Training the left-handed child

By John Muturi

I met Jeremy Thoithi, a former primary school classmate the other day, after many years. Interestingly, we spent half the time reminiscing about his woes as a left-handed pupil.

Back in the day, he was a laughing stalk and often taunted as bewitched.

Our class teacher did not help matters by beating him and forcing him to write with his right hand. It was a painful punishment that never bore fruits.

Speaking from experience, Jeremy insisted that forcing a left-handed child to use his right hand could result in many problems, not least of which are stuttering and loss of self-confidence.

Since we live in a ‘right-handed’ world where most people use their right hand for manual tasks such as lifting a cup, cutting with a knife, opening doors or using a pair of scissors, we forget that this does not apply to everyone.

Developing hand dominance

That is unfortunate because about one boy in 10, and one girl in 12, is left-handed.

Preference of which hand to use is never present at birth.

When a baby starts to explore the world with his or her hands, he or she will show no preference for one over the other and is able to use them with equal competence.

It is not until towards the end of the second year that toddlers begin to develop hand preference, and even then, you may find your child using one hand for months at a time, then switch comfortably to the other.

Usually, hand dominance will be firmly established by the age of three or four. Some children remain ambidextrous (able to use either the right or left hand with equal skill) throughout their life.

Child experts have never been able to fully establish whether left-handedness is inborn or learned.

There is, however, evidence to support both points of view. Nonetheless, if you are concerned about your child’s left-handedness, you can gently encourage him or her — up to the age of 12 or 15 months — to use the right hand.

This, however, does not mean you should pressurise the child to use the right hand all the time. Instead, it means providing opportunities for him or her to use the right hand —for instance, by always handing the child food or other things to his or her right side.

If he or she seems agitated or uneasy about it, let him or her use the hand he or she prefers. Beyond 12 to 15 months, the toddler should definitely choose which hand to use.

Makes life difficult

The important thing, however, is to keep the significance of left-handedness in proper perspective. Undoubtedly, being left-handed can make life a little difficult for a young child, especially when he or she is trying to learn new manual skills such as cutting and sewing, or when learning some new sports.

That does not mean it is a handicap; you should not get overly worried about it. A child learns to adapt to his or her world, whether he or she is left-handed, right-handed or ambidextrous.

Hand preference is controlled by the same part of the brain that is responsible for speech, writing and reading.

Forcing a left-handed child to use his or her right hand may result in problems when he or she starts learning to read, and can be linked to stuttering.

Furthermore, undue emphasis on making a child use his right hand will only lead to confrontation and will reduce his self-confidence.

Writing from left to right

There are a few areas where a left-handed child may experience problems. For instance, he or she will have difficulty learning to cut with a pair of scissors, since standard scissors are made to fit on to the right hand, not the left. It has been wrongly argued that left-handed children are likely to fair badly at reading.

Surveys on the issue have, however, confirmed that there is no difference in reading scores between left-handed and right-handed children.

The only instance where left-handedness and reading problems can be linked is where a left-handed child has been forced to use his right hand from an early age.

The biggest hurdle for left-handed children to overcome is learning to write.

This is especially so for English writing patterns, which run from left to right and which favour a right-handed pupil because they involve movements that are natural for that hand preference.

A left-handed pupil learning to write faces a number of difficulties such as:

*Smudging: The hand that holds the pen or pencil moves across the words after he or she writes them, which can smudge the writing. Fountain pens and felt-tip pens are therefore not suitable for him.

*Blocking: While writing, the left-handed child can’t see everything that he or she has already written because the hand he or she continues to write with conceals part of the page.

*Awkward direction: Whereas a right-handed child sweeps the pencil across the page form left to right, a left-handed child has to push it across; this is not an easy task-rather like pushing a rake across a lawn instead of pulling it.

*Cramped position: A left-handed child or writer has to hold his or her arm closer to the body when writing than a right-handed person.

This is an unnatural pose for a left-handed child and he or she may feel restricted. The child would be much happier writing from right to left, the reason left-handed children have a head-start when writing languages in which the words go in the opposite direction such as in Hebrew.