Chelsea Instagram

[Red Hair, Black Dress]

My MIL couldn't be bothered to raise a left handed child: too hard, too much work, and he'd be the only left hander in the family.  So she forced Mr. Dress to be right handed.  She was waaaay older than 18 so no excuse. He's the youngest and I think she took  his left-ness as him being obstinate and difficult on purpose (she's like that). This was in the early 1960s.

His handwriting is unreadable, so he prints (very quickly).  His signature is a scrawl that could be anything.  He catches left handed, throws left handed, ties his shoes left handed.  He told me was somewhat uncoordinated as a small child. He sometimes has a problem using scissors in his right hand -- holds them upside down.  He been known to confuse left and right, such as when setting the table he'll place the fork on the right side of the plate.  In general I believe he's spent his life forcing his left-handed brain and self to function as a right-handed person.

My left handed brother, the exact same age, was shown by our mother how to do things left handed so he doesn't write in that weird hand turned around upside down way lefties do or any of the other hand contortions I've since left-handed people his ago do.  Our mother didn't seem to find it all that difficult to have 1 lefty child.

[Hane]

4 hours ago, OtterRuletheWorld said:

16 hours ago, bea said:

My MIL used to push my husband down - in the 60s and 70s there was this belief that walking before talking led to......learning disabilities? Something like that. So early walking was actively discouraged. Sounds like they need to get parenting advice from someone other than idiots.
 

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Where do people get such strange information. I don't think that was the norm in the 60s and 70s, but I do have a relative that was convinced kids who skip crawling (or who end up scooting or whatever) will never be able to read.

In the ‘70s, certain developmental psychologists believed that crawling before walking was an important step and could somehow impede literacy. My daughter *could* crawl, but didn’t like to—she preferred pulling herself to her feet and cruising along by holding on to the sofa—and she had no trouble learning to read.

In a developmental psych class back then, I learned of one study indicating that early walking was more likely than early talking to predict age-appropriate literacy. 

Still, tall babies often are late walkers. My first husband was a tall drink of water with no health problems, and didn’t walk till 15 months. He also could read things like Reader’s Digest when he entered first grade.

[bea]

My MIL couldn't be bothered to raise a left handed child: too hard, too much work, and he'd be the only left hander in the family.  So she forced Mr. Dress to be right handed. 

My dad (b. 1929) was forced to learn to write with his right hand. His brother (b. 1932) was permitted to learn using his left.
My dad had GORGEOUS handwriting. He drew his letters rather than writing them.

Sorry for derailing! Back to Chelsea and the Very Coordinated Children.

[smittykins]

5 hours ago, bea said:

My kids talked early and walked late (14 months for #1, 13 months for #2). Older is in a self-contained gifted program and took the PSAT at 9, Younger is very bright. Both were reading by 5. So there, old stories.

In her defense (kinda), MIL was 18 when husband was born and desperate to do everything “right.” She lived in a very rural area and took pretty much every scrap of advice from HER mother in law, who had 11 kids. And there are still people who buy this crap - just as there’s people still doing “blanket training” and whipping kids with plumbing line.

 

And letting babies cry it out because"if you pick them up every time, you'll spoil them" and "they need to exercise their lungs." 

Edited November 22, 2017 by smittykins

[zeebaneighba]

6 hours ago, OtterRuletheWorld said:

19 hours ago, bea said:

My MIL used to push my husband down - in the 60s and 70s there was this belief that walking before talking led to......learning disabilities? Something like that. So early walking was actively discouraged. Sounds like they need to get parenting advice from someone other than idiots.
 

Where do people get such strange information. I don't think that was the norm in the 60s and 70s, but I do have a relative that was convinced kids who skip crawling (or who end up scooting or whatever) will never be able to read.

My SIL was (is?) convinced that babies who skip crawling will have learning disabilities.  Her kid is about 20, so this was not that long ago.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

2 hours ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

Our mother didn't seem to find it all that difficult to have 1 lefty child.

My mom didn't have any problem with her youngest child (me) being her only lefty and my aunt did just fine with her oldest child being her only lefty. My cousin is 4 years older and we have always lived in different states.

My grandma even taught my cousin how to knit left-handed. I wish I had gotten in on that, but I didn't get interested in knitting until Grandma couldn't knit any more. I learned it right-handed for the same reason I do some other things right-handed; because it was just easier.

I'm always thankful that my mom and my teachers made it easy for me to learn to write (no "hook" for me) and cut as a lefty, and the high school coach who showed us a left-handed batting stance will always have my gratitude.

Edited November 22, 2017 by WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?
missing comma

[Seahorse Wrangler]

3 hours ago, zeebaneighba said:

My SIL was (is?) convinced that babies who skip crawling will have learning disabilities.  Her kid is about 20, so this was not that long ago.

I heard that about 10 years ago from a physiotherapist who claimed that not crawling could lead to autism and you had to train your children to crawl if they skipped that stage.

[Rebelwife]

6 hours ago, Hane said:

In the ‘70s, certain developmental psychologists believed that crawling before walking was an important step and could somehow impede literacy. My daughter *could* crawl, but didn’t like to—she preferred pulling herself to her feet and cruising along by holding on to the sofa—and she had no trouble learning to read.

In a developmental psych class back then, I learned of one study indicating that early walking was more likely than early talking to predict age-appropriate literacy. 

Still, tall babies often are late walkers. My first husband was a tall drink of water with no health problems, and didn’t walk till 15 months. He also could read things like Reader’s Digest when he entered first grade.

My daughter did not crawl, went right to walking and did have a number of fine and gross motor delays that were diagnosed in kindergarten.  It took 5 minutes of the OT watching her play to ask me "She didn't crawl, did she?"  Of course, it was kind of a chicken and egg situation, she skipped crawling likely because of some muscle tone and sensory issues and not crawling caused her to miss out on some important cross body skills.  A lot of her OT involved crawling around on all fours playing games so she would cross her midline more naturally.

She was reading on a fourth grade level by 1st grade, though, so obviously it didn't affect that.

Edited November 23, 2017 by Rebelwife

[RainbowSky]

On 10/28/2017 at 11:38 AM, nastyhobbitses said:

If you can afford all those floofy dresses and hair decorations (I see the girls wearing Snugars headbands, which are like $30 a pop), you can afford to buy your kids properly fitting shoes.

I'm fine with dressing your kids up in cute outfits for Christmas card photos or for worship services, or letting your daughter (or son!) wear tons of frilly shit because they want to (lord knows I drove my parents nuts with my demands to look like a Disney Princess for preschool every day), but I doubt that these girls get much say in how they dress. I'm rooting for Charlotte Eloise to go full-on goth/punk when she's fifteen.

One or more of them could take this frilly, floofy stuff pretty far if they grow up into Goth things, too!

[HarryPotterFan]

10 hours ago, Seahorse Wrangler said:

I heard that about 10 years ago from a physiotherapist who claimed that not crawling could lead to autism and you had to train your children to crawl if they skipped that stage.

I'm so glad someone has finally discovered the cause of autism! Millions of research dollars poured into it be damned! Have they published a paper on their brilliant discovery yet? *sarcasm*

[elliha]

Apparently knowing how to crawl is a much more important skill that we tend to think. A friend of mine had problems with coordination and other motor skills and had to learn to crawl at age 7-8 to be able to catch up with same age friends. She obviously could walk properly at age 7 and had started walking at about 1 years of age so at a normal time. 

[JillyO]

15 hours ago, WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo? said:

I'm always thankful that my mom and my teachers made it easy for me to learn to write (no "hook" for me) and cut as a lefty, and the high school coach who showed us a left-handed batting stance will always have my gratitude.

Man, I wish I'd learned to write without the "hook." It is such a pain in the ass! No one tried to get me to write with my right hand or anything, but we were required to use fountain pens in elementary schools, and there was just no other way to avoid completely smearing everything you just wrote without developing a "hook."

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

@JillyO, I learned to write broad nib calligraphy (a bit) when I was younger and I still do a little bit from time to time. I prefer a fountain-type pen or a dip-in-the-inkwell type pen, so I'm familiar with what a pain it is to try not to smear wet ink. I usually keep my paper at about a 45° slant when I write with an ordinary pen or pencil, but with calligraphy, I sometimes turn the paper up to 90°. It's weird, but it helps!

Spoiler

I can also write mirror image letters very easily. 

[moochies]

17 hours ago, WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo? said:

My mom didn't have any problem with her youngest child (me) being her only lefty and my aunt did just fine with her oldest child being her only lefty. My cousin is 4 years older and we have always lived in different states.

My grandma even taught my cousin how to knit left-handed. I wish I had gotten in on that, but I didn't get interested in knitting until Grandma couldn't knit any more. I learned it right-handed for the same reason I do some other things right-handed; because it was just easier.

I'm always thankful that my mom and my teachers made it easy for me to learn to write (no "hook" for me) and cut as a lefty, and the high school coach who showed us a left-handed batting stance will always have my gratitude.

One of my kids is a lefty and I never discouraged him from using his left hand. I have been told that lefties handwriting is worse than righties which is true for him. His handwriting is pretty atrocious to the point where he has had some OT help at school because teachers couldn't even read his assignments. His issue though isn't a lefty issue.

My former FIL told me that he was a lefty but was forced to write with his right hand (this was back in the 50s.)

[church_of_dog]

56 minutes ago, WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo? said:

@JillyO, I learned to write broad nib calligraphy (a bit) when I was younger and I still do a little bit from time to time. I prefer a fountain-type pen or a dip-in-the-inkwell type pen, so I'm familiar with what a pain it is to try not to smear wet ink. I usually keep my paper at about a 45° slant when I write with an ordinary pen or pencil, but with calligraphy, I sometimes turn the paper up to 90°. It's weird, but it helps!

  Hide contents

I can also write mirror image letters very easily. 

Have we talked about this before?  If so I don’t recall, but ME TOO!!  about the mirror image writing, and I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone else who can do it, so I really couldn’t tell if it was common for us lefties (I imagine that many folks who can do it might not know they can, never having perhaps tried it or even thought about it) or whether I’m just a weirdo (well, I already know the answer to that, lol).

I tilt my paper about to the degree of the middle image, no hook and minimal smearing.  I can’t remember how I batted in baseball/softball, but I don’t do anything else leftily — regular right hand for scissors, knitting, etc.  I do have some elevated level of verbal dyslexia though, having to stop and think before saying ‘left’ or ‘right’.  In fact my weirdleftyness even has me often saying ‘tomorrow’ instead of ‘yesterday’ and vice versa.  That might just be me though, lol.

 

[nastyhobbitses]

I'm a lefty with a lot of lefties in the family (mom,  two aunts, grandmother). I have pretty decent handwriting but I have the "hook" when I write, and spiral notebooks are the WORST (I always reverse them). I was never discouraged from being a lefty, though it was hard being in rural China where being left handed is discouraged, and seen as a little gross because of bathroom habits.

[nausicaa]

Love all this lefty talk!

I had terrible lefty handwriting as a kid and had the hook (Which by the way is caused by a lefty attempting to mimic the angles a righty is writing at--which is the only way handwriting is taught by most teachers.  Unfortunately your hand is very cramped in that position, hence the terrible handwriting. Obama has a really pronounced lefty curl.)

Then in sixth grade, I decided I wanted nice "girl" handwriting and that summer just retaught myself how to write. Unknowingly I reversed all of the strokes and just taught myself handwriting the way I was supposed to learn it in the first place. I have pretty nice handwriting now, if I do say so myself. College desks and binders are still the bane of my existence though.

When I worked at a tutoring center I was surprised at how many parents wanted me to teach handwriting to their southpaws. Another tip-- playing with sewing cards and stringing beads are great activities for little kids to help work the muscles for writing. 

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

27 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

College desks and binders are still the bane of my existence though.

My usual fix for lecture halls with no lefty desks was a clipboard with loose pages or a notebook with the spiral at the top. I never saw a single left-handed desk in the lecture halls at the large (ish) public university here, but the small private college in a nearby town always had left-handed desks along one aisle of the lecture halls. It was nice, even if I was only there for church youth conferences.

[Ozlsn]

22 hours ago, Hane said:

In the ‘70s, certain developmental psychologists believed that crawling before walking was an important step and could somehow impede literacy.

Certain institutes are still promoting variations on that idea. My 'favourite' is still that you have to progress through commando crawling, crawling, walking and then running to mimic the stages of evolution - that cracked me up completely when I read it. There are some good motor development reasons why going through those stages happens and is good but they have nothing to do with humans having evolved from an amphibious ancestor. (Also that mob are way too fixated on the stages happening in order and with no deviations allowed. My son cruised holding on to furniture before he discovered crawling, and took to that because it gave him more freedom to get further. By their logic I should have prevented him from cruising until he could crawl x metres in y time and then allowed it. Especially as he totally skipped the commando crawling part!)

[dianapavelovna]

A quick note about the Anne of Green Gables wigs mentioned earlier: I was in Charlottetown this summer and at the Green Gables house, they have them for sale in the gift shop. They're straw hats with the red braids attached, so not full wigs. There were little girls wearing them everywheeeere there, and they were freakin' adorable. 

[Nikedagain?]

This is weird that we are discussing this! My ASD daughter had OT yesterday and we were talking about this. I've spent 18 years working with people with autism and the OT has 10+ years. We have both seen a very high percentage of lefties in this population! Including my daughter. It's just interesting...

(Also, my daughter has had LOTS of classmates who are twins. Some have one NT and one ASD, some have one very mild and and one severe twin, but the twin who is most affected in the twinship, has always been a lefty)

SOO INTERESTINGG!

[VaSportsMom]

My oldest is a leftie. My baby does a lot of things left handed because he learned by watching his brother. 

[bjr70]

Apparently knowing how to crawl is a much more important skill that we tend to think. A friend of mine had problems with coordination and other motor skills and had to learn to crawl at age 7-8 to be able to catch up with same age friends. She obviously could walk properly at age 7 and had started walking at about 1 years of age so at a normal time. 

I never crawled and I still can't coordinate. Can't ride a bike, roller skate, or ice skate. Have a hard time with right and left too. No developmental delays though. I am definitely a "clumsy" person.

[Ali]

7 hours ago, WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo? said:

My usual fix for lecture halls with no lefty desks was a clipboard with loose pages or a notebook with the spiral at the top. I never saw a single left-handed desk in the lecture halls at the large (ish) public university here, but the small private college in a nearby town always had left-handed desks along one aisle of the lecture halls. It was nice, even if I was only there for church youth conferences.

I had a college classes recently where the desks easily could be switched from being right-handed to left-handed. 

[nausicaa]

5 hours ago, Nikedagain? said:

This is weird that we are discussing this! My ASD daughter had OT yesterday and we were talking about this. I've spent 18 years working with people with autism and the OT has 10+ years. We have both seen a very high percentage of lefties in this population! Including my daughter. It's just interesting...

Yes, statistically a higher number of autistic people are left-handed than the general population. Same phenomenon occurs with those in prison, Nobel Prize winners, Mensa members, and those who suffer from depression.  It's so weird to me that we still don't understand what causes left-handedness and why it is exhibited more in some demographics. 

And while I'm spouting off my left-handed facts, for anyone reading this: If you do have a child who is showing signs of being left-handed, please don't force right-handedness on them. The link between forcing right-handedness and severe speech impediments is very real, and it seems silly to risk it for a difference that is so negligible. Plus lefties look out for other lefties, and you'd be surprised how many times an employer or someone else in the lefty network cuts you a break because they notice you're left handed (But the first rule of Left-Handed Club is no discussing Left-Handed Club so... )