Possible Leftie?

[Tealady]

I have a just two year old in my care. I realise when they are little, children can be quite ambidextrous. However, when drawing this little one uses her tripod grip with her left hand but palm grips with her right.

Could this be a sign left handedness? Should I encourage tripod grip with drawing with thethe right too? I feel she is quite good to be tripod gripping at 25 months wether it be left or right handed!

I feel I need to be aware that this might be the case for teaching/supporting other skills but I know that due to not having a Childcare background before CMing I am prone to over think the simplest of things.

[moggy]

I would not 'encourage' one hand or the other but let the child naturally use which ever hand they want. I would not point it out or make anything of it, there is not need for the child to be concious about it or to feel that they need to make a choice about what hand they 'should' use.
The only thing is to have left hands scissors available for later on in case they want to try scissors with their left hand.

[supermumy]

There is no difference if there a righty or a lefty my 2youngest (my own) are leftys And so is there dad and my mum
I wouldn't change it

[Simona]

All we can do is support children who appear left handed... and know what to do without labelling them 'lefties'....we cannot stop it

Look at this link and, unless I am wrong, that left handed person in the picture is none other than President Barack Obama!!



Support your LEFT HANDED child / Articles / Leeds / LOCATIONS / Home - Families Magazine Online

[Tracie Morrison]

Yes definitely as per Moggys reply, just support the chosen use, have left handed scissors available. When writing obs you might mention for your own documentation which hand they were using for an activity but merely as an observation. The world has come a long way thankfully since children were forced back to right handed use. On a termly report I might mention that I had noted that X has a preference for his right/left hand merely for parents notification. x

[Tealady]

Thank you for the article Simona.

I am not looking to lable this child or force her to be anything other than what she is.

My first point was just about the three finger grip we should encourage children to use. She naturally does this with her left hand, however, she uses both hands to draw with but as she uses her right with a palm grip should I encourage the tripod grip in this hand AS WELL as her left.

Also given my lack of experience of lefthandedness I was just looking for some advice on what children who are left handed struggle with, cutting with scissors being the obvious one, but wasn't sure if there were any other main ones.

[Simona]

Thank you for the article Simona.

I am not looking to lable this child or force her to be anything other than what she is.

My first point was just about the three finger grip we should encourage children to use. She naturally does this with her left hand, however, she uses both hands to draw with but as she uses her right with a palm grip should I encourage the tripod grip in this hand AS WELL as her left.

Also given my lack of experience of lefthandedness I was just looking for some advice on what children who are left handed struggle with, cutting with scissors being the obvious one, but wasn't sure if there were any other main ones.

Sorry Tealady if I came across as critical...I did not mean that at all.

There are 2 sides to being ambidextrous...some think children may have problems such as ADHD or struggle at school while other view it as being very positive
If you google ambidextrous there is an awful lot of info including being genetic

To help with the tripod grip look at this


dynamic tripod | Occupational Therapy for Children

[k1rstie]

I am sure this was covered on a course I did on 'boys learning', I only learnt that boys are able to be selective in what they hear, but being married, I leeway knew this!!!

Does your child use their left hand on the left hand of the paper, and then the right for the right side?. A child could write from left to right, and write all the left side of the page with their left and, and as soon as they reach the centre they switch to the right hand until they reach the right and side.

I think it's all to do with the left and right sides of the brain. The lecturer (who was so interesting), said that encouraging the child to draw big figure of eights on big paper, so encourage the fluid movement right across the page would help the brain to cross the centre line boundary.
.

Sorry, it sounded great when he was explaining it!!!

[Kaybeaa]

I have a just two year old in my care. I realise when they are little, children can be quite ambidextrous. However, when drawing this little one uses her tripod grip with her left hand but palm grips with her right. Could this be a sign left handedness? Should I encourage tripod grip with drawing with thethe right too? I feel she is quite good to be tripod gripping at 25 months wether it be left or right handed! I feel I need to be aware that this might be the case for teaching/supporting other skills but I know that due to not having a Childcare background before CMing I am prone to over think the simplest of things.

This is really interesting as my own DS was displaying exactly the same signs up until a month ago until he switched from Palm grip with the right hand to tripod grip, which then meant he was using tripod grip with both hands. He's 28months and now switches between hands. I've been looking for details of ambidextrous children. Turns out my great grandad (so his great great grandad) was ambidextrous. Don't know if it's genetic. Anyway I didn't encourage anything I just left him to it and like I say he figured it out himself. Whether he stays like this is anyone's guess but for now I'm just watching with interest.

[teacake2]

My 2.5 year old is definitely left-handed and has always used his left hand, he can use his right but prefers his left. Mum was a bit worried and asked Dr if he was doing anything wrong, to ease her mind Dr did tests and found there was nothing wrong with his right hand to make him use his left all the time just that he preferred it that way.
Teacake2