Can anyone point me in the direction of solid advice on handedness?
My second son is left dominant through and through, but as a result of taking keyboarding at age 5-7 (which he says “strengthened” his right hand) and as a result of feeling he should go with the general flow etc. he switched to his right hand. (In kindergarten he would switch back and forth, so I got his teacher a copy of Jerome Rosner’s advice on this—which, I think, since I’ve misplaced the book, is to establish a hand and stick with it) and encouraged her to give him reminders. However, he decided to be a “rightie” despite our best efforts.
The consequence is that he is a very slow writer & has some reversals. He also hates and avoids writing. He is getting an hour of tutoring in cursive a week. I’ve ordered Handwriting Without Tears for this. On top of this he is struggling with a convergence problem and is doing vision exercises daily.
The developmental optometrist has recommended that he try to reestablish left hand writing if possible. However, I do not see this happening at this stage.
The Grade 3 (Ontario, Canada) provincial testing is coming up— five half days of testing, including a lot of writing. His teacher wants to use a letter from the optometrist to enable him to get an enlarged version of the test. We are also working on an IEP so he can have the extra time accommodation.
The optometrist has suggested testing to ascertain the impact of the handedness issue, but agrees there’s no point in doing the testing until the vision stuff is cleared up.
Since vision therapy is controversial, it will be interesting to see if our government allows an accommodation for it.
Meantime, any advice on handedness? Has anyone seen this problem resolve itself eventually without huge intervention?
Thanks.
You ask:
>>Can anyone point me in the direction of solid advice on handedness?
The short answer is no, nobody can.
This is a field that is so full of mythology and prejudice and snake oil and profit-making quackery that sorting out the tiny amount of actual fact is well-nigh impossible.
A general rule of thumb on reading supposed information is that the stronger and more forceful and more definite the statements are, the more likely they are false or distorted. Human beings are tremendously complex, and real science on humans is full of percentages and probabilities and qualifiers.
For starters, what makes a person left-handed or right-handed? Taking myself for example, I was ambidextrous until at least age nine; I still have to think consciously which is my left and which my right. I taught myself to write with the right because what the heck, I needed to pick one. The right is therefore stronger. But to this day (in my fifties) when I am painting or working with screwdrivers or whatever, I switch to the left when it reaches better in a corner. Some people call me right-handed because of the writing and most tool use, and others throw me out of the testing pool when I volunteer, because I don’t fit the pre-judged criteria (one reason the science is bad, if they don’t even look at the full range of real people.). Was this a disadvantage? Quite the contrary, I have excellent 3-D visualization skills and I teach 3-D advanced calculus; being able to see all sides of an object is useful. And I do good painting.
The stuff printed and posted on brain dominance ranges from rather poor science down to out-and-out quackery. The real science is a question of probablilities — a difference of 5% is interesting and notable, but hardly something to hase a whole educational curriculum on. Please don’t let yourself get conned.
One thing worth trying: wait until a few weeks into summer, when social pressure is less. Get a good teacher/tutor who is nice but very very firm. Have the tutor insist that he return to left for several hours (at least five or six, preferably ten or more) of tutoring in writing — not just handwriting, but at the same time work on spelling and sentence structure and content, so he gets some value either way. At the same time talk to him repeatedly about the fact that there is nothing at all “wrong” about using the left — many famous people from da Vinci to several US presidents were lefties.
Then, after he has enough background to make an honest comparison, have him do the same writing assignment, say a dictation, with each hand. Watch *very* closely and time him. Have him do the left first and don’t tell him in advance you are going to compare to the right, so he doesn’t fake failing. *If * the right is still much better after honest work, leave it alone. *If* the left is better or even close to equal, point out that he has caught up to three years of work with the right, and he can save himself a lot of time and fatigue by using the hand that actually works. No matter what, this will take time and work to convince him, so be prepared. People hate changing habits and will fight like cornered rats to avoid changing even totally self-destructive habits. Then if you do make him go back, you will have to supervise him and get the teacher to supervise him for several months until the new habit is established.
By the Way: At his age it is common for lots of students to have a hard time writing and to complain vigorously anyway — I have found my focus changing from being a reading tutor with a few lessons on improving writing, to being more than half the time a handwriting tutor. My informal observation is that over the past two decades the teaching of reading is still chaotic but at least some teachers have gotten the message, while the teaching of handwriting has gone down from poor to essentially zero; kids are handed a pencil and told to write and that seems to be it. So good tutoring in *how* to write, with either hand, is the first recommendation. Directionality is vital, and seems not to be taught in almost all cases. Also kids must learn to reduce pressure (feel the back of the page, and ask why they are so fatigued!! — change to a liquid-ink pen for immediate relief); and to sit in a passable posture so they can move the hand and arm freely, something that is apparently against the rules for teachers to do any more.