Left handedness on left handers day

They say that children should start to show a preference for handedness by the age of 18 months.  So far, at 3.5 years, I still have no clearer idea of which hand N will end up using full time

Both my brother and I are left handed, with right handed parents (that’s only a 2% chance), so it must have skipped a generation as our maternal grandfather was a lefty.  Our aunt started off as a lefty and then got it drummed out of her at school.  Luckily we didn’t find it much of an issue at school.

They say left handers have it hard, but apart from struggling with being advised to use left handed pens and scissor (nope, can’t use either of them!), writing was never an issue.  I did have to teach myself calligraphy with my right hand as I couldn’t use a left handed pen for it.  But the pair of us are quite handy with either hand, my brother’s almost ambidextrous as it depends what sport he’s doing as to whether he uses left or right hand.  We could both beat our mum at swingball using our right  hands!

Sports lessons could be a bit antisocial – athletics for example, where you’d all be stood in a line facing one direction ready to throw a javelin….and then I’d be on the end facing the other direction.  But aside from those minor issues, I think it’s pretty cool being a left hander.

They say around 10% of people are left handed, but I’ve sat in meetings at previous jobs where over half the room of market researchers or marketers are left handed.  So I think there’s a lot more than we think nowadays.  Maybe this is borne out by the fact that women giving birth after 40 years old, are 128% more likely to give birth to a left hander.  Weird fact, when you’d think it’d be genetic.

And within sports and music, there seems to be a higher than average proportion of left handers especially tennis.  So much for being ‘cack-handed’ as my OH says.  Seems to back up the fact that both my brother and I were pretty efficient racquet sports players.

With N, he’s still using both hands for different purposes, so his true handedness is still a bit of a mystery.

Using a knife and fork, he’ll use it the left handed way which makes sense as he prefers to use only a spoon, knife or fork singly in his right hand.  (This is why I think it makes more sense for me to use a knife and fork right-handed, so I don’t have to switch my fork to my left hand if using it on it’s own).  But he will still draw or write with his left hand as well.

Kicking a ball will depend, and he’ll walk up and downstairs with different legs leading each time.  Throwing is right handed, and he prefers putting a right shoe on first if given the choice.  Maybe I’m comparing him to me, and I’m more right oriented than I think?

It would be quite handy (ha ha) if he was ambidextrous.  I used to find it handy on the rounders pitch, being able to switch hand when batting and annoying the fielders who would already have moved position to the opposite site to usual.

Here’s some interesting left-handed facts:

1. Left handers day on 13th August has been going since 1996.
2. Left handers tend to perform better with their right hand, than right handers with their left.
3. While most right handers are left brain dominant using that for language, some lefthanders have that reversed, and many others have more even language skills distributed across both hemispheres.  This means more flexibility in randomised thoughts and less specific to one side of the brain or another…maybe why a disproportionate 20% of Mensa members are left handed?  It can also help in stroke rehabilitation with right handers who suffer strokes on their left side can take longer to recover than left handers with the same stroke pattern..

Are you a left hander?  And your children?  How have they found learning to write once they started school?