Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck, I'm the mother for previous foster parent of many
and I teach self-government and parenting all over the world.
But in this video, we're going to talk about how to teach a left-handed child to write.
In this video, I'm going to tell you a story about my own daughter who happens to be
left-handed and some of the things that we did to help her master her writing. Not only was she
left-handed, she was also dyslexic and I found out that maybe I was stressing a little bit too much.
So hopefully, this video gives you a little bit of the confidence and the security that
you need to take a little bit more relaxed approach to helping your left-handed child.
So, I'm right-handed, my husband's right-handed, and all of my children except for one are right-handed.
Sweet little Londyn is left-handed, which really serves her well. When it's a crowded table she
can sit on the way left-hand side and still have plenty of room to eat. She always strategizes to
put herself there on purpose so that she's not crowded like the rest of us. It's kind of cute.
Left-handed people are not at a disadvantage. We've got to remember that, things are just different for them.
In fact, many people who are left-handed see the world and connect with the world in a slightly
different way that actually can be very refreshing. Sometimes, left-handed people see solutions to
problems that right-handed people don't see, just because the way that they form their letters.
The way that they maneuver their hands is different than the way a right-handed person does.
So as my daughter was expressing an interest in writing and in reading. We noticed right
off the bat that she was having a little bit of a struggle. Not only did she always want to
do everything with her left hand. Even though we were showing her everything with her right hand
but she also started reading everything completely backward and we thought,
"Whoa, this child is seeing the world with eyes going in a completely different direction." Now,
at first, I thought, "Okay, well I'll just have her move everything to her right hand. I mean, after all
that's what my mother did for my sister." That's right, my sister who kept eating with her left hand,
writing with her left hand. Kept getting the pen and the fork moved to the right hand and after a while,
she started doing everything with her right hand. But you know to this day my sister is ambidextrous.
She can now do everything with both hands. Because my mom did that. Now, does she write with her right hand?
Yes, because she spent the most time practicing that. But technically, she was a
left-hander. So, with my own daughter, I decided I wasn't going to just replace the pen and put
something in a different hand, I thought, if she's left-handed, she's left-handed and I'm going to
let her be left-handed and see what happens. But I have to say, I wasn't exactly sure how to help her
with the writing. Especially because she started wanting to do that writing a little bit sooner
than most people might want to. So, you know what I did? I just showed her the shapes, not necessarily
the strokes. So when a person learns writing usually, they learn strokes. Like, this is a C,
this is an R. They learn the time that you make the certain lines. But for a left-handed person that
doesn't actually matter. So, I showed her the shapes and then let her make the shapes any way that she
wanted to and you know what I found? Is that she wrote things like 8 like the number 8,
completely opposite from the way that I wrote the letter 8. She wrote letters like Y
differently than I wrote the letter Y. She would make the long tail before she would make the short piece
I went, "Wow, that's amazing." Every time I watched her write, I was intrigued that she could
come up with the same look on her page. But it all happened differently and then I realized that
me being so low-key about her writing was exactly what she needed. In fact, she didn't get that little
hooked hand going over the paper either. Because I never told her she had to have her paper a certain way.
I just wrote with my paper a certain way and I tipped it a certain way to do my writing
and she just figured out how she wanted to tip her paper to do her writing. So that she could keep her
hand in the position that she wanted to keep it. Now, there's nothing wrong with hooking your hand
over the top to right. But it can be uncomfortable and create a cramp in the fingers and the hands.
So I was glad that she didn't ever get into that habit. Instead, she kept her hand down low
but there is a danger when you're a left-handed writer from getting a dirty palm of your hand.
Because it can run over the letters. So tipping the paper slightly with the top left corner down
from the top right corner oftentimes, helps the left-handed writer not get as dirty
on their hand. Which I noticed was definitely a thing that she didn't like happened.
Also, notebooks there are certain notebooks that are better than others. You don't want to have
a notebook that has a big obstruction right on the left side of the page. Because that gets in
the way of their hand positioning and they don't feel like they can write properly. So for my child
I just let her be, I let her form the shapes and I told her all of it was right. No one's gonna
judge her or grade her on what time she made the stroke for the letter. They would just know that's
the letter, that's the whole point. The point of writing is communicating your thoughts and ideas
it's creating a symbol that other people know what it means. So it doesn't matter if they make their
strokes in a different order than I do. Hopefully you feel a little bit more relaxed. I know that I
have a laid-back personality, maybe a little bit by nature. But your child does not need stress.
One of the worst things you can do is stress over the left-handed writing or any writing or
any formation of letters. Let them do it their way, let them figure it out, and then constantly
show them what the shapes look like again and again so that they get it right. They will get it,
she got it. She's a fantastic writer now and there are no problems with her writing.
Even though at first it looked like that she was having a different writing experience.
I hope you've enjoyed this video all dedicated to left-handed writers, if you've liked this video.
I'm pretty sure you'll like the next one which is, how to stop kids from whining, I'll see you there.