tried to do anything with her left hand), and I think it messed her up with hand-writing and more.

I'd just continue letting her figure it out.

[maize]

4 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

Yep. I have one like this. Picked one hand for writing and one for sports.

My sister was forced to be a righty  (slapped/punished if she tried to do anything with her left hand), and I think it messed her up with hand-writing and more.

I'd just continue letting her figure it out.

That is so sad about your sister 😞

Mixed dominance isn't particularly uncommon, my dad is left handed for small motor tasks but plays sports right handed. I have a SiL who is completely ambidextrous.

Dh is a lefty as well, I've been a bit surprised so far that none of my children has turned out lefty.

[RootAnn]

1 hour ago, maize said:

That is so sad about your sister 😞

Me, too. Sad to say, it wasn't the worst thing my mom did.

[shawthorne44]

On 1/27/2019 at 7:50 PM, sweet2ndchance said:

... The vast majority of people, in my experience, are hard-wired to be dominant with one hand or the other. ....

The theory is that a small percentage are hard-wired right, and a small (roughly equal) are hard-wired left, and the remaining could be either so use the culturally easy hand.   Since we write, left-to-right, that means right-handed.  

[Whitney]

14 hours ago, Lecka said:

Does she switch hands at the midline (the middle of the paper) when she changes hands on one worksheet?  If so you can google “crossing the midline,” and there are recommended activities.  

I have been watching her for that because I heard it could be a problem but she does cross the midline with both hands. It doesn't seem like there is a pattern to why/ when she switches, just whenever she wants to. 

 

4 hours ago, RootAnn said:

Yep. I have one like this. Picked one hand for writing and one for sports.

My sister was forced to be a righty  (slapped/punished if she tried to do anything with her left hand), and I think it messed her up with hand-writing and more.

I'd just continue letting her figure it out.

How sad. 😣 I am left handed but thankfully I never encountered anything like that. 

[Farrar]

7 minutes ago, shawthorne44 said:

The theory is that a small percentage are hard-wired right, and a small (roughly equal) are hard-wired left, and the remaining could be either so use the culturally easy hand.   Since we write, left-to-right, that means right-handed.  

But wouldn't that imply that people who grow up with Arabic or Hebrew or other right to left languages would be more likely to be left handed? Is that the case? Because I thought the breakdown was roughly the same with more right handed people, but maybe I'm wrong.

[maize]

19 minutes ago, shawthorne44 said:

The theory is that a small percentage are hard-wired right, and a small (roughly equal) are hard-wired left, and the remaining could be either so use the culturally easy hand.   Since we write, left-to-right, that means right-handed.  

Where are you getting this from? I've read a fair bit of what is currently known of the genetics of handedness and this isn't what most mainstream researchers propose.

There seems to be a significant heritability factor in handedness, with the majority of humans predisposed to right handedness. Unfortunately there are a number of diseases associated with left handedness.

One recent research article That identifies some SNPs (single DNA nucleotide alleles) associated with non right handedness:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C45&q=genes+rght+ambidextrous&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3Df1Fwsg5vdxUJ

[Lecka]

My daughter is left-handed, and my MIL noticed her picking things up with her left hand when she was very little, and said then that she thought she would be left-handed.  

The only time it has ever been a problem, she was trying to use a computer mouse with her right hand.  It’s one of those things that should be obvious, but I think a lot of times we don’t want to much wire around and don’t have them set up to where they could easily be moved to the other side of a computer.  

But we did just think she was having a hard time with the computer mouse for a while, and didn’t think about which hand she was using.  

[maize]

1 hour ago, Farrar said:

But wouldn't that imply that people who grow up with Arabic or Hebrew or other right to left languages would be more likely to be left handed? Is that the case? Because I thought the breakdown was roughly the same with more right handed people, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

Arab speaking cultures actually tend to have stronger right hand prejudices than we do; among other things, food may never be touched with the left hand, which is regarded as unclean.

It's a hard society to be a lefty in.

[hippiemamato3]

On 1/27/2019 at 5:40 PM, Whitney said:

Here's some back story for my question -

My 5 year old daughter has consistently used both hands for all things - drawing, coloring, writing, eating, throwing a ball, etc. - since she was tiny. As we progress with her kindergarten year she still has not picked a dominant hand to use. Sometimes she will finish a complete worksheet using one hand and sometimes she will switch several times doing one page. I do not care which she uses, or if she uses both, but I do not want to be doing her a disservice by not focusing on one for school time and handwriting training. What would/ have you done?

Look up cross-dominance. Let her do what feels comfortable.