I’ve heard it’s very common for someone to be born left handed then for a variety of reason be forced to do things with their right. I recently came across posts about how that’s actually harmful and can cause a list of issues that I seemingly deal with. What do people here think? I’m training my left hand now, writing with it, throwing a ball lefty and playing pool lefty. Anyone ever hear of or live a similar story?
I am 68, and was in the second year of students not forced to write right handed. Stuttering was a much bigger problem when I was a kid than it is now. I’ve read that when they stopped forcing lefties to write with their right hand, the rate of stuttering in the U.S. plummeted!
This happened to my grandfather he dropped out of school in 9th grade started being completely left-handed and his stuttering disappeared almost immediately.
Interestingly his handwriting was indistinguishable whether written left or right.
Are you saying lefties are more prone to shuddering?
Not at all. But it appears that forcing kids to write with their non-dominant hand can lead to stuttering.
Yes. My great-grandmother tried to force my left-handed mother to be right-handed, and my grandmother made her stop when my mother developed a stuttering. (This would have been in the early 1950s - my mother is in her 70s)
When I taught pre school (3-4 year olds) a mother asked me to make her left handed daughter right handed. I told her I was unable to do this.
I was ‘allowed’ to write left handed but forced (by school) to use scissors with my right hand and to hold my cutlery ‘correctly’ 🙄
Comically I use my right hand for a knife when eating. But when I'm doing kitchen work that chef knife is in my left where it belongs. I think it's mostly because it feels wrong to use a fork with my right hand.
I do the same thing
Almost makes you wonder if being able to handle a blade in both hands. Means a past version said to hell with a shield and dual wielded or used a sword breaker.
I'm half asleep and if that sentence makes sense awesome.
This happened to my grandmother. Later in life, she wrote left-handed but when she needed to disguise her handwriting, she wrote right-handed.
My kindergarten teacher in the mid-80s came to my mother and asked me if my mother wanted my teacher to correct my use of the left hand in favor of the right. My mother said no and let me be left-handed except when it came to cutting with scissors, she insisted that I cut scissors with my right hand.
Dad was a lefty, was switched. I read something decades ago that it can actually make one smarter since you're firing both sides of your brain more than a single-sided person, but it makes you a bit off the rails mentally. That was def my dad - a certified genius, but his mental health was suspect. Of course, he may have been that way without having been switched.
I was already writing and using my left hand by the time I started school, but my teacher thought it was ok to tie my left hand to the desk and tried to make me use my right hand. My dad had a whole entire fit when he found out and made her stop that. I still use right handed Scissors, but everything else is left-handed.
You probably use right-handed scissors because that's all that were available. We adapt.
When I started school in the 70s, the teacher tried to make me use my right hand. My mom went to the school and told them to let me keep using my left.
Went to Catholic school in the late '60s/early '70s and they tried to convert me to being right-handed early on.
They eventually gave up. Score one for "Satan."
Yep, that's where it started. If you were left handed, you were "possessed by the devil". I was born in the mid-60's. My grandmother lived with us for a time and she use to switch my spoon from my left to my right hand when I was a toddler, trying to convert me. My father intervened and told her to let me be. I do everything with my left hand.
I was always being told that I was using the wrong hand when writing or eating so I grew up right handed but my handwriting was awful. The teachers would try to motivate me to write better, some by punishing me when my handwriting didn’t improve after being scolded but it never worked. None of them ever even considered having me try my left hand.
When I was in my 30s I tried using my left hand and although it wasn’t great it was basically the same as my right.
I know a painter that was born right handed. He happened to get a big hourly job for a contractor who was a complete jerk to him. So he trained himself to paint left handed on his job. Now he’s ambidextrous with a paintbrush.
I used to be ambidextrous, but I was told in school to only use my right hand. I wonder if it made my ADHD worse as a kid because I was forced to use my right hand only.
Kids used to grow up to be laborers and factory workers where uniformity of hand usage was more important. And kids often show variable hand preference until they’re in late preschool, so parents may encourage a choice. In some cases, that’s to help with motor coordination. In other words, there were and are non-idiotic reasons.
I was forced to switch by an accident. It was very difficult, partly because I had no help, no therapy, no guidance about how my body works. Like my eyes focus for a left hander, which is easily observed by an outsider but which was excruciating to work out as a child. I felt physically incompetent at times trying to do things the wrong way for me.
The weirdest may be that I could not crack an egg with one hand, but one day I was busy with my right and my left hand did it perfectly. I literally looked at my hand and said how did you do that? Turns out my left is very competent, but was shoved aside.
I have a nerve injury to my right, so by default i am left handed. I was made to use both.
I have anxiety and adhd that i dont think is linked lol my mom is similar
I think that most of us can use both of our hands for many things by nature of being born into a right-handed world. I think this gives us superpowers the righties don't have. ;)
😛
I grew up with the tail end of the nuns who were no longer allowed to force you to be right handed and no longer allowed to hit you with the ruler. Their retaliation was to just not work with me on penmanship or accommodate any kind of left handedness.
So I write sloppily with my left but do most other things right handed. Some things are equally left and right but I can barely use scissors left handed now. My precision is much more accurate with my right. But when I use a rotary cutter (cutting fabric) or exacto knife I can use either hand just fine.
I find it so crazy that in 2024, this would even be an issue. I am 66 years old, and nobody ever tried to make me use my right hand. Interestingly enough, my mother was also a leftie, and not only was she "allowed" to be, she had a teacher who really helped her to develop her handwriting via the Palmer method. She was born in 1932.
Same almost exactly. 62m, dominant leftie. My Mom is a leftie and insisted I use my left hand. I can't ever remember being told anything about being a leftie. Zero discussion about it being wrong. I didn't even know what a left handed pair of scissors was until probably 5 years ago, and to this day, I still use rightie scissors with zero issues.
Only right handed things i donate bat and golf.
Mostly my school (80s UK) was fine with left-handedness, but I did have one particular teacher who tried to force me to be right-handed.
The result is lifelong appalling handwriting. I'm not talking about the normal left-hand writing, I'm talking about looking at old school books where I have a slightly thin, slightly smudged cursive writing like any other early teen transforming into horrible nonsense garbage which has mostly stuck with my my full life.
My dad was born left forced right when he started school in 1959. His handwriting sucks but I swear it unlocked something in his brain and this man knows everything. Knows every jeopardy clue. Never forgets a single fact he’s read or been told.
My mom is sort of the opposite of this. She has a condition that makes it harder for her to use her right hand, and even though she would instinctively go to use the right, she had to learn to use her left because it functioned better. I don't think the necessity to switch had any negative effect on her or her mental health, she has never let her disability affect her that way.
My parents and teachers tried to force me to write with my right. They gave up when my handwriting only got worse, and I had trouble with writing letters backwards. I had already learned how to write letters left-handed, and when I switched to right, I just mimicked the movements I did when I wrote left, but in reverse.
That and my grandma was a lefty and yelled at them for trying to "separate our left-handed souls". 🤣
Both my grandfathers were likely lefties as kids. But both were born in the 30s, so both went to Catholic school and were beaten by nuns for using their left hand.
They both became ambidextrous.
My parents were the only lefties of their families and my sister and I are both lefties. We grew up in a left oriented house. It was great.
Unfortunately she and I both married righties and now we're back in 'backwards' houses.
Excited to see what my 4 month old nephew ends up being (mom is lefty and dad is righty)
I was never criticized for being left-handed, and nobody ever tried to force me to change. My left-handed brother never experienced anything like this either. I am now 70 years old, and he is 80.
When we were growing up, we were told that the efforts to force left handers to use their right hands was an ancient, outdated practice that had been abandoned long ago. For reference, we both attended the same Catholic parochial school from grades 1-8 in Detroit, MI. He was there in the '40s and '50s and I was there in the '50s and '60s.
Our elderly grandparents on both sides of the family were firmly in favor of letting us use the hand that we preferred.
Part of your post is unclear to me. You said that you are now training yourself to use your left hand. Is that because you had been forced to switch when you were young? Or is there some other reason, such as thinking that it will be beneficial in some way to be left-handed?
In recent years I have seen quite a few social media posts (appearing almost entirely elsewhere and not on Reddit) in which the writers claimed to be naturally right-handed but were doing this left hand training entirely for the second reason. Hence, my question.
I’m left handed. It’s only with pencil sized objects (ex. Brushing my teeth, writing, eating with utensils). Everything else was forced, like throwing a ball, using a bat, using a computer. I haven’t bothered putting in effort to relearn a few things with my left side. I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard but It hasn’t really bothered me since I’ve grown up having to learn a lot with my right hand anyway.
Most ppl that are teaching you a new skill ARE right handed. It confuses them when you pop up being a lefty more times than not (I’m not sure if it’s any different now, this is just how it was when I went to elementary school). I imagine it’s like when I try to write with my right hand and I just feel weird trying to hold my pencil, even if it’s positioned the same way I would normally hold it. Overall, I have no complaints or wishes. In a way, it’s made me a better problem solver🤷🏼♀️
I was born left. Every time I used my left hand I was hit and made to sit on it for hours. I'm an artistic person and my art suffers for it. My handwriting. My memory and learning abilities. Things like math, spelling and grammar are harder.
I seriously doubt switching hands is harmful. Any perceived harm, I’m guessing, would more likely be linked to the degree of trauma and stress with which the change was imposed… like if the student were beaten and yelled at constantly until he switched.
I was born left-hand dominant but my school assumed I was right-handed. My school taught me to write with my right hand and now I'm right-hand dominant. My sister told me this recently. The good thing is that I'm still mixed-handed.
Happened to me in the 1960's. I didn’t retrain. But really the only thing I do exclusively right handed is to write. Everything else is kind of either or…
My husband was forced to use his right hand to write but he does everything else left handed. One of those 60s things.
I had a teacher try and force me to be right handed. My dad put an end to it quickly, and any time an issue caused by my handedness came up, he dealt with it too.
My pediatrician stepped in and saved me. So I was able to continue learning to write with my left hand.
I do everything left except writing because I was forced to switch in Kindergarten
my mom (born in the 60s) was left handed and told that it was demonic by her teachers and they made her use her right. she's right handed today and I'm left handed (but right-handed in sports) while my brother is fully lefthanded. she never made us switch to being right handed
In first grade I was forced to use my right... for a day. (I still remember that day though). As soon as my dad found out he went into the school and demanded they leave me be.
My uncle is a lefty but went to Catholic school and was forced to write righty. He never ended up learning lefty even after, and his writing is just horribly shaky-looking to the point that it's barely legible (he still writes with his right hand)
My father was born in 1926. He had his left hand tied behind his back so he HAD to be right-handed. If he screwed up and got caught...paddling. You couldn't read his cursive if you were a cryptographer; but I could copy his signature.
My mother, born in 1948, didn't go through any of that. Of the 5 people in my nuclear family, only one of us is a natural righty (and we used to give her all kinds of hell.)
My ex forced our son to be right-handed (we were already divorced when it was noticeable that he was left-handed). I did my best to make sure that he used both hands equally when he was with me.
I’m a stickler for legible handwriting (Catholic school), so I had him practice writing with both hands until I could easily read what he was writing. At that point, I let him choose when to use his left hand. Turns out that in the kitchen and for dinner, he’s predominantly left-handed. Baseball is switch and everything else is right-handed.
My son was forced to switch and he it has been hard for him. I've tried to get him to go back but he can't now
You don't have to force it. Lefties will usually learn to use right-handed scissors, guitars, etc. I know I did! Without making a conscious effort.
What you DON'T want to do is harm a child or shame or abuse a child into changing a behavior. I'm sure you know what I mean. If a kid wants to experiment, though, it seems many of us did that and turned out okay pretty much.
I was taught both ways of using my left and right hands for doing things, thankfully not out of spite but out of necessity because not everything has a reverse operation on them. Best thing to do is use whichever way comes naturally and easiest for you. Though I do wish I could drive a right side drive vehicle to how I'd do with having to shift with my left hand instead at once.
I'm right handed.But do lots of things left handed.I've always driven left handed. I'm not ambidextrous but I'm good at doing things left handed.
41 here. Born lefty and forced by my kindergarten teacher to be right handed. My uncle is 52 and he was forced to do the same.
My daughter was born lefty and there was no way I was going to allow anyone to change that.
My dad was forced to be right handed
I had a psyco kindergarten teacher back in late1999- 2000. I can do alot left handed but not write
Husband's cousin grew up in a small town. Teacher tied his left hand down to his side. He had mental health problems his whole life. I'm left-handed also, but never once was it an issue. I grew up in a large city. Loved you ____.
9
My experience is rare I’ve learned but Thankfully I’m born to a family of left handed people. I am, my mother, my gramma, my uncle, my great grandparents were born left handed too. My great grandmother was a witch and a left handed writer and always said being left handed was a “gift” or a sign of good fortune so my family always embraced being left handed. I’m ambidextrous but my left hand is dominant being in a world where the majority is right handed so things are usually geared towards right handed people I’ve grown to adapt and I’m comfortable using my left or write hand for things.
I remember in school my 1st grade teacher hated I was left handed and always tried to correct me using my left hand instead of my right hand and told my mom I’d grow up to be stupid if i didn’t learn to use my right hand. Thankfully my mom pulled me out of school and homeschooled me until we were able to attend a different school the following year
It happened to me in the 80's. I became cross dominant and do a variety of things with my right or both hands, but still write with my left because I absolutely refused to use my right even through the yelling, hand swatting, and detention. It just was uncomfortable, unnatural, and I can be supremely stubborn when I want to be.