Monday 25th January 2010
byBefore I went to kindergarten I was ambidextrous. I could write fairly well (as well as any five year old anyway) with both my left and right hands. I could do a lot of things with both hands. But then I went to school. When I got there, my teacher told me that I had to choose which hand to write with because I wasn’t going to be able to learn to write really well with both hands. I told her that I didn’t know which hand to choose. She said to be right-handed since that’s what most people are. True story.
These days I can’t write at all with my left hand. Good thing I’ve got a keyboard to keep both hands busy I guess.
What’s got me thinking about all of this is a LiveScience article that I just read about ambidextrous children. It reports on a study that says that ambidextrous kids “may be more likely to have mental health, language and academic problems than their peers”. They do admit, however, that nobody knows what causes people to be ambidextrous and that the small sample of people used for the study means that the results aren’t necessarily accurate.
That said, would things have been any different for me if I’d remained ambidextrous? Would I have found math and language more difficult in school? Would my brain have been struggling to connect the left and right sides and therefore have caused me to struggle in school? This all seems doubtful. It always seemed fairly precocious that I could do things just as well with both hands back then. It goes against that to think it would’ve slowed me down in any way.
But I guess we’ll never know.
Did you have trouble with schoolteachers because you weren’t strictly right-handed? Tell me about it – I’d love to commiserate!
Tags: ambidextrous, science
I used to be ambidextrous when I was little too. I asked my sister what hand to choose and she said right because “lefties are weirdos.” True story. Anyway I think that as far as diseases go its more like the symptoms of certain diseases can be ambidextrous-ness. But since other than those rare cases they don’t know what causes ambedextrouusnessingiss there is probably nothing to worry about. I think however that it may just be based on how equally people use each side of their brains. I for example use both sides equally so it makes me wonder if when I was little that caused me to be ambidextrous when I was little.
The same exact thing happened to me. My kindergarten teacher told me to choose a hand and that it was bad I did not have a dominate one to start with. I am trying to regain the ability because i can draw well with my left still, but not write. So I guess I haven’t lost all of the ability.