Lefty's.

 

i am not a lefty.

but this handsome guy above is,

my 8 year old son.

 

before i had him i never thought about

a "lefty's world".

and to be honest, i probably would have thought,

who cares, what's the big deal.

 

but turns out it was!

around 10 months old, he started trying to stack things.

blocks, cars, plastic boxes etc.

and even then, i  never noticed whether he was right or left.

why would i though? i didn't know to look for that.

 

i remember him getting so mad all the time because

he couldn't get them to stack without falling.

so one day i watched him and noticed he was lying on his belly,

his left arm was propping him up, and he was using

his right arm to stack some abc blocks.

his little right hand was shaking so bad.

he couldn't even get close to the blocks and bam,

they'd all fall over and he would totally freak out.

 

i sat him up and handed him the block in his left hand,

piece of cake. immediately he turned pro-block-stacker.

then i thought, what the?

where did this come from?

 

then began the problems.

the problems i caused.

because guess what!? it does matter.

if you put a 1 year olds sippy cup on the right hand side

of his plate, he's gonna reach for it with his left.

which means he reaches across his plate and

drags his shirt sleeve through the ketchup, every time.

and if that 1 year old is a screamer, well,

your day is set to be ruined.

 

and if you put him near his 3 year old sister,

and they bump elbows, causing any number of accidents,

all hell WILL break loose.

you ever seen an elbow war between a 1 & 3 year old?

hilarious.

 

it's surprising that it took me that long to remember

to put things on the left for him.

i guess a right handed person will

automatically put things on the right side.

you don't think about it, you just do it.

and when you have a 3 year old and a 1 year old,

your brain is not functioning at its normal capacity anyways,

leaving a lot of problems along the way.

 

so the little things work themselves out eventually.

then it's all gravy.

til school starts.

 

here son, cut this paper, with these regular right handed scissors.

can't do it?

but everyone told me not to treat you differently.

still can't do it?

but this is a right handed world and you need to learn.

oh, the paper keeps turning sideways?

well then, screw everyone else. let's get some lefty scissors.

looky there, you can do it just fine.

 

i challenge any right handed person to use

a pair of left handed scissors to understand

what i'm talking about.

 

now onto binding.

 

 

 

remember in elementary school when you'd turn the page

in your binder and realize

"oh crap, that stupid divider is in my way, now my

writing is all messed up and i gotta squeeze

my hand in here, no wait...here. wait crap that's

not working, i'll try this. nope..." and frustration sets in.

WELL that's how a left handed person starts out

...on the wrong side.

the binding is always, always in the way.

thankfully there is left handed notebooks now!

we also buy him blank journals and tell him to flip

them over and work from the back side first!

he got laughed at about it the other day by his friend,

"haha, you're writing in your notebook backwards!"

(as if he didn't already know.)

"YA i know. i'm left handed. you try writing with your left

hand, it's not easy!" he barked at his friend.

 

and now, the mouse problem.

 

 

 

i was really determinded for him to learn how to use

the mouse with his right hand.

poor guy couldn't get his right hand to work with it.

so we moved it to the left side.

then he couldn't remember to use his middle finger,

instead of his pointer finger, to push the button.

so he was constantly rearranging my desktop on accident.

not fun, especially for me!

 

then i found out they make a mouse with only one button.

i'm sure they make one that is backwards too,

but the one button works for him and his 5 year old brother.

so it was a win-win.

 

smearing, smudging, erasing

 

 

 this one makes me feel so bad for him!

everytime he tries to write on a whiteboard,

his hand drags behind and erases all his hard work

that would really suck!

so he has to hold his hand away from the board,

which leaves his hand wobbling and not writing to

his ridiculously high standards.

i asked him how he solves that problem.

he said he can't fix it on the whiteboard,

but when he draws with marker on his paper,

he starts his drawings from left to right so they

don't smudge or smear.

smart kid.

 

if you have a lefty, treat them different.

they are different!

my recommendation? well, since you asked...

just don't over do it.

tell them there will be many many times

in their lives that they will have no choice

but to adjust to being more "right-handed" at something.

don't treat it as a handicap or make a huge deal of it.

just change what you can and work out the rest!

 

.erinthemom.