mixed dominance

My LD son also has mixed dominance. So does my husband who is not LD. In my experience, LD kids are much more likely to be mixed dominant than other kids, but not all mixed dominant folks are LD.

I found it very strange when my right handed son led with his left when jumping rope. I am so right side dominant that I am basically incompetent with my left. I always tell his soccer coaches he is left foot dominant—not very many people are.

Beth

My son also had mixed dominance. He doesn’t anymore. I do wonder sometimes if that is why he is doing better.

When he was younger one of the other mom’s from his kindergarten class told me about her dad. She said her dad, a harvard professor, had great difficulty in school early on. He was mixed dominant and she said once they got him working with just one side of his body he was found to be gifted.

I was also told this by a learning specialist at the local waldorf school where I applied for my son. He wasn’t accepted because they thought he was LD, this was before he was officially diagnosed. They told me to help him find one side for dominance.

When my son took golf lessons. He wanted to use his left side. I asked the instructor to evaluate him to help decide which side to use. He said he was stronger on the left but more coordinated on the right. He said to have him do the right as he will develop his strength on that side with use. He writes righty and catches and throws right. Now he is mostly righty with everything.

I have mixed dominance but never had difficulty with school. I found out as an adult that I have a gifted IQ but I did not perform gifted as a child. I hate to diagnose myself with something at this point. I was pretty successful in my career and did well in college.

I wonder if the mixed dominant aren’t just late bloomers.

mixed dominance.

I am ambidextrous. In my childhood I made no distinction at all between left and right, and at age 8 or 9 my brother was calling me on which way to set a place at the table and I honestly didn’t see or know the difference. Over forty years of training in a right-handed world, and learning to use my right hand for writing and many tools because if you don’t care you might as welo go along with the majority, I’m now about 80% right-handed. However when I do fine painting or crafts and cannot reach with my right, I just move the brush to my left without thinking.

I used to do a fair amount of downhill skiing, still go when I can, and that is a sport where you absolutely must use both sides; the natural consequences of favouring one side are very noticeable (crash, thump, bang).
By the way, it’s a good sport for a kid to learn to develop coordination; it’s individual so you don’t get yelled at so much, and you have a lot of tactile feedback. There’s a steep learning curve at first, but this can be all to the good since the kids who are used to being smart-alecks get bumped around pretty badly and the kid working on things doesn’t have to look too bad.

I am most definitely right-eyed, having severely mistreated amblyopia in my left.

If I have any ear dominance at all, it’s my left. I noticed last summer at the International Jazz festival that I could generally work my way through crowds of many thousand and get quite close to the stage as long as I went up the left side of the crowd; that means your left ear is to the stage. Most people seem to strongly prefer the right.

I have degrees in math (supposedly left-brained), art and design (supposedly right brained) and languages (supposedly left or both.). I do well in both facets of testing.

The mixed dominance doesn’t bother me a bit, in fact I consider it to be an advantage.

I do have strange difficulties with locating my body in space, fine motor coordination, formerly figure-ground problems, recognizing faces, directionality, and so on, but except for directionality none of them seems to be directly related to the dominance issue. My daughter has many of the same issues but has been a definite right-hander since babyhoood (I first checked this at ten months and it was absolute; she always picked up the block with her right.)

Personally, I think what throws LD kids off the most are mixed dominance in eye and ear vs. hand and foot.

Bob Doman (NACD) is one of the few people that believe that your right side doesn’t have to be your dominant side. He believes there are true lefties in the world and that it’s ok to have a left dominant side (but it’s still important to est. dominance).

Thanks y’all, your replies are very interesting. New stuff to go and research. Someday I’ll figure out how to get paid for all this curiousity LOL!
Best wishes y’all.
Amy

I’m severely left handed for many things, but dominance confused with certain matters.

Although my handwriting is atrocious with left hand, can’t coordinate a writing utensil with my right.

No problem eating with either hand, even with utensils :)

I’m no hunter, but can only sight and shoot like a right hander.

Always swing a hammer with my left, can use a pick ax or sledge hammer as a righty or lefty, no matter.

Bowling. Don’t do it much, but when I start to get off target bowling left handed, I switch to right for a few frames and that tends to true in my aim so I switch back to lefty.

I can only shoot pool right handed.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve done many of these activities, but if memory serves correctly, I could face either way on a skate board (old school version) without any balance problems.

As a child, I was always ambidexterous. At time for little league, my dad had me pick which ever hand I wanted to get a mitt. My older brother, dad and all the kids on the block were right handed, so I chose lefty. Go figure. Kind of the story of my life ever since!

Anyways, you asked, and the answer is yes. Mixed dominance. Definitely.

Andy

It only stands to reason that mixed dominance can create confusion in the brain. I have mixed dominance and it is always interesting to see which hand I’ll use in a new activity. If the theory that right handed people use the left side of the brain and left handed people use the right side of their brain - mixed must keep that brain really jumping. My son didn’t determine dominance so we chose for him (right). He mirror wrote, which drove my husband crazy, and is very creative and extremely talented in athletics. (now a college athlete) He still will sneak the left hand in at times for eating. Try reading some research on brain activity and hand dominance. Interesting stuff!

Andy,

This is exactly my experience. I can play tennis with both hands and it is funny to see the reaction from people when I do this.

I often find myself asking my husband, “Am I doing this righty or lefty.” I thought I played pool righty only to find that the way I was holding the cue is lefty.

I taught my son to draw a circle backwards. I didn’t know there was a correct way to draw it and I was apparantly doing it the opposite way.

I’m surprised to see all these adults on this board with mixed dominance and many have children with either learning disorders or mixed dominance as well.

My child with LD is mixed dominance. Strongly left handed for writing but uses scissors, etc. with the right hand. I am thinking from the APD testing that she was right ear dominant. I’d love to see statistics of the number of LD kids who are mixed dominance or left handed. I’d be willing to bet it would be greater than in the general population.

Janis

I eat right handed and write right handed. Everything else is left. Sometimes if I cut meat, I hold the knife in my right and when finished, just begin eating with my left (easier than putting down the knife and going after the fork again). Other than that, it’s all left. If someone asks, I say I’m right handed. (B/c I write with my right)

Not LD (or at least not identified!!) Did great in school, definitely ADD. Who knows. My kids are adopted one LD one no. Go figure.

Linda,

That reminds me, I can play ping pong and almost always hit it forehand, by switching hands. Although, I do prefer to play ping pong with my left hand a bit more than my right. Strange, huh.

I was noticing the same thing as you. And you know - everytime this topic comes up - EVERYONE who responds indicates their LD child is mixed-dominant in something.

(I’m 100% right dominant, but my husband is same as my dd - even with the eye. He has siblings and nephews that are lefties - but he is right. My husband was a slow to learn reader, has many of characteristics as my dd and although she does not admit it, I think his mother was same way).

When we were going to NACD, they told me that almost EVERY kid they see who has some sort of neurological disorganization is mixed dominant.

I also want to say that being 100% dominant is not all that perfect in my opinion. Yes, I got straight A’s in school with very little effort. But I am about as uncreative as you can get. Have no musical or artistic talent what-so-ever.

This was another reason why I was somewhat opposed at ‘switching’ my dd’s dominance. She has many right brain talents that make her special in my opinion. Don’t see why I would want to change that.

Oh, DEA, we must be twins! That is precisely why I am afraid I can’t homeshool my daughter! She is creative and I am a book learner! No creativity at all!

Janis

nt/

I really do worry about this switching dominance thing. First, read up on left-handedness and why it is a very very bad idea to force a switch. Then, I don’t know much about the NACD, just a few side notes here, but what I hear smells of snake oil; have a care.

If you read the real science, almost everybody in the population is *not* 100% single dominance. This is one of those **false** syllogisms/misuses of statistics:

Every dyslexic I have met drinks water
Therefore drinking water causes dyslexia

Every juvenile delinquent in our town has trouble in school
Therefore trouble in school causes juvenile delinquency
Therefore all kids who have trouble in school should be flagged to the police as potential delinquents

If you don’t like those arguments, then the following argument is **equally terrible**:

Every LD person we decide to test shows some signs of mixed dominance
Therefore mixed dominance causes dyslexia
Therefore we should play around with people’s minds trying to change dominance.

This is fallacious logic, and is part of what I mean when I say there is a smell of snake oil.