Visit our online shop for your left-handed productsThe effect of changing left to right handed
For many years, left-handed children were forced by their parents or schools to change hands and at least write left-handed. We have also hear many stories about other activities that have been forcibly changed – from eating to making the sign of the cross in Catholic schools.
We received a note from Kent in the USA that made us think about this again and try to get some more feedback from members on this subject. This is what he had to say:
I was forced to change my writing hand from left to right at a young age and I would like to see feedback from your other readers that were forced to write right handed as to how it affected them. I’m a male in the US and I wet the bed up until the age of 12 and I wonder if that was related. Also the universal opinion of my penmanship is that it is atrocious. I’m 62 now and a few years back I taught myself to write left handed. Although I’m slower left handed (probably less practice) the writing is clearly more legible.
Another thing that has made us think about this is a new film to be release shortly called “The King’s Speech” about UK Monarch George VI (King from 1936 to 1952 and father of our current Queen Elizabeth II), starring Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter. He was a natural left-hander but was forced to write with his right and grew up as a nervous child with a pronounced stammer. The film does not seem to make much of the forced change in handedness, but stuttering is one effect of changing hands that has come up in research before.
There is a good article about the film here:
http://enchantedserenityperiodfilms.blogspot.com/2009/11/kings-speech-2010_14.html
- Are you a natural left-hander who was forced to write right handed?
- Is there anything else that you have been forced to change and do right-handed?
- What effect did these changes have on you and how have things changed as you have grown up?
Are you aware of any research into this subject, or do you want to undertake any?
Please add a comment to this blog post or use our contact form to send us your thoughts – we will report back in a future newsletter.
You can see an update on this article with more information here
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Oh wow! More like me! I grew up in the 80′s (I am 32 now) and went to a private catholic school in El Paso and my 1st grade teacher forced me to write with my right. She would hit my hands with a ruler when she saw me writing with my left. I became ambidextrous and now write with my right (horrible handwriting I have), but do most everyhting else with my left. I am trying to re-train myself to write with my left, but sometimes I feel I can’t) maybe its the psychological effects from being forced and feeling ashamed by it). I will keep tryinng- since after reading these posts I now see it will take some time, and is feasible! I am glad I didnt have further effects like other south paws here. I send a big HUG to all of you!
when i was small my granny had me change from my left to my right.id allways wanted to wright with my left but she didnt let me.sice then my speaking hasnt been so good and im very shy about that. also my sence of direction is wrong ,instead of going right i go left and so on.its a huge realive to know theres others out there
I was born a left handed but switched to be a right handed. They said it was a handicap to be a lefty. So, I do some things right and some things left. I did have speech therepy because I couldn’t say certain words. I am bad with directions.
You could certainly see your skills within the work you write. The sector hopes for more passionate writers such as you who aren’t afraid to say how they believe. At all times go after your heart.
My story is very similiar to King George VI. I was forced by my first grade teacher to use my right hand. She would tie my left hand to the chair behind my back so I couldn’t untie it. She left me that way all day every day.
I stuttered and staminered horribly. This was 1970 and the speech therapist aren’t what they are today.
In 1972 my dad (a cowboy with no special training) decied to try to help. He had me read very very slowly outloud to him every night. One slow syllable at a time. It was almost a year before I could speak most of the time without stuttering. I also did several of the tongue twisters over and over 24/7 for years.
Because of my speech difficulties, I was a very nervous child and adult. It felt like I was in constant conflict with my brain in making decisions. It was like my left and right sides were fighting each other for control. I managed to succeed someone in life but it was not without great difficulty.
I am ambidextrous in that I do alot of things with my left hand like dealing card.
Sue, i have been searching all my life for someone with the same issues i have. I was forced by my kindergarten school teacher to write and eat with my right had (because these were the only acts she could see me perform often in school).
Now im 27 years and i have a problem with directions, i say “go left” when i actually mean to say “go right” and i can attribute this problem to the fact that i was forced to be a “rightie” at a tender age of 3years. Suprisingly, i have discovered that other left handed people that where not forced to be right handed do not have this same problem at all.
I am indeed glad ive found someone with the same issues as i do.
Hi, the reason I am looking into this issue is because, due to injury I have switched playing tennis (which I love) from right to left. I have noticed that I have to repeat myself more when I speak to someone. (but nothing major)
On reading your comment it might help gto know that my husband who is right handed has the same problem as you with saying turn right when he means left.
My son who is now 35 and a left handed has the same ptoblem althogh we have never forced him to change hands.
I don’t think this problem has anything to do with beeing forced to change hands.
I’m a fellow lefty as well. I was fortunate enough to have a left handed mother who went through the horrors of teacher attempting to train her to use her right hand for writing so she made sure that no one made an issue out of me being left handed. However I did have my grade one teacher (’82) constantly taking my pencil out of my left hand and placing it in my right hand as she walked by. I would look at her with some confusion then immediately put my pencil back into my left hand and continue on with my work.
A few years later (’86) I had a teacher approach me and as she had a left handed student in her class and he didn’t know how to hold a pencil “properly” (He would clutch it in a fist and write with his arm instead of his wrist) This teacher, bless her, got me out of my regular class for 1/2 hour each day to work one-on-one with the boy so the he could learn to write better with someone who understood the difficulties he was facing. The teacher also sat with us for a while near the beginning so she could learn something from me as well in case she needed to help other students in the future.
On the whole I haven’t found being left handed a burden but more as an interesting challenge when I encounter something new. At work (I’m an Electronics Engineer) I have my computer and work station set up for my comfort (Left-handed) and really enjoy watching me right handed counterparts attempting to work at my station. They all get frustrated very quickly and as soon as they say something about it I smile and tell them they are starting to gain some empathy for us south-paws!
PS> Setting up a computer mouse as left handed is a great security measure against right handed people!
When I started school in 1955 my Reception teacher tried to make me write with my right hand. she didn’t succeed but I remember when teaching me to read I had to point to each word. I kept using my left hand but she she kept slapping my hand, and holding the first finger of my right hand to point to the words. I can still remember the pressure of her nails digging into my finger to make pe point.
As I got older another teacher tried to teach me to sew using my right hand, this time she had more success, with the result that I can now use both hands for sewing but use my left hand for intricate work. I’m now 59 and over the years I’ve had to adapt to a right handed world, I’ve managed with most things (including using the computer mouse right handed) but I still need a left handed check book, and can sew from left to right & right to left.
I have always had a problem with directions and the difference between right and left. If I am told to go left, I will turn right, etc. It is kinda like thinking backwards which is more normal for me. I was allowed to write left handed but forced to use other utensils right handed beacause there were no others. I specifically remember scissors in school and looking at them and not knowing how to use them. They did not cut if I used them left handed but confused me using them right handed. I am now an artist and still think of things “backwards” but it works in my art. I am allowed to see the world as I think it is.
I am from the Netherlands . After reading all the comments about the bad school-experiences to be forced to write with the right hand, I thought lucky me! Now I am 65 and when I started the Elementary school I tried to write, like the other children ,with my right hand and I managed it. To my surprise the next year my lady-teacher (the same one and I bless her) asked me if I wanted to change to write with my left hand. She noticed that I was using this hand for many other tasks. I can still write a bit and doing automaticly a lot with my right hand. When I started a new job and was settled in an office . My new colleagues were watching me and started to laugh when they saw me writing and welcomed me in the left-handed club. All of them (4) were left-handed. I don’t use special utilities. My only problem is that I don’t have much power in my right hand like cutting meat etc. and am changing constantly knife and fork during dinner. When we have dinner with family or friends I always prefer to sit on a left edge of the table . I am the only one of the 6 children who is left-handed. My Greek mother-in-law was left-handed too. My son is writing right but kicking a ball with his left leg.
Gee, I’ve been left-handed since the day I was born and I feel left out after reading some of these terrible stories. I started school in the 50′s and no one ever tried to change me from my left hand to my right hand in writing. The only problem I had was when we were learning to use an ink pen and ink. Anything I wrote would, of course, become smeared and I’d end up with ink on my hand. I started to write ‘back handed’ in Junior High until an English teacher held my paper up one day and asked if anyone could read my ‘chicken scratching’. Another student raised his hand and said that was the way I was supposed to write, since I was left handed. Hurrah for him!! After that I slanted my writing the way everyone else did.
hi all, when I was on kindergarden, I was forced to do anything righthanded…
but now, I am 22 years old and still left handed n I’m so happy with this…
read my story about being lefthanded woman here
http://purpletulippinkrose.blogspot.com/2010/07/lefthanded-woman-in-righthanded-world.html
I’ve enjoyed reading the previous comments, and am amazed at the number of us lefties who have experienced the same problems growing up. I am a full lefty, proof of which is preserved on film from my second birthday. In home movies of the inevitable “child destroying birthday cake”, the spoon was put into my right hand, and I promptly switched it to my left and dug in.
I remember no major problems with my handedness (except for “chewing” up paper with kids’ safety scissors unless I turned my hand over upside down–I was amazed the first pair of left-handed scissors I picked up) until second grade (mid ’60s), when my elderly female teacher informed me that I was the “Devil’s Spawn” for using my left hand, and forced me to sit on my left hand while writing with my right. After a short time of illegible papers and terrible grades, my mother figured out what was going on and raised cain with the teacher until I was allowed to return to using my left hand. Then my third grade teacher, who meant well and as an attempt to draw me out of severe shyness, taught me to knit, but as a right-hander. I never did very well, and put it aside until later in life, after I had taught myself to crochet and do other needlework as a lefthander. When I attempted to relearn knitting as a left-hander, there evidently was enough of the memory of learning the other way in my brain that I still cannot do well with it.
I also realized shortly after learning cursive writing that I had the ability to mirror write and later on out of boredom in class would turn in “backwards” papers just to see the teachers’ reactions (I graduated valedictorian, so evidently it didn’t hurt).
Sports? Forget it. I was (and still am) so clutzy I could trip and fall walking on flat ground. I do bowl, but with a kind of underhand backwards spin to the ball–and a 165 average.
In college I had to deal with the small writing desks attached to the chair, and was forced to turn completely sideways in my chair in order to write, frequently attracting the ire of my professors. During tests, I was banished to the far side of the room by myself to prevent cheating. I did have one professor who noted that my backwards-slanting handwriting could be misconstrued as a sign of weakness (I was a business major), and had me copy text out of a book while “adjusting” my writing to slant to the right. I still slant to the right unless extremely hurried, and have been told that I have beautiful handwriting.
I learned to use a computer in a shared office of right handers, so could not reverse the mouse button position. I move it with my left hand, but use the middle finger on the left mouse button, index on the right.
I still run into problems being left-handed. In addition to all the common can opener/ruler/etc. noted by others here, I’d like to add power tools to the list. When using a power circular saw, I hold it with my left hand, extend that arm out to the right, and lean my head and upper body back to the left to watch the cutting guide to cut straight. Not the safest method, but it works.
I love to crochet and knit.I taught myself to crochet lefty ,but my mom taught me to knit righty,and I stayed that way knitting righty.I am 62 now and only had one teacher who was a substitute,for 6 months, and she frowned on my left-handedness but didn’t stop me. I remember some classrooms had about 1 or 2 left handed kidney shaped desks for us. Also it was so cool in Phys Ed there were 2 lefty bows for shooting. These were beautiful expensive things. I enjoyed the sport so much moreWe all had to do P.E. until we were 21 in California in the 60′s. I always sit on the left end of a table to eat and find the pens in banks are chained to the right side of the table. I have never made a big deal about all the differences, until reading all the other commets.My father, one sister, and my one daughter are all lefties. I do always notice if a clerk in a store etc is lefty. There are more than people think.
It seems a lot of these stories (of being forced to use the right hand) are from the 40s to 60s. Well, I’m 21 years old and I recall almost being forced into being a right-hander, in the early 90s. You see, my parents were Chinese immigrants from the peasant countryside. So when they had me, a natural-born lefty, I can recall my dad doing his best to make me use my right hand in writing and in using utensils.
The only reason why I was left alone was because of my kindergarten teacher. My dad had tried to get her to teach me to use my right hand. Lucky for me, she told him, “No!” and explained why I should be able to use my left hand. This didn’t stop my dad from pointing out, in front of dinner company, when I would use my left hand to eat; I would be so embarrassed that I learned to use my right hand to serve myself just as well as my left hand (except for chopsticks). Pretty sure that had negative ramifications on my childhood self-esteem.
Interestingly enough, my mom tells me that I used to try to get out of using my right hand by saying that my right hand was “too tired” to be used. I thought I was being crafty but now, after reading some effects of converting handedness, I wonder if I was experiencing early fatigue/difficulty in concentrating at the time.
For most of my life, I had thought my parents were ashamed of or disliked my left-handedness–didn’t like Me. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I found out that they actually enjoyed that I’m special–the only left-hander in the family. This lifted a huge burden that I wasn’t even aware was there. My self-esteem and confidence suddenly skyrocketed.
I never would have thought that being left-handed could become so much a part of my identity.
I’ve been a leftie in a right handed world for 40 years now. Before finding this site and doing some research on being left-handed, I knew there were things wrong with me but could not make out how and why. Generally, it all makes sense now.
My nightmares actually risen once again as my 8 month old son is left-handed too. I just wished that he wasnt as the societies we live in are not orientated for us. Of course I will not force him to change to right, but there should be things that I can show him so that he can survive in a right-hand orientated world. I would be very grateful if you could give us parents some tips on what to do, how to train them etc. (above documentary states what NOT to do).
Fortunately, the year before I started school (1953), there was a law passed in the state of Maryland where I was reared forbidding forced changing of a child’s handedness unless specifically mandated by a doctor, for legitimate reasons. In other words, parents could not persuade a doctor
to advise that their child should be coerced into writing right-handed because they were “ashamed” of the child’s sinistrality; there had to be a health concern behind such a change.
My paternal grandmother was totally sinsitral, except for her writing, and that was browbeaten into her by a schoolteacher aunt who felt that her lefthandedness was a “moral failing.” As a result, my grandmother had significant neurological problems; her hands shook uncontrollably, and sometimes while walking, she would sudden pitch face first onto the ground. My father also was lefthanded apparently, and accidently let the fact slip once. When I questioned him, though, he launched into an almost hysterical tantrum about it. He then deflected any further enquiries into the subject by raving about MY “abnormality” – the one which I inherited from HIS mother, and from HIM.
I’m happy to see that our numbers are growing, and that dextrals now have the opportunity to realize that our handedness is simply a variation in nature (e.g., brown eyes vs. blue eyes), and nothing nefarious. Hopefully, everyone will come into the 21st century someday, so that no child will ever have to suffer again for the “crime” of lefthandedness, nor will they have to undergo the annoyance of a teacher who told me that I was “Satan’s own” (the Devil is presumably left-handed) -
then proceeded herself to write on the blackboard in that clumsy, overhanded style forced on us
in years past!
I am 72, the younger sister in our family. When my older sister started school in California in 1942, they tried to change her from left to right. My right-handed mother stormed up to the school and demanded that they cease that effort. Throughout our school lives, no further efforts were made to change either of us. In third grade(age 8), I had the good fortune of having a left-handed teacher just as I was learning how to write cursive. So, most lefties have trouble writing, but I have excellent handwriting. I never felt out of place because of being left-handed.
Recently at a family gathering, as 12 of us (cousins and their children) were starting to sit down together in a restaurant; seven of us headed for the left-handed corner of the table and we all had a good laugh as we realized that the majority of us were left-handed and we knew immediately which side of our respective family that trait came from!
So, for me left-handedness is not a problem. However, 50 years ago when I did student teaching in preparation for receiving a teacher’s license, the director of the program in our weekly seminar during that period, asked us if any of us had encountered learning disabilities such as left-handedness. I immediately raised my left hand and told him that I was left-handed and that I always thought it made me special, not disabled. I was really insulted by his comment.
When computers came along, I was an early learner, but had trouble with the trackball built into the right side of the keyboard of the PC’s. When the Macintosh came out in 1985, and the instructor in a class moved that mouse from the right to the left side, I was sold. I have used a Mac ever since.
I have two left-handed sons, both very successful. Several years ago, Omni Magazine had a test to determine how left or right handed you are. I tested at 100% left-handed; my sons were 60 and 70%. I am very creative and love to work with my hands. I knit, sew, quilt, and do other crafts. Left-handed people are often creative. I feel very fortunate to have grown up fully left-handed without being hindered in any way.
As a mum to the only “leftie” in my family, (that’s my own and relations) , I have been following this topic, and a lot of things are now making sense. I was the one who noticed my daughter was a leftie as soon as she was old enough to start grabbing things, to get told that she would change hands a “couple of times” through her toddler years ( she has a twin brother who is a “rightie”). I never accepted that and made a point of passing things to her left hand. When she started nursery, she was dry, but then the bed wetting started and the nail biting started. It took 3 years to get her settled again, and it meant that I had to make sure that everyone around her accepted her left handedness. from nursery staff to teachers when she started school, and even Nanna. And Nannas big mistake ………………. she always set Siobhans dinner place for a right handed child. Things like that have a big impact on Siobhan. 18 months ago she was picked to practice football after school, (her twin brother had already been playing for a couple of weeks). After Siobhans first session I asked the coach how Siobhan had played, and he said okay until the end of practice and she had to kick the ball in the net, but she hadn’t managed to do it. So when I asked him which foot he had made Siobhan kick the ball with, He replied “her right”. When I explained that Siobhan was left handed and left side dominant, he nodded his head. The following week, her practice went so much better as he let her use her “natural” foot.As soon as I made every one aware that Siobhan was left handed and left side dominant I had a happy well adjusted child. So any parents with an unsettled left handed child, just make sure that every one in their lives know, and ACCEPT that your child is a “leftie”
I’m just turned 70.When I was about 7 we all had to have the usual injections in school and of course I had them in my left arm like everyone else.Afterwards I couldn’t write properly because I couldn’t press down very hard with my pencil, so my work could hardly be read.My teacher never said anything about this and I carried on for about 2 or 3 weeks without comment, until my arm went back to normal.Ever since then I have always asked for any injections to be put in my right arm or blood to be taken from my right arm.I get strange looks until I say I’m left-handed but I have never forgotten how it affected my left arm.Another time a few weeks ago I was away on holiday and we had our breakfast and evening meal buffet style.I noticed that all the large serving spoons were left on the food dishes at the angle that right-handed people leave them.So just for a laugh, every time I used them I left them all at the opposite angle.(They could have been left straight but none were).I felt I had made a stand for all us lefties!!!I’m very proud to be a lefty.(The only one in our rather large family)
When I began primary schoool at 5 my mother asked the teacher if there would be any problems with my left handedness. She was told none by the elderly teacher therefore when I changed to a new school 1 year later she assumed all schools were the same. Not so. The teacher in the second school was young and she really singled me and other lefties out. She made us use the right hand and if she caught us using the left she dug her thumb nail into our 5/6 year old backs. As if learning to write with a pen and ink wasn’t tricky enough for a small child.
Other children at the school had ruler edges rapped over their knuckles or pencil points stabbed onto the backs of their hands. Because in those days (1944) you accepted punishment at school and I did not tell my parents of these happenings until I was an adult and then it just came out in conversation with another leftie. My mother would have gone down to the school to sort it out had she known. However then you just accepted things as I mentioned. Apart from that there hasn’t been any trouble except the odd remark throughout school in later years. “Oh you’re left handed are you?” like it was a crime.
I haven’t found any difficulty on the whole. I even learned to use right handed scissors.
I do however love the left handed ruler I bought from you.
As it happens I am not a complete leftie alhough I think of myself as one and am proud to be one. I play golf right handed. I can play tennis with both. I throw and catch a ball with my right hand, can’t do it at all with my left. I use cutlery the right handed way and can use either hand to hold a cup or glass. If and when I have fallen my right hand goes out to save myself. I stir with the left hand. I operate a mouse with the right hand.I can housepaint with both.
I would kick a ball more readily with my left foot but can do so with either.
So it’s a real mixture. Cross dexterity. The writing though is so important and that is really what singles us out, apart from golf or using a fork it is the most noticeable.
When I was 16 I hurt my left hand and had to wear a huge bandage for weeks. Therefore the teachers encourged me to try the right hand to write. This I did badly and as soon as my hand was useable I was straight back to writing with it.
My daughter is very left handed and my Lithuanian granny was left handed.
I was a primary teacher for many years and took pleasure in encouraging all my left handers to be proud to be lefties.
I was amazed that even during the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s there were still people who still believed that young children should be taught to use their right hands!
well I grew up i South Philadelphia dad was in the navy and I was sent to a Catholic School for my education. the sisters of the Sacred Heart were our teachers.. coat and ties we mandatory .. I being the only Hawaiian in the school..( mostly Irish, and Italian ) and two black kids whom became my closest friends…the nuns taught penmanship.. every one had to turn their papers toward the left so the righthanders could write properly make their P ‘s and Q’s.. being left handed I would turn my paper the opposite of all the others.. well I would get my knuckles slapped and made to turn the paper the ( proper ) way..so being a lefty and smarter then everyone else.. I would place a pen in both hands…. and when the sister was not looking I would write with my left hand ( the correct way hehehe).. while I held the other pen in my right where she could see it.. she never could figure it out but my hand writing has always suffered from that..and it still does.. thank god for keyboards….and spell check.. thanks for listening to my musings bob welsh..PS I am now 61yrs old and it still is a sour topic for me…
Nearly sixty years ago I was at a primary school in Portsmouth, Hampshire, where we had a rather cruel teacher called Knight who taught us handwriting . He insisted we use our right hand to write with and if you did’nt he’d hit you across the hand with a two foot long solid bar of ebony. Consequently my handwriting was terrible and even today, now that I use my left hand to write with, my writing is terrible and for many years at school I had very low self esteem. Apart from that episode I’ve never found being left handed a problem.
I`m Left hander from Lithuania. Now i am 33 years old. From the first grade in school i was forced to write right hand. I dont know is that have any effect on me exept my terrible handwriting. I`m naturall left handed and do all thigs left hand exept writing. I was allways proud that i`m different. And never understand why i cant write left hand? If i were attend school in present time i think no one wouldn`t force me to write right hand.
Message: I’m 50 years old and I’m also a natural left-hander. My
mother forced me to do ALL things with my right hand. She was a
teacher and also my teacher in the first and second grade in the
elementary (primary) school. My writing with the right hand was always
very slow. When I went to the commercial school I often had an
inflammation of the tendon and the sheeth and a lot of pain in my
right hand. So I started to write with my left hand. But I changed to
the right hand when the inflammation was gone. What a mistake! But at
that time I was still believing that I am a right-hander. My mother
always told me that. (If you would ask her today if I’m a right- or a
left-hander, she still would say that I’m a right-hander.) But since
16 years I write ONLY with my left hand and I’m very, very happy! I
NEVER change my hand again!!
I’m a leftie from New Zealand who started school in the late 1980′s. I am the only left handed person in my entire extended family. On my 5th birthday and my first day of school the teacher asked me to come to the front of the class, take the chalk and draw a cat. I did it with the chalk in my left hand and turned to face her and she rubbed it off and said “do it properly”, I did it again and got the same response…I had no idea what her problem was until she grabbed a piece of chalk, grabbed my right hand, shoved the chalk in my hand and pressed me up against the blackboard. I tried to draw a cat but as it was my first time ever doing anything with my right hand (and I was pretty scared) it turned out like a wobbly blob…she turned to the class and laughed at me, pointed at my picture and said I was too stupid to know what a cat looked like. I still remember standing there in horror with the whole class laughing at me. I also remember my mum picking me up at 2pm (you had a half day of school on your first day) and telling her. She grabbed my hand, marched us straight into the principal and demand I be respected as left handed or she’d get the government minister of education himself in there to sort them out. She then marched into my class and told my teacher to never touch me again and that I was left handed. The woman suggested I get my left hand tied and my mum told her she was nuts
Mum made sure I was always allowed to be a leftie at school from then on and apart from an incident or two as a little school kid I never had a single hassle as a leftie and can do things pretty well left or right – gotta love my mum though 
You poor thing.I can’t believe that forced right-handedness was still going on in the late 80′s.I was at primary schoolin the late 60′s and never had any problems with teachers mainly because I flatly refused to hold a pen in what I think is the wrong hand as my grandad had told me when it became obvious that I was a leftie,that all geniuses were left-handed and which to this day I tell my family(especially my children)of righties is true!!
I am a proud leftie and my parents never forced me to write with the right hand,but,I still remember at the age of 5 years old when my teacher forced me to write and cut with the right hand…my father was very concerned about it…he forced her to let me the leftie I have always be…but something happens …maybe wrong…i do not know what do you guys think…but I am not able to cut with scissors a piece of paper and I do it horrible like a 5 years old…during my childhood i was a shy girl…when i was younger my mother told that i was different,opposite of shy….I never connect this event of cutting and maybe the trauma of the (right)forcing during kindergarten.During my university years I join the dental school,pretty delicate with the use of hands….there I took advantage of my (use) of the right hand ,when they taught me how to use the dental needle into the mouth …it was in a (right)languaje….then at home i translate it into leftie languaje…now…14 years after ..I am a dentist who uses the needle for anesthetics with both hands…it is usefull for ergonomics in my case..and because i do not think with which hand i am using the needle it simply comes out automatically,and many other things like this,I worked in my shyness during college years…it was hard..but i did it…i woud like to join any of the researches about this forcing to right from left…we are sensitive,smart,sparkling minds,creative,esay going,with a new vision always because things can be done in more than a dozen of ways…responsabily I declare that we are unique.
I am a 55 year old lefty. My parents did not try to change me and either did the school. I did break my left arm in the 3rd grade and did use my right to the best of my ability. Once the cast was off, I was back to using my left. Most of what I do is with the left hand, however there are a couple of things I do right handed: iron, computer mouse and throw a frisbee. I am also right eyed. Neither of my parents were left handed, but my dad’s sister was left handed. In school during sports, I never remember my being left handed as a problem. I rarely give it a thought that I am left handed until someone mentions it to me. I do have the advantage at work as I can write and use my adding maching at the same time. Rightys have to put the pencil down.
When I learned to fish, I can do in all with my left hand. I do reel in with the right hand. My husband rigged it up for me, to work left handed. I iron with my right hand because my mom taught me. I watched her and then just did it that way. I also seem to be ambidextrous. My little sister is a lefty but does everything else righty.
As a child I was forced to sit by myself when taking tests, because the teacher thought that I would cheat because I was left handed; that was after she tried on several occasions to put the pen in my right hand. Plus, I was told to turn my paper a certain way that did not work for me. Am sure the experience has left my scared in some way or another. I felt ashamed that my teacher would think that I would cheat after spending hours learning my vocabulary words. And I becasme a shy little girl that did not often raise her hand, because to write on the chalkbroad everyone would see that I was different.
Once I joined the Army no one was qualified to teach me to fire my weapon left-handed, so I had to learn to fire right-handed. However, my brain would not let the left be left out. I know fire my weapon with either hand or eye.
No matter what the world says, I love being unique.
Lauren
I am a lefty and as a child was gently ‘steered’ by my mother to use my right hand for eating but was allowed to write etc with my left. In Sri Lanka – earlier Ceylon – my home, children are helped to distinguish between their right and left hands by identifying the right as – rice eating hand and the left as – back washing hand. Hence the reason for my mother’s action. An advantage that accrued is my ability to serve myself curry with my left hand whilst eating unlike the ‘righties’ who are compelled to take the spoons of the curry dishes in their food stained right hands or serve themselves clumsily using their left hands. I had an Uncle who told me that the left hand should never be used for anything as God kept all good things on the right side. My mother and I did not take him seriously. The only other area in which I had a right-left mix up was in the game of cricket where I was told by my seniors that my left postures in batting and bowling were wrong and sad to say, I believed them and switched over to become a right hand bowler/batsman. An astrologer I consulted as a youngster told me that I would one day be a world class cricketer. Now I know what went wrong and why I never made the headlines. In the Sinhala language (spoken by the majority in Sri Lanka) The word for SOUTH and LEFT is the same ‘DAKUNA’ pronounced DAR-KOO-NER, somewhat paralleling south paw = lefty. People in Sri Lanka are generally easygoing and tolerant and do not impose restrictions on lefties, in fact lefties are regarded here as ‘smart’ guys. My son is left handed and lives now in USA which seems to have a high proportion of left handers.
My brother and I are left-handed as was our father although I am the only one the is a true southpaw (I throw, bowl, etc. left-handed). My grandfather was left handed but was forced to switch when he entered school. When my father stated school, teachers tried to do the same to him. According to the story my grandfather told me over 30 years ago, a visit was made to the school by my gradnfather. There was no more attempt to change my father. However his writing as well as mine and my brother’s was not the greatest. My brother writes with his hand curled downward so that his hand doesn’t get in the ink while I hold my hand “normally” and get a stained “pinkie” nuckle.
The funny thing is even though I am a true southpaw, the fact is my right hand can do everything better than my left except write. The fine moter skills are just better. The curse of right hand heritage maybe.
And I hate to say it but I’m glad that my son and daughter are right-handed. They don’t have to go through the things we still have to.
From the age of 5 to the age of 26 I considered my self right handed and right footed and right eye dominant, but I suffered very bad symptoms which were detrimental to my learning through all those years. (including poor concentration, poor memory recall, reading difficulties and a very neurotic personality and physical tiredness) After visiting a family doctor when I was 19 and getting no diagnosis or cure I began what was to become 7 years of searching for the cause , I finally found out by chance discovery it was because of misuse of my co-ordination and that I should be doing everything left handed and left footed, and even the muscles on my face had been affected causing me to find it difficult to smile properly etc. With a theoretical understanding of the cause of the symptoms now gained, I proceeded to use my left hand for everything and walk to my left foot with a realization that this must never stop if I wanted to recover. Gradually the symptoms went away. Handwriting with the subordinate hand, all my life up to then had been the main inducer of the symptoms, possibly because of the levels of concentration and dexterity required for handwriting. Muscular imbalance and force of habit had disguised my natural tendency to the left. It was just as important to reduce use of my right hand and right foot, as it was to transfer duties to my left hand and left foot to enable recovery.
Recovery took me many years partly because of my age(26 at the time, I am now 48), the duration and intensity of the symptoms suffered and the disruption in social interaction during what should have been my formative years. Basically having to learn many things that the neurosis induced had stopped me learning
Now I can get on with people a lot better, and be a much more efficient worker and am a lot happier.
The cause of the symptoms was much more difficult for me to find as I had retained no memory of being coerced into writing with my right hand at school in 1967 when I was 5 years old. It must have happened from bigotry in the school system in my country (Scotland) at the time because my parents never showed any attitude towards handedness ever.
My circumstances very much conform to the scientific discovery of Dr Johanna Barbara Sattler (a Psychologist) in 1987 (a person I did not find out about until 2 years ago on the internet. The description of symptoms on her website matched very closely what I had experienced, although bed-wetting was not one of the symptoms I experienced).
I find if I look around today at groups of young children writing that about one in 5 is writing with the left hand, because the policy of coercing left handed kids into writing with the right hand was ended after Doctor Sattler’s discovery. It was one in 10 in my days at school in the 1960s and 1970s, so there must be a lot more victims than just me.
Recently I went to my current family doctor and as an off chance asked if there were better recovery therapies than my own deduced ones, and to my sadness I found that he had never heard of this science.
Although government and education in Scotland has ended the anti-lefthanded education policies in the classrooms, and thus preventing more victims like me happening, they will not do anything to provide diagnosis and recovery assistance, something I could have well benefited from. A human rights case that is wanting. I have written to politicians here but they do not want to help.
Alan MG
Thanks for sharing Alan – that is a sad story but one that I am sure is all too common, even if people do not always suffer such a wide range of problems as a result of a handedness change. I am going to feature your comment in the November newsletter as well as more information from Dr Sattler.
I’m in my 50′s and remember from early elementary school when teachers would tell us “Remember that your right hand is the hand you write with”. To this day I still frequently get the directions of ‘right’ and ‘left’ switched around because of that.
Well, when I was about 2, I started showing definite left-hand dominance. My parents didn’t quite know what to do, because all their friends were saying, “Switch her to her right hand! You’ve got to do it soon, before she starts being completely left-handed!” My dad was bending towards switching me, but my mom apparently put up a real fight about it, and so for a while my dad would be watching me color and keep switching the marker to my right hand, and if I started using my right hand my mom would come in and immediately switch it back over. I was always more comfortable using my left hand, though, and when I went into kindergarten the teacher said it was perfectly fine. So I’m still a hard core leftie to this day! (:
I can’t play tennis because my PE teacher made us all throw the ball up with our left hand and hit it with the racquet in our right. Absolutely useless! I grew up in a right handed family and do a lot of things i was taught, ie use a rotary whisk or sew with a needle in the opposite direction but with my right hand. It seems normal to me.
The consequence of my mother relentlessly setting my cutlery in a right handed style is that , to this day, I hold down the food with my knife and tear at it with my fork! Neither efficient nor particularly attractive but I can’t now cope with a reversed place setting either.
On the plus side I found that playing a right handed guitar as a lefty meant that my more agile hand was the one making the chord shapes, which I thought was a bonus.
My grandfather was left-handed and was forced to write right-handed as a child. He had a bad stutter. Then he got polio and his right hand was crippled. He was allowed to write left-handed and lost his stutter.
I am naturally left handed, but my writing is not good. When I was younger, I couldn’t write on plain paper (my writing went down the page diagonally as I tried to write a stright line), I still can’t write that straight now. I can’t seem to cut a straight line either (even if I am following a cut-line).
I am 43 years old and a strong lefty. I can use a mouse on either right or left, same with scissors. Well due to carpal tunnel surgery complications I am learning to eat, brush my teeth and do may other things with my right hand that I would have never dreamed of in the past. I have had two surgeries in less than two months. I have my left hand in a cast, so it will be a while before it is usable again. I have to learn now how to write my name with my right hand, I may have to purchase a standard fountain pen after reading these blog entries. My brain is definitely being challenged to think differently. Not sure if I will ever be able to eat Asian food with chopsticks again.
The people/societies that attempt to change left-handed people to become right-handed don’t seem to understand that it’s not just our left hands that are “left!” Most of us are also left footed, left eyed and generally geared to functioning properly as left EVERYTHING! Most of the other leftness doesn’t interfere with the right handed world’s sense of what is proper, but I had a lot of problems being left-eyed after being made to become right-handed. In law enforcement, when shooting a gun, you need to line up the target with the sights on the gun, preferably while keeping both eyes open. Being left-eyed caused me to line up the target to my left eye while the gun was being held in my right hand! That doesn’t properly line the target up with your gun…lol. After the problem was discovered I was told I would either need to learn to shoot left-handed or else close my left eye so that I could line the target up properly to my right hand. I worked it out by closing my left eye just long enough to get the sights of the gun aligned to the proper eye. I thought it was funny that after all the effort to make me right handed I was later advised to do something left handed…lol.
DeAnn, I am a retired police officer. I was a rangemaster for twenty years and a sniper. I am left handed but, shoot pistol and rifle either right or left. For shotgun I almost always have to have it on
my left side. I throw, kick, and shoot a bow right handed. Master eye is left. I carried my side arm for years on my right side and then for years on my left. Sound messed up don’t I.
Police shooting sould not be teaching you to be a target shooter but instinctive style in which you do not close your eye but focus on the target with both eyes and your weapon comes into the picture without thought. That goes for both left handed or right handed people. Do not learn to shoot with just the left hand, it could in handy one day.
My mum also forced me to use my right handing by all manner of techniques as a young kid. 20 years later, i realize that my dorminant hand is the left one. i have reverted back to it and a lot has changed right from my intellect to other aspects of my life. Not to say that it might have been the reason why i have bed-wetted till the age of 15 years!!!!!!!!
The school and my father changed me from left-handed to right-handed in the early 70s. My dad literally tied my left hand behind my back and had me practice writing with my right hand. This was condoned by the school. I will say, for a guy, I have great handwriting. I also grew up a nervous child and have always had problems with public speaking. My thoughts are never quick enough with my mouth. I was more artistic then sports oriented, but I had to play baseball. So I had a “lefty” mit and had to think which side of the plate I would bat from. Now I see it as ambidextrous confusion, but wonder how this change truly affected me. Today, I would say I still write with my right hand very well but am a pronounced lefty in every other way. I do often wonder if changing my handedness had a negative impact. If there is any viable research on this topic, I would like to know more!! It is always good to see that many had my same issues in one form or another and have turned out great!
Im 23 and im the only lefty in my ENTIRE Family on both sides. My dad is the youngest of 6 and my mom is the youngest of 4. All of my kin are righties. My parents figured it out as while i was a baby and i didnt ever think about it till i hit kidergarden when the teacher came over to my desk while i was reading and writing notes from a book i got from my dad. She promptly ripped the book and my pencil out of my hand and asked “what do you think you are doing?” I didnt get what she meant so she told me the book was too advanced for me that there was no way i understood it and that i was writing with the wrong hand. My parents got called to the school the same day and were informed my dad confirmed that they already knew i was left handed and they werent going to make me try being right handed. When she asked who taught me to read neither of them knew i could they hadnt taught me. Come to think of it no one ever taught me i just knew how, cant explain how i knew what i was doing i just grabbed a book one day and started. Now im a member of the Mensa Group which is a group that in order to join you have to score genius level on an IQ test which is 140 i got a 151. So when poeple tell me that i should try to be right handed i tell i would only when i want to be stupid.
Have already said this but it’s worth repeating, when my family realised I was a leftie in a family of rightie’s my grandad told me that only geniuses were lefties. I’ve always believed it and tell my kids(both righties)that this is the reason that me/mum knows best!
I am left/ambidextrous handed. When it was discovered by my grandmother (mom’s mother) that I was using my left hand for “everything” she took it upon herself to correct the problem. Because, it was a right handed world.
My grandmother was my babysitter and when I was with her I was scolded and slapped and spanked me when ever she observed me using my left hand as my primary hand. She resorted to also tying my left arm/hand to my body leaving only my right had to use when eating, writing and daily things. To my grandmother being left handed was abnormal maybe a sign of retardation. Her intentions, I’m sure were well meant but somewhat incorrect. Discovered at a much later time in the future.
To the best of my knowledge I am the only “left handed” one of my relatives in my age group. I have never really thought of my condition until in a discussion with a very dear friend. She explained to me what I had never thought about. I am left handed and always have been and always will be.
My left side is my dominate side I use my left eye as my “master eye”. Throw me something and I will attempt to catch it left handed. I was a military combat shooting instructor in the U.S. Air Force. I just naturally switched rifles or pistols to either hand when shooting. I could shoot just about the same overall score either way. There are some things though I do right handed like like handling a cutting knife, scissors, flipping things on a cooking grill, electrical wiring etc.. It just depends. But I am able to adapt very easy and quickly in accomplishing tasks. I “switch” like a light switch most of the time. Don’t even have to “think” about it.
Pretty “neat” don’t you think?
Seems it’s all “good” to me.
Hi,i am almost the only naturally left-handed one in my family,i remember when i was a kid and was having a meal , my grandfather always forced my parents to exchange fork and spoon in my hands,they did so,but immediatly i brought it back to the same before form.
I was never forced to become right handed as child but there also wern’t any left handed device’s available to me either. In order to make the playing field level or to my advantage I learned to think from a different perspective. Over time this pattern of thought became instinctive so my actions and verbalization on a subject matter may appear to be different from that of a righty. Out of habit a left may first seek to understand what is seen or heard to determine if any adaptation is required, whereas a righty might take it at face value at first. If a righty can gain any insight from the perspective then it’s win-win.
Interesting comment, Bret,
When asked to to something a certain way at work, I usually ask why, which has at times gotten me in trouble, as people think that I’m questioning their authority. Not so! I find that if I understand the “reason” behind the action I’m much more likely to remember it and do it correctly. I never have thought of this as being “left-handed reasoning,” but maybe it is!
I’ve been left-handed since the day that my mom sat me down at the dining room table and gave me a bowl of applesauce and a spoon. She had placed the spoon on the right side of the bowl. I picked it up and put it on the left side. She moved it back to the right. I picked it up again and put it on the left. She put the spoon back on the right side. I picked it up again and put on the left side. She then stopped and let me use my left hand to pick up the spoon. I guess upon discovering this that my parents allowed me to progress normally as a left-hander and I’m so happy they did!
I was never whacked on the hand by my teachers for being left-handed. I do tend to be a slow learner and I do have a high IQ…it’s over 100.
As far as I’m concerned, I think that parents should let their children progress naturally as left-handers if their kids start picking things up with their left hands.
G’day All.
I’m an Australian lefty. At school (in the sixties) I was whacked with a ruler time and time again for writing left handed. My hand writing is really bad. I can read it easily, but other people can’t. I can’t say how many times I was told that I was simply too lazy and clumsy to do things the “right” way. Many times I was called cacky handed or molly duker. I remember hearing a teacher telling my parents that he thought that I would always be a slow learner (as it turned out, I had a very high IQ). Many times I was made to sit in the hallway of the school as punishment for being lazy. As a result, I used to skip classes and go to the library and read. They would come and get me, and make me sit in the hallway. As soon as they weren’t looking, I would take off again to the library.
After a while, I got really good at hiding when they came looking for me. I often wonder if that’s the reason I turned into a rebel, with a very healthy disrespect for authority. None of their methods worked, and I am still a proud lefty.
I made electronic communications my career, and because my workstation was set up for me, nobody else could use it because it was set up “backwards” and right handed people burned themselves on the soldering tool. I got a giggle out of that. Test gear was a bit of a problem, because the knobs were all on the right side, which meant that I couldn’t see the dials and screens whilst making adjustments.
Later on in life, I joined law enforcement. My right eye is my dominant one, which meant that I had to hold a revolver at about a 45 degree angle so I could sight it properly. Also with revolvers, when reloading, I had to turn it upside down because the cylinder comes out the left side. With practice, I could fire six shots, turn it over, reload, and set off another six as quick as a right hander (I call them commoners). I never used a semi automatic pistol because the safety catch was too hard to use quickly.
In the seventies, I went motorcycle racing for about 10 years. I discovered that for some odd reason, I could lap much quicker on circuits that went anticlockwise compared to clockwise.
I read most magazines and newspapers from the back to the front. I can read upside down and in a mirror easily.
I’ve been told that in ancient cultures where water was scarce, such as in the Middle East, it was a practical custom to use one hand for “clean” purposes such as eating and the other for “unclean” purposes such as cleaning oneself after using the toilet. Since most people’s dominant hand was the right hand, it made sense to use the right hand for clean purposes. Over the years, the left hand got a bad reputation because it was the one used for unclean purposes. Lefties travelling to the Middle East today are advised always to use their right hands for eating lest they offend their hosts!
How interesting! The practice of forcing people to change from being left-handed to right-handed is not only known in Western cultures. In the Middle East is it widely believed that using/writing your left-hand is “evil”. It may have its roots from spurious interpretation of religious texts. Although the word “left-handed” is not featured in those texts. It sounds as if it is deeply rooted in humans minds that left equals evil and right equals good.
i was taught to write my name before i started school ,aged 4 in 1955 i started school in east london , the teacher promptly made me put my left hand behind my back and write with the right hand ,when i was sitting at the table writing at home and mum noticed i was writing with my right hand left hand behind my back like teacher showed me , she asked what i was doing when i explained to her what had happenned in school , she was at that school next day and told the teacher ths was not to happen that i was left handed and that was the way i was to stay and i did.
learning to knit was hard my aunt though right handed herself taught me , i hold the knitting needles towards me , it all looks back to front but it ends up the same as right handers . my sewing also ,i sew the opposite way to right handers but it ends up the same.i turn the page at an angle when i write and its been no problem to me ,for years i started to read a newspaper or magazine back to front , but now i start at the front page.
I am lefthanded but do many things right handed like knitting and crocheting. But I had a girlfriend in grade school who was 100% left handed and her mother taught Sheryl to knit/crochet by having Sheryl face her when teaching her the stitches. What a simple solution! And how understanding of Sheryl’s mom (a rightie) of what it’s like being a leftie in a backwards world.
I attended Catholic school is the late 40′s and was forced to write like most of the other kids with my right hand. I developed a stutter and my parents couldn’t understand why. The doctor notice the hand change and ordered the school to let me write lefty.
Stutter vanished.
I have become quasi ambidextrous because most tools and kitchen stuff are for righties, even ladles! So I can use a screw driver either way. I do get a lot of sawdust on me using the circular saw but I see the cut line better. And if I have to switch I can due to many of the tool designs and much much more.
I started school in the 40s. We were made to write right handed then, and smacked if we used our left hands. The reason given was that if we wrote left handed, we would smudge the writing that we had just done. (We used pens, and ink-wells, there were no ball point pens then!) My son is left handed, my daughters take after their mother, and are right handed. I can still write legibly with either hand, a constant source of amazement to the young.
Well me personally, I’m only 20 and I was never forced to use my right hand as such, however I was raised in a mainly right-handed family (my dad was a lefty and forced to write right-handed, I guess that’s where I get my leftyness from) so naturally, I use a computer mouse, a pair of scissors and – oddly enough – I can throw better with my right hand. My niece is a lefty too, she’s only four.
I read on my Left Hander’s Calendar today that it’s possible to get the lefty gene, but only from the father if he is left-handed.
Not true … my dad’s side of the family are all right-handed but on my mum’s side my aunt, and two of my cousins (from another sister of my mum’s) are left handed … while me and my brother are lefties …
I was forced to change the way I held my cutlery at junior school (knife had to be in right hand not left) . Otherwise I’m entirely left-handed & footed.
Extremely fortunate to have had RH parents & a Mother who found a way to teach me (& her younger sister) to knit left handed.
I was made to write with my right hand when I first started school, at home I was allowed to use my left hand, but this teacher would put the pencil in my right hand, and smack my left hand with a ruler. I lived near the school and my mother said I would run home in the break times crying, but wouldn’t say why. She asked some of the bigger children and they told her what was happening. My mother normally wouldn’t have interfered in any way but she went and saw the headmistress and told her I was to be allowed to use my left hand. I often wonder if this contributed to the fact I disliked school so much, it wasn’t until I went to another school that I settled more.
I am the only leftie in all my family, so thanks to my mother for sticking up for me!
Hello. I’m Elisabeth. I’m French. I was born in 1944 but my father being a school head and my mother a teacher, they were clever enough to show me to a German psychologist (since we were in the French schools for the occupation army in Germany) when I was 3 . They’d noticed I grabbed everything with my left hand. The psychologist confirmed I was 100 per cent left-handed and so I was blissfully left to do as I wanted. All the time I was in either my father’s or my mother’s classes – not always an easy situation with the other kids and with parents doubly strict for fear of being accused of favouring me ! – except once.
Mother was down with the flu so for the first time ever I was with another teacher. The first lesson was drawing and she called me to the blackboard and handed me the chalf.
I took it with my left hand of course but she said “No, with the good hand ! ” I said, sorry, I can’t, I’m left-handed. She stubbornly insisted, almost threatening me.
So I took the chalf in my right hand and stared at the blackboard.
And then an odd thing happened. I stared and stared at the blackboard, unable to talk, hearing a kind of big ringing in my ears, and then my eyesight got blurred and.. I fainted.
I just passed out.
So far I remember when I woke up again, there was a terrible row between my mother and this teacher, who never ever tried again to have a left-handed write against its grain !
Good luck to all lefties !
Elisabeth
My Mom was born in 1899. She was left handed (so am I). She was forced to write and do EVERYTHING with her right hand. she had beautiful Palmer penmenship. However, I do believe it affected her, she never seemed to put two and two together, or maybe she did and just didn’t want to discuss it. As I said she was forced to do everything right handed. Her school went so far as to tie her left arm (with rope) to her desk as a little first grader so she couldn’t use it. Today they would be arrested for that.
She sewed left handed, and was very good at it; however, in school that would make her fail at a time these things were an important part of the cirriculum. She had to hem right handed etc, but the thing that did her in were buttonholes. in order to make them appear to be right handed she had to do them upside down and backwards. She said she could n’t stand it. This occured her Junior year, 11th grade in US. When Septembe arrived her senior year she was in bed unable to walk. She was unable to walk for one year, cause unknown, but when 12th grade was over and she knew she didn’t have to go back I believe that let her mind let her walk. She also had some what we call panic attacks over the years/
She swore no one would ever force me to use my right and they didn’t. However, they had no idea how to teach me and I didn’t have a left handed desk till I went back to finish a college degree in my fith decade!
My Mom was born in 1899. She was left handed (so am I). She was forced to write and do EVERYTHING with her right hand. she had beautiful Palmer penmenship. However, I do believe it affected her. She never seemed to put two and two together, or maybe she did and just didn’t want to discuss it. As I said she was forced to do everything right handed. Her school went so far as to tie her left arm (with rope) to her desk as a little first grader so she couldn’t use it. Today they would be arrested for that.
She sewed left handed, and was very good at it; however, in school that would make her fail at a time these things were an important part of the ciriculum. she had to hem right handed etc, but the thing that did her in were buttonholes. in order to make them appear to be right handed whe had to do them upside down and backwards. She said she could n’t stand it. This occured her Junior year, 11th grade in US. When S eptember arrived her senior year she was in bed unable to walk. She was unable to walk for one year, cause unknown, but when 12th grade was over and she knew she didn’t have to go back I believed that let hermind let her walk. She also had some, what we call panic attacks.
She swore no one would ever force me to use my right and they didn’t. However, they had no idea how to teach me and I didn’t have a left handed desk till I went back to finish a college degree in my fith decade!
please read the one below as this one has too many typos!
My aunt was born left handed and was strapped with a ruler and forced to write with her right hand. As she grew older she could write with either hand and you couldn’t tell the difference in which hand she used. She always had great penmanship.
I am left handed but, being born in the 60′s meant that I was allowed to write with my left hand. Awkward for sure (with right handed desks) but at least not ‘forced’ to become right handed.
I love being ‘different’ but, all in all, am glad my 3 children are right handers
Thanks.
Janet/Canada
I too, was forced to try and learn to write the “correct way.” However, I persisted and kept writing left handed. In college I took drafting class and the professor said the first day, “Oh no, we have three women in this class and one is left handed.” I will never forget that. I ended up being the surviving female in the class and,…… the prof so liked my work that we went to bat for me to transfer my credits to an engineering school if I chose to go there.
Meanwhile back at home I was not allowed to cook, God forbid if I were to use a knife left handed!!!!!!!!! I did not begin to really bake or cook until I left home. The same was true with sewing and using a sewing machine. My mother finally realized that I could really cook and sew (ten times better than her.)
I have learned to use a drafting board, food processor left handed and showed everyone that, “A left hander has to work twice as hard to show others that we are the best at what we do, and fortunately it is not difficult.!!! GO LEFT HANDERS!!
My father was left-handed and forced to write right-handedly. Result: he became ambidextrous. That always fascinated me, but not enough to make me write righthandedly.
This is a great discussion and I thought I was the only one that had this problem. I have always been a lefty with eating brushing teeth etc. However in grade schoold I was forced to use my RH. I remember in the 70′s we used to have RED scissors for right handers and GREEN for the left handers. I would natually pic the green scissors with my LH. Now the teacher saw this and instead of encouraging me to use my LH she pointed out how different I was in front of the entire class. So being humiliated in front of my peers and not wanting to go through that again I put down the green and picked up the red so I could, FIT in. And when it came to writing with the LH you received a wrap on the hand with a ruler. Suffice it to say I became RH with handwriting but was never comfortable with it. I always found myself doodling later life with my left hand because it just felt natural but didn’t change to writing with it because so many years had gone by. But a few years ago I broke my RH and while I still tried to write with it, my writing went from slow and autrotious to slow and horrific. So at 40 I have completely changed over to my Left Hand. It’s much quicker than my RH ever was so I try to practice everyday to get better with neatness. I just wish as a child my parents would have caught this and encouraged my left handedness at a young age. As for how this affects someone at a young age I think it does. I was the troubled child of the family that dropped out of school and didn’t listen to anyone. But my two brothers were the glory boys of the family (right handers). Both finished high school and college, have a network of friends play guitar, are very creative with writing, drawing and are funny. So it has affected me to some degree. I just made sure my kids wouldn’t go throught what I did. So when they were young I payed keen attention for LH & RH habits. My son naturally is Left Handed. and my daughter is Right Handed. While my daughter is still yound my son has finished high school is currently in college, has a network of friends plays guitar, is very creative with writing, drawing and funny. mmm…must be something to do with ENCOURGEMENT.
I am left handed and have been all my life. My father tried to change me but it did not work. he did make me play little league right and to this day I through with my right. I can bat left or right. I play golf only left.
I have 2 sons one is right and one left. My father said it is my mothers fault I am a lefty because she would feed me and put the spoon down her right my left.
I tried this with my sons. My oldest who is right. I put the spoon on the right he picked it up with his right. I put the spoon on his left he picked it up with his right. I put the spoon in the middle and he still picked it up with his right.
My youngest son is a lefty and I did the same test with him and he picked it up with his left every time.
When my younger son started playing little league he played right. I did nothing to change him. and he is right at all sports.
As a child of the late 60′s, you would assume the hippie movement would have gotten rid of this problem, however I attended grade school in a small country school where the free thinking movement hadn’t hit yet and was told repeatedly that only the offspring of the devil wrote with their left hand and was therefore forced to write right-handed for a while. My mother (who is also a lefty) saw me writing with “the wrong hand” and asked me about it. When I told her about the “devil’s offspring” comments, she came unglued and let the teacher, principal and school board EXACTLY what she thought! I was no longer forced to write with the “wrong hand” and within a few years we moved into the city and a new school that embraced me just as I was. I still write left-handed, but in order to adapt to the right-handed world around me, I’ve learned to do many things right handed: cutting, can-opening, and mousing are just a few.
I’m near 50 years but could never write with my left hand as in school the nuns force me to write with my write hand. Nowadays I do a lot of things with my left hand because it’s natural and sometimes have a problem opening a tap in the bathroom as they work for the hand-writed and other small things.I have scissors for let hand as can opener and it’s much easier. It’s a pity that people don’t understand our natural way and force us to do it one way.
My Uncle was forced to use his right hand whilst at school, and he developed a really bad stammer. It caused him a lot of upset during his life, and made him speak as slowly and carefully as he could. People then thought he was a bit simple.
Thankfully I was allowed to use my left hand, but I can’t say my writing was ever any good.
Using a pen that needed to be dipped into an inkwell for handwriting classes meant lots of blots and messy work as I dragged my hand across the still wet ink! Ballpoint pens were a wonderful invention.
I am left handed and have had a stammer since I started school. Over the years I have learned various strategies to deal with it so now a lot of people don’t know I have a stammer. I am always aware it is there ready to trip me up. If I am worried about something (speaking in public, going to the dentist etc) my stammer tends to come back. It is under control most of the time. I am a Town Councillor and as long as I know what I want to say and don’t say too much it is OK.
At primary school a page of writing would start on the left and gradually each line would start a little further to the right so by the end the left side of writing was on the diagonal with the right side in a straight line down the page.
I have one daughter who is left handed and the other is righted handed, the same as my husband. I did not push them to be left or right but left it up to them. One day in the infant school the teacher used the ruler to do maths, adding and subtracting. As it was a day when I was helping I had a quiet word with the teacher afterwards. For anyone left handed they would start at the right end of the ruler not the left. For someone righthanded they could easily add 2 to 3 and make 5 using the numbers from the left, not so easy for a left hander like my daughter.
I am grateful for Anything LeftHanded and have bought many things over the years, thank you.
I was forced from a left hand to a right hand in first grade. The teacher actually tied my left hand to the chair behind my back so I couldn’t untie it.
I had a terrible stammer and stuttering for years. To me stammer is the blocked hesitation when you brain is crosses channels and can’t get the words out. Stuttering is repeating part of the word over and over because your brain can’t let go.
My dad cured me. Although I still have ADD type symptoms that I feel is a part of this. I read outloud every night for maybe an hour. I read very very slowly one syllable at a time. You can’t imagine how slowly. I wasn’t allowed to speed up the speech for months and months. When he felt I had mastered the extreme slowly speaking I was allowed to speak a little tiny bit faster. I said tongue twisters all the time 24/7. Outloud. It took almost a year before I could have a normal conversation.
Eventually I gave speeches as a project manager of a very large company to hundreds of people. I strongly recommend this process and to join Toastmasters. It gives you confidence so fear doesn’t bring back all the speech issues. It seems like when you are afraid, it makes it harder for your brain to process and can bring back the old issues. Toastmasters will help with that.
I was a left-hander. When I started school I was made to write with my right hand, if I changed the pencil over to my left hand I was smacked. As you can guess, I ended up writing with my right hand. Nobody noticed that when I sewed I used my left hand & I still sew left handed. Years later I was a teacher & could write with either hand. A pupil arrived at school one morning with his right arm in plaster & said ‘I can’t do any writing, I’ve broken my arm’ I replied that if I could write with my left hand then he could have a try. I wrote on the board with my left hand & he said ‘Crikey! that’s neater than your right.’ Needless to say he had to try with his left hand. I didn’t let on I could write with either hand!!
My first grade teacher tried to force me to be right-handed (back in 1959). She would come to me and take my pencil from my left hand and place it in my right hand. I just could not write with my right hand, so I would switch my pencil back to my left hand when her back was turned. I am so glad she finally gave up. My future teachers never bothered me using my left hand. My handwriting is not the best but I am so proud to be a “lefty” even though this is a right-handed world.
I was born in 1951 and I’ve been told my paternal grandmother tried her darndest to switch me as a baby, but my parents fought against that. When I got into third grade, when we were being taught to write (cursive as they call it now), my teacher was not happy with my left-handedness, but she didn’t try to change me. She only told me if I was going to write, I wasn’t going to write poorly, so she taught me to turn my paper in the way that would prevent a hooked hand (and rapped my hand with a ruler if I didn’t do it correctly). I have good penmanship because of her.
I have experienced several things in school where I was forced to do things right-handed. When playing baseball, the schools didn’t have any left-handed mitts (which would have been mitts for the right hand) and refused to accommodate left handers, so I had to catch the ball with the mitt on my left hand and then quickly tear it off my hand and throw the ball in the way that was natural to me, with my left hand. Needless to say, no scouts in the stands looked at me as a potential for the major leagues (LOL). I also bat left-handed but that, of course, was not a problem and I was allowed to do that.
When I took golf lessons I was the only left-hander in the class, and the instructor said there was no way he was going to teach me different from anyone else in the class so he said I would learn to golf right-handed or not at all.
Those were the 2 most memorable times where I was forced to do things right-handed, and although they were awkward for me at the time, I didn’t end up with any residual effects later in life.
Oh, I also use the computer mouse in my right hand, since I never was given a left-handed mouse, and now I find it more comfortable to use the computer mouse with my right hand and awkward in my left, which I think is actually an advantage, as I can be writing and mousing at the same time, not something the right-handed can do.
In second grade I was not allowed to take the I.Q. tests with the other children because I could not hold a pencil in my right hand. My grandfather complained to the school and I was allowed to come after school to take the test. No other students were present. During the regular test, I had to sit on the floor in the hallway until all the other students were finished. I am now 70 years old and I know this is not the case any more. However, for me it was very traumatic. During my high school years all the chairs with desk handles were for right handed students. Consequently, when writing I had to sit on an angle in the chair and mostly wrote upside-down.
As a ‘lefty’ in grade school, I had a teacher who told me I was writing with the wrong hand when she noticed me using my left hand. For the rest of her class, she made me use my right hand. When I got home from school that day, I told my mother what happened and first thing the next morning, the teacher and principal was getting a face full from my mom. It was great! My mother has always been very proud and happy that one of her kids is left handed. I do everything with my left (eat, bowl, hit, phone) but the only adjustment was using a pc. In high school we had typewriters so when pc’s came along it was difficult at first using the mouse and the 10-keys but now it’s more natural than using the mouse on my left. Go figure.
I was born in 1960, when I started school, the teacher actually would tap your hand with a ruler if you used your left hand. My father would have none of that. He was the President of the school board at the time, and made it very clear that children needed to be encouraged to be who they were. He actually worked with me every night when I started writing so that I would not have to “hook” my hand to write. I am very thankful that my father stood up for me and even made me feel special for being left-handed. I never felt that there was anything wrong with being left-handed. I was proud of it, as all of us lefties should be!
I am convinced that my Father was born left-handed and was forced to righ right-handed . He was the last of 5 chidren in a middle-class family. As a child I remember the appalling problems he had with his stammer and it took him 50 odd years to get rid of it completely.
I was born left-handed but no-one made any attempt to make me change. The only change I made was with eating. When I learnt to use a knife and fork I did so with the knife in my left hand. Whe I started school, at lunch we all sat on benches and I found it very difficult as I kept putting my elbow into my neighbour, so I changed and used my knife in the right hand as everone else. I have dreadful hanwriting as no-one helped me and just left me to it – eith resulting messy work!!!
I notice that my 7 year old grandson get’s a lot of help from his teachers with his writing – he says there are 3 other boys in his class who are left=handed
I was not forced to write right-handed but a right-handed teacher taught me to write in an uncomfortable and awkward position in attempts to keep my hand from smearing the letters. Eventually, I would abandon that approach and write the way it was most comfortable for me. I don’t have the best penmanship because the left-hand “hides” the letters as I form words but at least I’m comfortable. I don’t know about these days but back in the late 60′s, few if any teachers were sympathetic towards us lefties.
I’m not sure that any of these theories can be tested in a sufficiently scientific way, as for most of the blog writers, a significant length of time has elapsed since the original steps to ‘re-train’ them from being lefties to righties…
But I do agree that from personal memory, being forced to try to write (and eat) as a right-hander did have a traumatic effect on me.
I can remember crying and being very confused because I couldn’t ‘get it’ at all. From being able to write conventionally (albeit very scruffily) from left to right, I became very disorientated and started writing from the right to the left. This led to me receiving even more abuse, so I’m sure people can imagine how traumatic it was for a child who was already trying to cope with undiagnosed dyslexia!
Eventually, after weeks of me crying and being totally traumatised, I was allowed to continue writing with my left hand. But the ‘dinner ladies’ at school were determined that I would eat with my fork in my left hand and knife in my right, so that persecution continued.
I can confirm that systematic indoctrination does work and that to this day, I eat with a knife and fork in the same way as ‘righties’. But I have never been able to master eating ‘spoon stuff’ (soup, cereal, custard, etc.) with my right hand and still use my left.
I was forced to write right-handed by my kindergarten teachers and it was very difficult for me to learn how to write letters, words, etc at a very crucial development point in my life. Fortunately, by the time I entered grade school my teachers let me write left handed, but I had to work extra hard to catch up to where my class was. I also had a gym teacher who would not let me bat at softball as a leftie, because she said there was no one that could pitch to a leftie on her team. As a result, I always bat right handed now if I am playing softball and I also play tennis with my right hand instead of my left hand.
I go to a Catholic School for girls and I am made to make the sign of the cross with my right hand. It is quite annoying as I automatically raise my left hand when I make the sign of the cross. It is a problem I will have to get used to.
I also use a mouse with my right hand but a use a laptop mouse with my left. I’m just so used to using a mouse with my right hand it’s actually differcult to use my left.
I agree with you Emily, by the time they came along with a mouse for left-handed use, I was already comfortable using my right hand. To use my left feels very ackward – never thought using my left would feel that way.
I have always been very strongly left-handed and the only drawback at school was atrocious hand-writing (teachers were not taught how to help left-handers in the early 1960s and both my parents were right-handed) so that I had to keep using pencils after the other pupils had moved to pens. Time moves on however, my handwriting is a little neater now but not used very often as I communicate mostly via a keyboard. One effect of twenty years of computer use is that as we are virtually forced to use a mouse with our right hands, mine has become stronger and more dextrous (sorry about the pun but it’s the word that fits). Interestingly one of my sons is very dominantly left-handed and I was able to help him with writing, throwing, etc. The other is right-handed for most things but prefers to eat left-handed.
Dear Lesley,
Why do you use your mouse righthanded ? It is very easy to switch to the left of your keyboard and change the pointers….
Dear Lesley,
I have always used a mouse with my left hand without problems
Have you ever seen somebody righthanded trying to use your computer with your lefthanded mouse ?
no but that would be very funny.my son has picked upmy gutair to try to play it .it’s a leftr fender strat .he say it’s freaks him out how weierd it feel’s to him.i tell him as a lefty a lot of rihthanded things fell like that to me.but as a lefty have learneds to deal with this.rich m mondovi wi
I have also always used the mouse with my left hand and do not have any problems. I just couldn’t get on with using it with my right hand.
I have and its pretty funny! They walk up to my desk; are confused when they can’t find the mouse at first, then reach their right hand across in front of them trying to use the mouse on the left side of the keyboard. It is a picture!
I had one nurse that I worked with that complained (quite seriously) when she had to change the desk setup back to right handed when following me. Since she was a charge nurse, I made sure to set it to right handed before I quit my shift. Did anyone thing I might have liked to have the desk set up left handed for me berfore I came on shift?
Such is the left hander’s life.
I have always been very strongly left-handed and the only drawback at school was attrocious hand-writing (teachers were not taught how to help left-handers in the early 1960s and both my parents were right-handed) so that I had to keep using pencils after the other pupils had moved to pens. Time moves on however, my handwriting is a little neater now but not used very often as I communicate mostly via a keyboard. One effect of twenty years of computer use is that as we are virtually forced to use a mouse with out right hands, mine has become stronger and more dextrous (sorry about the pun but it’s the word that fits). Interestingly one of my sons is very dominantly left-handed and I was able to help him with writing, throwing, etc. The other is right-handed for most things but prefers to eat left-handed.
I am now 43, and I’m amazed at all your stories about growing up left handed.
When I was in Grade 2, my mother blamed my school teacher for “making me left handed”
I had to sit down at the kitchen table for an hour after school and was forced to try right handedness
I somehow grew up still left handed, I don’t remember why mom gave up on the writing right handed
To this day, my mother insists that she is also ‘left handed’, even though she tried to properly squish it out of me
Both my brother and sister are right handed.
I am a very lefty lefty, but was forced to use my right hand to spread butter on bread etc, thought fortunately that ended when I went to boarding school and my dining table captain couldn’t bear to see me struggle! I’ve used the spreading knife left handed since then. I also had to make the sign of the cross right handed, I got the feeling it would be disrespectful to God if I didn’t. In the Catholic creed it says “he [Christ] is seated on the right hand of the Lord” implying that this is the favoured side. At home, I use left handed rulers, pens, corkscrew, etc. I do have lefty scissors but can use both types, since there were no lefty scissors that I knew of while growing up in the 60s/70s. I don’t think our mother ever appreciated the struggle that we faced trying to do things “backwards”! I am also dyspraxic and co-ordination is not my strong point. I have set up my home to suit me, and it is only when I am out and about that I encounter obstacles. The corkscrew was a complete revelation, by the way, and so was the ruler. I wouldn’t be without those now.
Agree about the corkscrew – still can’t use the “normal” one. It took me years to discover the problem – I turn the bottle not the corkscrew! Now I’ve got a leftie one, I do it properly.
The left-handed item I use most often is my corkscrew (I live in a wine-making area). I don’t let others use my corkscrew, fearing it may be harmed or lost. If people ask why I won’t share, I tell them they couldn’t handle it. Some have taken this as a dare, and for them, I let them try, and enjoy their awkwardness as they end up turning the bottle. LOL! So far, no one has ever asked to use my corkscrew a second time after having tried it once. Wine tasting, anyone?
I am a very pronounced lefty, and no one tried to make me change hands, but I got a lot of teasing. almost to the point of cruelty. I farmed, and would lamb a ewe “the wrong way” had problems with chain saws, and petrol strimmers as the cut out button was on the wrong side etc, etc, I work gun dogs and at trials I have been told that the dogs are now lefty’s as they work better to the wrong side, the problems are endless. one of my main grouches is TESCO/S as their pin no. readers are fixed and when I remove the reader I often get moaned at by the stafff, I am unable to use them the right way, as I turn paper etc. to the right to be able to write, my hand writing is fine, some times likened to that of a doctor, but I can read it!!
I have always been strongly opposed to people being made to write with their right hand when they are left handed. The headmistress at my Infant School tried to make me write with my right hand but she thankfully she didn’t succeed, it makes my blood boil when I think about it and when I think about what other lefties have had to go through.
hello. i am left-handed too. when i went at school i knew to write with left hand but the teacher insisted to write with the righthand. she was taking my pen and puting it in my right hand.. was hard to get used. the effects of the moment were that i started to make mistakes of speech that before i didnt made. now i write very ugly.. all the activitis except writing i make with the left hand, i even work with the left hand [i am a dentist].
anyway, i consider this was a big mistake to change me, i was not disturbing nobody writing with left hand
[sorry for the mistakes of grammar, i am not native english speaker]
I’m Italian and in Italy being left-handed is still considered a disadvantage – right up the ’70s, it actually meant being forced to change hands in most schools, especially Catholic-run ones. Left-handiness runs in both my original families (my grandfather was one of the few left-handers which didn’t undergo change of hands of his time), so my generation had a few left-handed born. My cousin from my mother’s side was born just a few years before me, and when it was time for school, she went to a Catholic-run school which forced her to change hand in writing: it became such a problem, she became actually a retarded woman, which she was not to start with. She can’t drive, can’t manage her own money, and can’t have a relationship. It pushed my own mother to check before I started school that NOBODY would have made me change hand when it was my time in school, not a Catholic one however. I am a very proud left-hander, which has often battled for her rights to get the consideration left-handiness deserve.
I am a lefty for more then 40 years and was luckilly allowed to use the hand I wanted. However in kindergarten no lefthanded scissors were available so I learned to use the righthanded one (with my right hand). Even now when lefthanded scissors are common I cannot handle them.
My husband is lefthanded too and he uses the righthanded scissors with his lefthand without problems (just as easily as the lefthanded scissors.)
Friends observing me doing things often think me strange, as anything I have been taught to do I do right handed, but anything I have learned naturally or self taught I do left handed. Admittedly I do write with either hand (whichever picks up the pen first), a bonus at University as when one hand became tired I just carried on with the other. The only thing I ever got on with well at primary school was when I was introduced to a hand sewing machine (which I later found out was invented by a left hander), I was suddenly the only one in the class who could thread it up and control the fabric going through it, instead of my usual ‘clumsiness’.
I grew up in Surrey in the 1950′s and when very young my mother took me to the Doctor thinking that I was “backwards” She was then told not at all madam, your daughter is left handed. No one in the family before or since, where did that come from? I was left to carry on and managed very well but I am sure you all know how difficult life has been. I have always felt that I was different to everyone else in life, but even now if I get lost and faced with either going right or left, guess which way I choose… Isnt it nice to be different..
I am fully left handed and footed. At school in the UK in the early 50s they allowed me to write with my left hand but insisted that I sloped my writing forwards like right handers…I wanted to draw the pen and slope backwards rather than have to push the pen to slope forwards but I was not allowed too. This was in the days of nibs and inkwells; the result of the schools insistance was that my nib kept digging into the paper and making blots and my work was untidy and very slow. I always got low marks because I never was able to finish in the time allocated in exams. Thank god for ball point pens! Although of course they were forbidden at school. The freedom to write slopping backwards and to be able to use a ball point pen made University even more liberating for me. Strangely my work was still late and untidy but by that stage this was for reasons other than my writing style
Heh, I still write with a fountain pen! Though I slope the letters forwards …
try the left handed fountain pens – it was a revalation to me how easy it is to write with one. I love to use a foiuntain pen but always had to keep lifting the nib from the page so it didn’t dig in. Left handed pen is wonderful – just as easy as using a ball point.
My Father was naturally left handed and was forced to write with his right hand when he went to school in England the 1930′s. He managed to achieve this without any adverse efects ( as far as I know ). But he continued to use his left hand for other dexterous activies such as painting, sawing and using a hammer.
One strange benefit of all of this was that he had a talent for writing simultaneoulsly with both hands. He could start in the middle of a piece of paper and write ‘normally’ with his right hand whilst wrtiting the same text in mirror writing with his left going towardss the left hand edge of the page.
When I held up what he had written to a mirror it looked identical. Sadly he has passed away long since and I no longer have an example that I can show you.
For the longest time I thought I was a natural RH until I started shooting scoped rifles. As most rifles are RH, I shot right-handed only to later find out that I could hardly see through the scope with my right eye. As soon as I switched handedness and started shooting with my left eye, I had an awakening. I spoke with my Mom, who informed me that I was naturally left-handed but felt different from all the other kiddies that were right-handed. I decided to switch to my right hand and she did not intervene. What are the effects of my switching handedness? I stuttered and I had dyslexia. Fortunately for me, my mom quickly addressed this by hiring a tutor to help me with my stuttering. Dyslexia was another issue and I flunked the first grade as a result.
Sometimes when I am really sleepy for having just waking up, I make myself a bowl of cereal and will realize later that I am holding the spoon with my left hand when I normally eat with my right.
Interestingly enough, if I operate a drill with my right hand and drill a 4-inch hole, I find the hole comes out crooked because I am observing the bubble on the drill with my left eye. If I hold the drill with my left hand or close my right eye while holding the drill with my right hand, then the hole comes out much straighter. Apparently, the slight parallax at observing the bubble with my dominant, left eye while holding the drill right-handed is enough to introduce a slight slant to the hole I am drilling.
Other than that, I find myself doing most things right-handed: Batting, catching, using the computer, cooking, cutting, turning a screw driver, shooting a handgun, using a fork, etc. If I eat with my hands or collect items, I will use my left hand and transfer them over to my right.
I was required to write right handed in grade school. As a result, my handwriting is so
illegible that now many people think I’m a doctor. Also, no left-handed desks at that school. Ironically, I was a fairly good pitcher on the school’s baseball team – so none of the teachers had the courage to suggest that I throw with my right hand. Fortunately the so-called stuttering curse bypassed me, enabling me to pursue a career in broadcasting.
I was forced to write with my RH both in kindergarten and elementary school. Now my LH writes much faster unfortunately it also tires faster (I guess due to less practice) and the results is less legible which is why I use my right hand. I use the eraser with my LH though.
Other than writing, I was also forced to eat right-handed. Now I use my RH when I eat with hand but I use my LH whenever I use a spoon or chopsticks. Most people associate being left-handed with writing with the LH so they would always be surprised when I eat with my left hand since I write with my RH.
I always wished my mom had stood up for me during kindergarten and told my teacher off. But being a forced-convert herself, I guess she didn’t think it would have any serious consequences.
In school my Hindi language teachers used to pick on me because of my left-handedness. They would always single me out and call me “lefty” … one even tried to change how I wrote as well!
Though I never did catch on to writing with my right hand, I developed a block towards Hindi and ever since then I’ve been struggling with the language! Also, I never really took a shine towards religion because as far as I am concerned, there really is no point in being a part of a religion that cannot accept me as a left hander. I too have been forced on many occasions to do things right handed in religious functions when I was younger.
My older brother was left handed but when he started the first grade it was decided that he MUST change hands to be able to keep up with the rest of the class and that it was just plain wrong to be left handed, his teacher took on the task and commenced to beat him on the hand (Left) every time he picked up the pencil with that hand, he took awhile to catch on to the the “Right way” and fell behind the rest of the class in his school work so what do you think the solution was, YEP!! change him back to Left handed again, some more beating on the hands (Right hand this time!) He fell behind some more, eventually he flunked 1st grade, lost all enthusiasm for school work and darn near flunked every class, dropped out of school with the urging of the High school . Joined the Army, got to be in the Armor(tanks) with nothing to do he drank allot, got in trouble, a dishonorable discharge followed, got out , no job because of the discharge, ended up in prison off and on for 30 years, caught emphysema while serving time and he just died recently ruing the day he ever learned to write right handed. BUT they did make him ambidextrous. The outcome was that by the time I got to the school they just left me alone with my lefthandedness.
I was forced to use my right hand for a very short time as child. This was before I started school. Luckily, wise counsel stopped this. I have a slight speech impediment. I don’t know if this is one of the side effects or pure coincidence. I’m 99% left-handed. About the only thing I do right handed is bat in cricket. Both my home and office are set up for left-handed use. I like to see the look on peoples’ faces when I give them a left-handed ruler to use!
Though I do most of my work Left-handed, but right since childhood, I was forced to eat right-handed. In India, Left handers are sometimes looked down upon as if being left-handed is a crime. One and everything has to be done right-handed. In temples and religious functions, nothing can be done left-handed.
my uncle was forced to write right handed…they used to think left handedness was a sign of the devil .
obviously never read thier bible…in the book of judges..God chose 200 soldiers who were left handed…so ..we are Gods chosen..!!!..lol..
However, there are over 80 references in the bible to God being right handed. So you know who must be left handed. I was always bothered when the priest shouted, “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the father”.
Wouldn’t you think that God’s own LEFT hand would also be OK? How can God’s own left hand be a bad thing?
Judges 20:16: “Among Benjamin’s elite troops, 700 were left-handed, and each of them could sling a rock and hit a target within a hairsbreadth without missing”.
I´m not too keen on slinging rocks though.
I’m 55 and was made to be right-handed. My parents, primarily my father, believed that being left-handed was a mistake and that “God doesn’t make mistakes”. So I do still write right-handed but do most other things left-handed, or ambidextrously – quite handy when I want to do multiple tasks at once.
I have two sons and one is left-handed, and the other ones is right-handed but eats left-handed. We could always count on a lecture when my father would see the boys eating because he didn’t get where the left-handedness came from. Subsequently we found out my mom was supposed to be left handed and so was my older sister.
I never connected my ability to write backwards or to read upside down with left-handedness but after reading the other comments I see I’m far from alone. I also got in trouble in Catholic school for doing the sign of the cross “backwards” – ah, memories (?)
Here’s to a world where people can be who they are.
i only spent the one year first grade in catholic school.when they tried to get my mother to help them she told them to stop that i was lefthanded and that the way god made me.all my baby pic ahow my always holding things in my left hand she showed me a pic of myself at 6 months my left leg crossed over my right .she said the tried for 30 min to get me to cross my right leg over my left but i would always quickly change left over right. iwent topublic school from second grade on .my grandma on my mothers side was also a lefty.heres to lefty power.are having to deal with a righthanded world makes us better with our right hand then righthanded people are with their left.addvantage lefty’s rich m
I was made to switch hands at primary school in the 1950′s , having to give up my lunch times to sit with 2 others to practice. However, it never really worked and I am still using my left hand to write. I am rather ambidextrous though and can use both. I find it hard to keep right on the footpath and don’t know if this is some result of left brain right brain thinking. As another reader mentioned about bed wetting , I did that until about 9 or 10 but don’t know if that was related. There are no ther members of my family who are left handed and I would be interested in any further research about this . It is fascinating!
My father (born in 1914) was made to switch from left to right handed when he started school. I don’t think it had much of an effect on him except for his handwriting. When he had a stroke in his 40′s, his right arm was weakened and he switched to writing with his left hand. Even though he had not used his left hand for writing before, his left handed writing was nearly the same as his right handed writing. He played golf right handed but baseball left handed. When I went to school in the 1950′s, left handed children were requested to switch. I refused and continued to write left handed. I was proud of beng left handed and liked being different. In those days left handed children were not taught how to write left handed but had to teach themselves and I learned to write with a “hook”. When we began to use a straight pen, I found that I smeared the ink with my hand. I got a fountain pen and found the ink flowed smoother and did not smear so much. Today’s children are not only not forced or requested to switch, they are actually taught to write properly left handed.
I am the only left-handed sister of 1 sister & 2 brothers (who are right handed). When I was born, my grandmother warned my mother about changing my left hand to right because of the devil, ect. My mother refused to change me and I am very proud to ber left-landed…it totally rocks….!!!
Thanks, Mom for letting me be me!!
Hear hear – my parents insisted the school allow me to be left handed (as my dad was forced to switch). This was in 1964. They had to go to the trouble of finding out some jobs in which being left handed was an advantage before the school gave in. I only recently found out there had been a problem. Thanks to my parents too.
iam fully ambitextrous ,and can even mirror write.have always been left handed first but can do everything right handed.i was sent to a catholic school in denver colo for first grade where the wher forcing me to learn to write right handed.my mother found out about this only because the head nun called her to complain and ask for help because i would untie my left hand witch they were tying down.i would then throw my books at them,if the tried to hit me with the ruller i would grab it out of ther hands and hit them back.i remember feeling all alone and like a freek would not ride the bus home walked the 2 to 3 miles.dont remember much about that grade except their was one young nun who always protected me in second grade started to teach myself to wrie lefthanded.i still write faster right handed but much neater lefthanded.i still sometimes feel out of place like everone’s staring rich martinez mondovi wi
When I started school, kindergarden in California, the school had things like left-handed scissors. So I used my left-hand for a lot of things. I honestly don’t remember the process of learning to either read or write, at least not much, but have the sense that the teachers didn’t really, at that time, know how to deal with teaching me how to write. So much of it I just sort of learned on my own, in a way.
We moved part way through third grade, and also both my parents are right handed, so I grew up doing only two things exclusively left-handed–eating and writing. Ohter things I do mostly left handed, but can use my right hand.
Some things I am able to do equally well (or badly, depending on what it is) with either hand, and some stuff I do mostly or only with my right hand.
My brother and a first-cousin on my mom’s side are left handed, and at least two of my three nephews are naturally left handed.
My mother was a leftie, my older brother (by 6 years) was born a leftie, and I am a leftie. When my brother was 6 his first grade teacher made him “change” to writing right-handed; as a result his handwriting was always atrocious, I think he always felt awkward in sports because of the “handedness” confusion, and I feel certain it created emotional problems for him as he grew older. By the time I came along my mother was adamant with the same teacher about NOT changing me, and I have always been eternally grateful for that support! I do some things with my right hand, but it’s only because it feels more natural, not as a result of being forced – and some things I still haven’t figured out (darts, for one!) And I love mirror writing – we ARE a versatile group!!!
same here – i play darts right handed too, also tennis, never known why. Oddly, i play table tennis left handed, so it’s obviously not related to holding a bat. I throw and catch a ball ambidexrously.
I am one of 2 left handed daughters of a left handed father. 1 sister is right handed. My dad if he was still with us would be in his early 80s. He was not forced to write with his right hand at school which was the norm at that time but his father did force him to eat right handed because it would be better when sitting at the table. He was the oldest of 4 children. When his left handed baby sister came along, she was not forced to change at the dinner table….20 years made a difference in parenting.
My experience of being left handed in a right handed world were not discussing. But I had to learn to use scissors and kitchen utensils right handed because there wasn’t anything else. I hated sitting in a right handed desk in school..my left arm got tired. I had my left handed aunt teach me to knit right handed….boy, do we look funny when we knit. We left handed people are so adaptable!!!! But I never could learn to crochet left handed…the mirror did not work and the patterns did not work in my mind.
My children were always given thing in the centre of their body so that they could decide which hand to use. the interesting observation in doing this is that my youngest was very ambidextrous until she was about 6 and she ended up being right handed. I had to advocate for the choice being her choice and there were a few challenges in her sports activities. We made our point very clear. I have 2 lefties and 2 righties children and household that is set up to meet our needs. I have all sort of tools in the home to meet the needs of all of us.
An interesting observation I have made working in health care in a hospital setting, there is a higher than average number of left handed people in the field. Makes you wonder if we use our brains differently than the rest of the world that draws us to health care???
When i was young, my parents taught me to write with my right hand. Naturally somehow i will switch to my left. They tried to change me, and i remembered that i tried but it was awful!
When i was about 12, i started learning to use the chopstick with my right. And now i can use both hands with chopstick though my right hand is still not so strong.
As for working on the computer, i uses my mouse with my right hand.
I don’t agree is forcing a child to change if they are left handed. What i think is that as htey grow up with surrouding influence, they will learn to adapt and switch hand to do certain things.
I’m 28 years old now and an engineer. I do use my right hand for certain tools and equipments. Generally people around me don’t realize that i’m a left hander. Being a left hander basically are better at adapting to new surroundings and they are always a more versatile person!
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. and started public school in the late 1950s. When learning to hold a pencil and write I was ‘encouraged’ to use my right hand, even though my natural instinct was to do it with my left. I’ve always felt that using my right hand for activities requiring more dexterity and learned skill, like writing, was ‘wrong.’ I became more ambidextrous and have learned to write with either hand from an early age. When I was in my mid-forties I developed Multiple Sclerosis, which affects my right side more than my left. Now, writing with my right hand is almost impossible, so I just use my left! Now, writing with my left hand seems ‘right.’ When I was younger I used to entertain friends by writing with a pen in each hand at the same time, the left writing normally and the right would write in a mirror image of what my left was writing! No one else I knew could do it.
I attended Catholic school. In 2nd grade I was forced to start using my right hand to write. This was enforced with a ruler used often by the nun in attendance. I started to stutter in my speech. Fortunately my mother took me to a doctor who was ahead of his time in the study of “handedness”
and told my mother to tell the nuns to stop enforcing the right handed writing immediately. They stopped, and I stopped stammering. The writing became a non issue. Lefties have a tough time adapting to many things in our daily lives. But I am glad I am a lefty, and glad there is this forum. Thanks. Bill K.
In kindergarten I was allowed to use my left hand and then in first grade my teacher was also left handed so she defended me when another instructor told me I had to switch hands. She supported my use of my left hand. I use both hands for different things, my righthand I use for shooting (law enforcement use) and baton, throwing a ball and batting in baseball, football. Left hand for basketball and writting. I can interchange with various degrees of profeciency for all things. I love the writting backwards part : )
I was not forced to use my right-hand when I was young, it was just assumed that I should be right-handed and I think I must have been gently corrected in my very early years without my parents really being aware of it. Both my parents are right-handed but there are a few lefty relatives on both sides.
However, I did run into problems later. Throughout school I was often corrected from left-handedness or left-footedness or left-eyedness, since I wrote with my right hand and was therefore assumed to be like “normal” people. However, the writing was dreadful and really went to pieces in high school. My teachers couldn’t figure it out and even suggested using special writing pens to straighten out my scrawl. This was despite the fact that I was good at art, even with my right hand.
It was through art that I discovered my inner lefty. Someone suggested a kind of game one day where we would try to draw something with the “wrong” hand. I discovered that I was particularly good at this party trick and soon adopted ambidextrous drawing as a personal technique to avoid fatigue while working. At university I started to write with both hands as a means of keeping up with the intensive note-taking that was an essential part of lectures in those days. Another lefty trait of mine is always to use my left eye with a camera or telescope. I just can’t seem to concentrate properly on what I am seeing when I use my right eye, despite having much better vision in my right eye.
It wasn’t until after the birth of my left-handed daughter that I started to pay more attention to the whole right and left thing. Particularly when I noticed my mother starting to correct her when she picked up objects with her left hand. We had to tell my mum that her grand-daughter was left-handed and didn’t need correcting. A situation that got me wondering about my own early years.
On reading about sidedness, I discovered that being ambidextrous is not a natural state and that you have to devote many years of training to your less-able hand to achieve it and yet it only took me a few days to master left-handed drawing and then writing. I had also started to suffer from a strange affliction which had prevented me continuing to enjoy hill-walking. This happened whenever I was on the side of a mountain and didn’t have a clear view of the horizon. Suddenly my brain would switch the world around so that the mountain slope appeared to be horizontal ground. The result was that I fell over – not a safe situation on a mountain. So I was suffering from some kind of spacial organisation problem.
Putting all of this together I decided to try going fully left-handed and, after a month or two, started to develop beautifully clear handwriting. I can also now climb a mountain without falling over. I have also improved tremendously at all sports as I now approach them from the left side. So I would have to strongly oppose any attempts to convert someone’s handedness from the natural side, and encourage people to be open-minded about the handedness of young children.
My six year old son is left-handed and a mirror writer. When he was younger he would do almost nothing with his right hand, and once commented, laughing, “The right side of my body doesn’t do anything. It just sort of hangs there.” I shudder to think of how horrible it would be for him to have to switch. Luckily no one has, though they have not had as much patience with the mirror writing as I would have liked. We looked for an alternative school for him in the hope they would back off the fussing over his reversals; one of the places we visited was a Waldorf school… we almost *ran* out of the building upon learning that the kids must write with fountain pens! (imagine the smudging)!!!! They had ONE left-handed pupil in the entire large school, which ran from pre-K to high school. Turns out the Waldorf founder thought that left-handedness was a sign of spiritual distress.
I have run across at least two left-handers who switched hands for writing *voluntarily,* at an early age. One is a small boy of five, who insists on trying to write with his right hand in spite of being decidedly left-handed; when his mom suggests that he would have an easier time writing with his left, he says “No mom it is too messy.” Another is an adult who also switched to writing with his right hand at a young age. I am curious if switching voluntarily has the same brain-frustrating consequences of being forced to switch.
While I can do a few things with my right hand, they are very few and far between. In reality, about the only thing I can do with my right hand that I can’t with my left is scratch my left elbow.
I am 47 yrs old. My mother decided that I would be disadvantaged by being left-handed. She made me use my right hand and I had a problem with it and as I tried to use my left hand she would slap the hand. I had real issues (like I do everything wrong). I stuggled with writing while others learned so easily….leads to low self esteem. In about the 2nd grade I began to know I was left handed and thought something was really wrong. I told my mom that something was wrong with me, I could write with my left hand. That’s when she told me I was born left-handed. Everything then made sense. The fact that I couldn’t play baseball with the other kids and kickball…forget it. Couldn’t get the feet right. My brother and the other kids ridiculed me…”you can’t kick the ball? you’re using the wrong foot”. Tough times. I began using my left hand for everthing and wrote with my right hand at school to avoid the “special” desk. Today, I use my right hand to write/sign at work and left for everthing else. I write great with both. Never really figured out if what my mother did by trying to change me was a Blessing or a Curse!
My mother was forced to write with her right arm in first grade. Until that she says that her writing was ugly. My father and I was left too.
I was fortunate that my parents and early teachers did not make any fuss about my left-handedness, other than comments in my report cards all through school about my horrible handwriting.
In fifth grade, though, a teacher tried to shame me into switching hands, saying I was sloppy and ‘backward’. He quickly learned who the more stubborn of the two of us was.
When I was training to become an OR nurse, I was forced to hand off instruments to the surgeon with my right hand, which was very difficult-I’d know what instrument I wanted and about where it was on my table, but I couldn’t transmit that information to my right hand. When I began working professionally in the OR, I’d pick the instrument up in my left hand, pass it to my right and then hand it off to the surgeon-within a very short period of time I was working as quickly going my double-handed way as my co-workers who were only using their right hands.
as a student nurse in the 60s being left handed caused me problems on the OR rotation, esp with threding surtures–I had to put the needle in the needle holder for a lefty and thread and then turn it upside down– took too long and needless to say I was never attracted to being a scrub nurse.
Never enjoyed theatre work in the late 70′s either – except for one surgeon, who was left handed. all the other nurses complained when allocated to his ops as they were forced to do everything “backwards”. I loved it!
As a 62 year old totally left sided person, I all-too-well remember my 1st grade year in school (we didn’t have knidergarten). My teacher would take my pencil out of my left hand, spank the palm of my left hand with a wooden ruler, then put the pencil in my right hand. As soon as she walked away I switched back. This went on every day for a couple of months until she gave up; but she always gave me bad handwriting grades although my penmanship was in the top third. Years later I broke some fingers in my left hand and was in a cast for six weeks. I am a teacher and I had to face the fact that I will never be able to write righthanded. My students had to do all of my writing for me. By the way, I feel no urge to force my righthanded students to write with the left.
I was a natural left-hander at a young age, but was forced to write right-handed as a result of the rules in my school system. I was seven years old at the time and remember my mother being called into the principal’s office. She told my mother right in front of me that I was writing with my left hand, that I couldn’t do that. I had to write right-handed like everyone else, that it was a rule. They had no teachers who could take the time to be just with me because I was left-handed. As a result of this, after using my right hand for a few years, my writing began to get bigger and I needed to wear glasses. A few years later, my right eye began to drift outward. I went through high school this way, others making fun, not realizing the outcome. At the age of twenty, I went through a muscle-corrective surgery. For a long time, my creativity was diminished. I’ve heard that the right and left brain activity can get scrambled as a result of becoming a forced right-hander. Has anyone else ever heard of this? Like someone else on the blog, I have practiced using my left hand to write and do other activities. It’s coming along slowly but surely. My creativity has opened up more readily as a result of this practice. I’ve recently written a lot of poetry which is being published as we speak. For sure I’ll keep practicing with my left hand. I’d like to hear more from those who were forced to switch.
I am generally left-handed, writing with my left hand, etc, mouse to the left of the computer keyboard, etc. But for things like using scissors or a can opener, if the handles are right handed ones, I have no problem using those with my right hand. However, even without right-handed handles on scissors and can openers, I find I prefer to use right hand rather than left. I always use my mobile phone with my right hand, partly because my left hand is free for taking down any information, but possibly also because my right eye is dominant. My left eye is ‘lazy’ (I think that’s the right term). Right eye dominance probably explains why I use scissors and can openers with my right hand.
Has there been any research done on dominant / lazy eyes, and their impact on handedness?
On a slightly different tack, I live in a culture (Mongolia) where use of the right hand is really important for certain gestures. Giving and receiving food or drink with the left hand is considered offensive. I was recently challenged on this by my language teacher when I gave her a cup of tea with my left hand. However, people here sometimes see a left-handed child or grand-child as someone who is destined to be particularly clever. I’m happy not to disagree with them!
As I noted in a reply above, most of the right-handed things I do weren’t exactly “forced,” but were done because that was the only way the available equipment allowed.
However, one thing REALLY bugged me and I never got used to it. When I was in the Air Force, I was forced to carry my shoulder bag on my left shoulder, as the right hand (and shoulder, I guess) are required to be unencumbered for saluting. I hated it! I could never get the bag to stay on my left shoulder. I looked much like a hunchback, with my left shoulder all scrunched up in an attempt to keep the bag there. Fortunately, that was years ago, I am long out of the Air Force, and I can now carry my bag on the right (though I still have narrow, sloping shoulders, so shoulder bags are a bit problematic in any case!)
My Dad is a left-hander who was changed to a righty for writing and his writing is atrocious, but I don’t really blame that on the change. He’s a doctor, too, so we “kids” (we’re all adults now) joke that he has two counts against him for writing legibly! Ironically enough, he was the sponsor of a bill in the Washington State legislature (and tried to get it going nationwide) called the anti-scribbling bill. It would require all doctors to print (not write in script) their prescriptions and in patients’ charts. Doctors are notorious for writing illegibly and lots of medical errors are due to their writing being misread. I think a lot of the illegibility is due to haste, not necessarily poor handwriting overall. With computers becoming more ubiquitous, that law might be updated to everything having to be typed on a computer, rather than handwritten or printed.
I am a nurse and left handed and have atrocious writing, but I agree w/ the theory for drs horrible writing–haste, I also have long thought that the absolutely huge amount of notes that Medical School students must take in class adds to this problem. At one hospital where I worked years ago a dr. (pre-computer, 70′s, 80′s) carried a portable typewriter and typed all his orders and notes as his poor writing had caused someone to mis-read an order which resulted in an error–he didn’t want that to happen again.
When a colleague–who had invited my wife and myself to his home in a distant town for the weekend–was drawing a map to help me find the route from the motorway to his address, I noticed that the drawing was the reverse (mirror image) of what he was saying in words. He stopped and, with embarrassment, explained that he was a natural left-hander who had been forced to change handedness. Consequently he had a tendency to reverse directions.
A slightly different situation…I was born “right-handed” but due to a well-intentioned, albeit misguided caretaker, I was forced to use my left hand for everything. Are the adverse effects of forced LEFT-handedness the same as those of forced right-handedness? Ps-I’ve never met anyone else with forced-handedness to the LEFT from infancy…
I am naturally ambidexrous. My first grade teacher forced me to give up use of my left hand for writing. This was about 1969, as I am now 47. I have had problems with bilateral symmetry my whole life. Reading was not a problem. I never confused letters such as p and q. In fact, I grew up to be an English professor, but I had trouble distinguishing left from right and telling time on an analog clock. I am convinced this problem is related to my forced right-handedness.
We have quite a bit of lefthanders in my family and I work with a lot of lefties. There are 7 offices in a row. I noticed that the lefties offices were all next to each other. I made the comment that our boss didn’t want us to bump elbows with each other and she had planned it that way.
The only thing I was forced to do with my right was making the sign of the cross as a child. But now as an adult I find myself crossing myself using my left hand and this is done without thinking. When I use the computer mouse I use my right hand, this is so I can write with my left if I needed to.
I had taken a quilting class a couple of years ago. I was the only lefty in the class. The teacher was very accommodating, she would she me how to do certain things the lefty way. There was one point in the class that it was my advantage to being lefthanded. We were cutting material using big clear rulers. The other ladies had to use their rulers in such a way the inches were backwards, reading from right to left. But I could place the ruler so the numbers could read left to right. either way would have been fine with me. The other ladies were grumbling and complaining and I told them “Welcome to my everyday world”.
I was fortunate enough to be classified as a complete lefty from the start. I remember another boy who was inconsistent. The teacher couldn’t accept switching back and forth, so he wound up forced to write with the right hand. I remember thinking to myself that it would be wonderful to be able to write with both hands and thought the teacher’s position was illogical. I was 6 years old at the time.
I have some ambidextrous abilities. I can hold a pair of scissors in either hand to trim the fingernails of the opposite hand. I can’t think of any of my right-handed friends who can do that. They have to use clippers in their left hand to manicure the right. I also reach for objects with whichever hand is closer.
I use a golf club and baseball bat right-handed, but not particularly well. It’s just the way I was taught those items. I throw and catch left-handed, and am completely lost if I try it with my right hand. In younger years, I also took part in boxing, and my stance was definitely left-handed, because that’s where the power is.
Hi,i’m in Australia and have noticed that the ANZ bank have been upgrading their ATM machines,where normally there’s just a slot for you to put your card in they now have some curved green thingy that flashes but it’s been designed in such a way that for right handed people it’s fine to use,but for us left handers you can’t put your card in and are forced to use your right hand or stand to one side,away from the ATM to put your card in easily also i’ve noticed that most banks very few have counter pens on the lhs for us to sign with.
They tried to change me from left to right by taping my left hand down – course I am talking about the mid 50′s and the only person who understood me were my parents who really didn’t care what hand I used as long as I wrote – but teachers thought differently and the results were that on school I would stop writing whenever anyone came by and pretended to be thinking while I held the pencil with my right hand. I was written up as a reluctant writer because of this but now I write short stories, poems and enjoy the freedom. Unfortunately I’m a righty when it comes to cutting – as well as bowling so I have lost the advantages southpaws have in this area and I am now in a position to help lefties as a teacher by making certain their papers are placed in reverse in their binders so they can write without having the rings get in the way – they also get special arrangements for desk and where they sit do they are relaxed and not bumping into their peers. I am determined to show them how to adapt so they don’t have to give up their uniqueness – my favorite saying is written on my pencil cup is “God made a few special people, the rest are right-handed” needless to say all my little lefties want one too.
My Mom and I are both left handed. My mom is in her 60s and she was forced to change hands when she was a child growing up in Scotland. She has scars on her wrist from the strap she got when she used her left hand. She also developed a stutter which finally went away with speech lessons when she was a young adult. When I was a 9 I had a teacher who ‘suggested’ that I change to my right hand because ‘life is much easier’. Needless to say, this did not go over well with my Mom. I changed teachers, and have been a happy left handed person since then
Hi I’m one that had my knuckles hit by a steel edge ruler by the music teacher. I was in Grade one at that time. my teacher would remind me the days that she would be coming to teach music. So I would be ready for her by writing with my right hand. But as soon as she was gone I would turn the paper around so I would be ready to write with my left hand. My Mother was left handed and my Dad and my older brother was right handed so he taught my how to write right handed. I can remember when this first started in Grade one at and old country school. I would go home with bloody knuckles, so my mother went to the teacher and he said that he would look into it. The music teacher thought I was and evil child because I wrote left handed and I was the only one who wrote left handed in the whole school from Grade one up to grade eigth It was an open country class room school. I believe it had a nerves effect on me plus I started to biting my nails. It would be the days she would be coming. I also wet myself on days after she left because I would be thinking I would get caught writing left handed. I was glad to hear that she was not coming to our school any more. and we was getting a different music teacher. Reply
From 4 yrs old at infant school in 1943 I was forced to write with my right hand, being rapped over the knuckles with the edge of a wooden ruler. My best pal was Maureen Cox who got the same treatment. This went on up through primary school to age 11. Of course by that time I was pretty much used to it. I went on to the local secondary school where teachers still insisted on writing right handed, no knuckle rapping though. Maureen went to an all girls school where she was allowed to revert to left hand writing, even encouraged. She went on to become a drummer in a group.
Two of our five daughters are left handed, I found myself using the mouse ok on a left handed desk setup, I just sat down and did it without thinking, only realising some time later.
When using tools I find I can exert more force with my left hand although I am more accurate with a hammer in my right hand!
I was a shotist in the RN and could use a single shot .22 pistol with either hand although the 9mm Browning pistol, the 9mm sub-machine gun and the 7.62mm rifle were all used right handed. I always shot with both eyes open. I use long-bow and cross-bow right handed although as a kid I used a catapult left handed. I guess I’m a little mixed up but I’m feelin’ fine….
I was forced to do everything with my right hand when I started school in Germany. I had to learn cutting with right handed scissors since there were no left handed ones in our household.
Everyhting I learned at home as a child, brushing my teeth, combing my hair, sewing, cutting with knives, all are done left handed. Everything I learned in school was done right handed.
I am now ambidextrous, yet have problems with directions. When I give directions I will often tell the person to go right when it is really on the left. I am also left footed ( I used to play soccer)
I don’t think the forced right handedness did any harm. I believe it created a fully functioning, ambidextrous adult.
I am now 55, but when my grandmother would baby sit me she would put things in my right hand, so some things I use with my right hand like using a can opener or opening a bottle cap. But for the most part I use my right hand about 95% of the time. My first wife never understood why I did not like it when she hung up my clothes after she washed them, she hung them up as a right handed person, it would drive me crazy. When I go to the library to study, I have to sit facing to the right and slant my notebook to write, but unlike Pres. Obama I am not a ‘hook writer’ as they sometimes refer to we lefties as. I love being left handed, I am different and special, lefties be proud for being different and unique!
I just wanted to comment on your remark about hooked-hand writing. There is an element of genetics to this. Not all lefties write with a hooked hand. I do NOT (though the nuns certainly tried to make me do so — in a misguided attempt to aid my left-handed writing, they would turn my paper on a slant opposite to the right-handed writers. As a result, I would either have had to write with an extreme left slant or I would have had to crook my hand. As soon as they moved away, I would slant the paper the other way and I would write “uphill” and without a crook in my wrist. I have a lovely slant to the right, but I do have a tendency to drag my hand right over what i have written!)
There are right-handed people who write with a crook to their wrist. It’s really strange to see it. Look around to see if anyone you know does this. Again, the tendency to “crook” is genetic, but it can be caused by well-meaning teachers, too!
yes i do agree with you. I see a lot of left handed people writting with a crook at the wrist. As for myself, i don’t do that. Just like Lloyd, i write with slanting my notepad. Any people sitting on my left will be seeing what i write which in those days is a disadvantage during exams! And yeah, my left hand will always rub on my writtings and will have ink stains. The main problem is learning to write chinese character where the stroke begins from the left to the right and it’s more difficult for a left hander.
I am a natural left-handed. Nobody has never forced me to do things with the right hand. However, when I see peolple around me ( my family, my friends, almost everybody) doing things with the right hand, I start doing things with the right hand without thinking. For exemple, I use the mouse only with right hand, when I am playing volleyball I use more my right hand. Sometimes I forget that I am left-handed and I think “why am I using the right hand?”. I don’t write with the right because I can’t. But when I see everybody writing with the right I feel out of the world. It’s crazy isn’t it?
You’re probably more like me — somewhat closer to the middle on the handedness spectrum. I am definitely left-handed and can’t imagine writing with my right hand, but there are many things I do right-handed fairly easily (though I would probably do them left-handed if given the correct equipment or a left-handed teacher).
I learned tennis righ- handed and now couldn’t do it left-handed for the life of me (the brain paths have been trained!). I play golf and fence left-handed, as the equipment provided was left-handed. Most everyday chores that require equipment that is “handed,” like cutting with scissors, I do right-handed, as that was the only kind of equipment available and it was fairly easy for me to learn to adapt.
We’re the lucky lefties, as we are more easily adaptable to a right-handed world. I’ve known some “extreme” lefties who have an absolutely terrible time coping. Besides, if we ever have an injury (or a stroke, God forbid), we’d probably be in a better position to change hands to the healthy hand.
I assume I was also made to change hands for writing It seemed to be the thing in England in the postwar years, for everyone to be RH. I’m 68 now
I am definitely a lefty when it comes down to everything else. I”m LH at Golf my main sport, also throwing balls, and Cricket if I did that to. Ive always been a lefty in Soccer
But coming back to writing, I actually have a good style, but this may have come from years of sign writing (not professional) but in my line of work
One comment I have is that I am glad I write Right handed as LH writing looks so wrong
(note you cannot see what you have just scribed) without concorting your neck, or lifting the pen to see what you are covering over with your arm
No offence to LH writers, but RH is natural unless you are chinese etc where they go from right to left anyway.
My son now 33, and my daughter 37 are the same as myself, and always have been from birth
At school in the mid-seventies in the UK, I was about 6 or 7 and had my left hand tied behind my back, was also hit very hard with a wooden ruler across my left fingers if I used them. This resulted in me ‘mirror writing’ my father went ballistic when he found out what the teacher was doing… Barbaric.
I am 51 (born and brought up in Poland) left handed but was forced to write with right hand (at school) – and still do. As a result I can write with both hands at the same time the same text in two opposite directions. Strange but true. Other than that, i.e. drawing, cutting, kicking, etc. I am entirely left handed.
darius i too can right with both hands at the same time one foward on bacward the same words.found this out accidently one a social study teacher brought the subject of right or left handedness i was the only lefty asked me if i could right with my right hand also whene i told her i could see asked me to try to write both hands at the same time one forward the other backwords it’s called mirror writing rich m mondovi wi .im 50 yrs old
Rich Martinez – I think they also call it ambidextrous writing. I always thought that all left-handed people who took up right hand writing in childhood could do it. But maybe not (?) – well, I don´t know. I have never thought much about it but now I read on the almighty internet that some people even try to force themselves to write that way – i.a. in order to overcome depression. Weird.
My grandfather was born in the 1800′s and was left handed. He had his left arm tied behind him in school and forced to write with his right hand. He became ami-dextrous and wrote beautifully with both hands. I still have some of his letters.
In my family the left handed skips generations. My grandfather was left handed, I am left handed but none of my children are. One of my grandkids is left handed.
I wasn’t forced to use my right hand but I did manage to have an accident involving my left shoulder being fractured so I was a part righty for about 4 months. Still signed my checks, etc. but had my friends fill out the majority of those. I am one of those everything left-handed – use my right side for my purse. What an eye opener! Glad I’m back to me! I, and my cousin are the only 2 lefty’s out of 85 kids, grandkids or cousins!
I’m now 58 – and still a lefty, thanks to my wonderful dad! When I was in infants school, the headmistress tried to make me write with my right hand. I can still vividly remember the day……my dad, who was also a teacher at the same school, knocked on the classroom door and reqested that Miss McFlyn (I can still remember her name!) come outside into the corridor. She appeared back in the classroom a few moments later, looking a little ruffled, and from that day on, she never mentioned my “handedness” again! My dad told me in later years that he had told her that “she was never to try to change me again”!!!!
One of my earliest memories is of my mother trying to have me hold a crayon in my right hand. I was probably 2 years old and even at that age was so confused as to why she continued to try to make me hold the crayon with my right hand. Thankfully, she didn’t pursue it any further, but I think it’s interesting as to how vivid that memory is and how devastating that could have been if she would have “pushed” the issue.
I never really learned to cut correctly because there were no left-handed scissors in the 50′s and early 60′s provided either at school or at home. In essence, I was forced to cut with a right-handed pair of scissors. I was almost 30 when I went to an exclusive cutlery shop looking for a good pair of pinking shears. The saleslady assured me that the pair she showed me were of superb quality. Needless to say, the fabric just bent when I tried to cut with them. The saleslady exclaimed in shear disgust, “Well, my dear, you don’t need scissors, you simply don’t know how to cut!”
I feel badly for those who were forced to use their right hand because being a lefty is a point of pride for me!
I too was made to use my right hand at school. i have grown up ambidextrous my penmanship is atrocious, even now at the age of 43 i can pick a pen up in my left hand and have to swap it to my right I am quite clumsy which i put down to not knowing which hand to use.(though i am also generally clumsy nd ca walk into doorframes too) i can knit and sew left and right handed, i could never use a ruler until i had a left handed one (from anything left handed) and then realised i used to count backwards from 30 on right handed rulers (i though that was what everyone did). discovering left handed scissors was a godsend (again from anything left handed) i did take part in a psychology experiment at college about dominant hands and left/right side brain dominance and they had to omit my results as they affected the results by being abnormal (they put me in the right handers group but i apparently still registered as lefthanded in the test )and it affected all the results until they realised about my school experience. i eat left and right handed and turn my plate and swap cutlery over according to what i want to eat to make it easier. multitasking is much easier though!
once or twice i have even forgotten which hand i use and need to try out things to see what happens
i am facinated by this subject and would gladly take part in any studies.
my dad one of my sisters and my uncle are all left handed and they dont have half the problems i do, (although they have the obvious problems of being left handed in a right handed world ) they do like watching me stir 2 cups of coffee at once or make a cup of tea using both hands simultaniously to do different tasks though.i think it’s my party piece
I was born left-handed and left-footed. I was forced to used my right hand and right foot. The only activity that my parents and teachers failed to ‘convert’ was sewing – to this day I am incapable of holding a needle with my right hand. The consequences were disastrous – my hand/foot eye co-ordination is hopeless. This made me really bad at catching and kicking and led to enormous loss of confidence; as a result I never played games. It is only in the last few years that I have tried to use my left hand a little and I find I can actually manage to catch a ball, play table tennis and kick with reasonable accuracy. Worse than being a games pariah was the feeling of confusion I experienced growing up. I could not understand why being me (ie being a lefty) was so wrong and shameful.
Quite sometime ago I read some research (sadly did not make a note of the paper) that found being made to be right-handed actually damages your brain. I felt devastated. I determined to use my left hand as much as I could. Nowadays I use my left hand far more than my right, and I have even started to experiment with drawing and writing left-handed. It feels like coming home.
I would say that the emotional damage of being made to be right-handed is as great as the physical consequences, at least for me. Am I the only one to feel this way?
I come from a family that seems to be evenly divided between left and right-handers. I do some things left-handed and some things right-handed depending on how difficult it was to learn to do it mirror-image. I can read and write upside down, too, which seems to impress people (right-handers of course).
Now, I have a left-handed granddaughter, age 4, whose parents are both righties. They live in Japan, and she is growing up bi-lingual. I sent the information about how to properly write left-handed from your site. And now, I am thinking it might be good if she learns to write English left-handed, and Japanese right-handed (because it has a sort of calligraphic thick and thin aspect to it).
Anyone with this sort of experience?
i too read upside down which can be an annoying habit when i’m in and office, as i don’t even realise i am doing it. my Manager has learn’t to cover up things she doesn’t want me to read but luckily she finds it funny.i havn’t tried writing backwards or upside down though so i might give it ago as it sounds fun!
I’m left handed but there are somethings I can only do right handed as a result of not having a choice such as using scissors; a pair of scissors in my left hand feels as alien as a pen does in my right. Pencil sharpeners too I use right handed and I play the violin right handed although I feel being left handed gives me the dexterity (or should that be sinisterity?!!) to have quick finger work. I play the piano which I feel has helped to even up my hands and made me more ambidextrous. When cutting with a bread knife or chopping vegetables I often can’t tell which hand feels more comfy. I always end up with wonky slices when using my left hand! My mum remembers my infant teacher telling her that there were so many left handed children in my class that it was fruitless trying to make us swap hands. My mum was aghast that it was even contemplated! I remain the only southpaw in my family for a good few generations which makes me feel proud.
I remember going to a special teacher when I was in grade school (early 70′s) and this woman tried to get me to change from writing as a lefty. I also remember that I was never going to let that happen! Even at that young age I was proud that I was different and I made every attempt to make my writing worse than it actually was, when using my right hand.
I’m not a “complete” lefty; I’m fairly ambidextrous. I was glad, however, that I didn’t throw a baseball with my left hand because those kids always had to have their own glove. They could never borrow one from someone else.
I’m the only lefty in my family. I’ve got three kids and I really wanted one of them to write with their left hand but, it never happened. Oh, well.
I remember when I was young I went to Catholic School and the Sisters (teachers) would slap your wrist with a ruler if they caught you using your left hand to write..Well, I got out of there for 5th grade and I was so glad…I still write lefthanded, but there were so many things that I had gotten used to that some of them stuck..I have been ambidexterous on everything else but my handwriting.. kinda strange one thing that really stuck was the fact that I wear my wristwatch on my left hand..
Hi Les, that sucks, I have heard many stories like yours. The weird thing is the other day I dreamed that I had to use my right hand, talk about a nightmare! Not sure where that came from. YIKES! By the way, LES are my initials!
I had a lisp and a stammer without being forced to change hands.
My mother was forced to write right handed and as a protest she wrote with two pens, mirror with left and normal with right. She switched back when she could.
ive hade to use my right hand in alot of things like on the computer with a mouse and in choir and moves and in dance its bugs me and i end up messing up it scuks cause im the only lefthanded person in my family ever im mean ever. im only 12. i start to feal weird when i use my right hand.
When I was 6, I fell and broke my left arm. I spent two months coloring and trying to write with my right hand (thankfully it was summertime). Since then, I’ve been more ambidextrous. I find that using left or right hand depends on what I’m doing. Baseball, hockey, and golf, are all lefty. Basketball, volleyball, and bowling are right. Baseball is actually hard for me -I want to throw and catsh with my right hand, and bat left. I was VERY clumsy growing up, but attributed that to being tall. I feel more like having to change my hand for two months short circuited my brain a bit -I almost have to try everything twice to see which hand feels best.