At school, a left-handed child is quickly confronted with problems that his right-handed classmates do not encounter. So try to measure a length with a ruler starting from the right: you will have to do a subtraction … And this is only one of the difficulties: how to tilt your notebook to write without twisting your wrist, cutting the drawing sheet with right-handed scissors …
“The first way to help his child is to detect his manual dexterity as early as possible. This allows the teacher to be warned from the start” underlines Doctor Michel Galobardès. The identification of the skillful hand can even be done very early since, from the ultrasound, it is often possible to detect the child’s preference. What thumb does he suck: if it’s the left, he has a good chance of being left-handed. The most trained doctors can even see it according to the structures of the brain. “We are born left-handed as we are born brown or blond” underlines the doctor.
Do not copy on right-handed people
At school, freedom has entered the classroom and left-handed people are allowed to behave. Everyone is happy about it. “But is it enough?” asks Doctor Galobardès. These children indeed live in a world of right-handed people, to which they must adapt on their own. Wouldn’t it be better to help them adjust to these constraints? “If we leave left-handed people alone when they learn to write, they will twist their wrists in order to have their hand above the line. They might as well teach them how to place their notebook correctly. Their hand will position itself correctly, which will spare them the physical fatigue associated with torsions, “suggests the specialist at the forefront of educational research in this field. It is up to us, parents, to be attentive at homework time, and to help our child to position himself well in his chair, facing his notebooks tilted to the right. The ideal: buy him also specially adapted supplies: cisesux, fountain pen, ruler graduated from right to left … not so futile as some right-handed people think. Even with the right hand, impossible to sharpen a pencil counterclockwise! Now, this meaning is the one that makes sense for left-handers.
To read : Understand and support the left-handed student ; Dr Galobardès, ed. Hatchet
