From the time you start thinking about offspring, you start wondering attributes your joyful bundle may acquire from you or your partner: shape and color of eyes, shade of skin, those oh-so-cute freckles, and whose nose or ears might baby have. You think of temperament, personality type, and preferences you mini may have. Speaking of preferences, you may even wonder about baby’s handedness, especially if there’s a lefty in the gene pool.
I would know being a southpaw.
I follow in my father’s footsteps. My mother and brother were both right-handed, but I have come to find out that it is not a 50/50 coin toss when it comes to handedness. Luckily for me, both my children prefer their left hand. The left side dominance runs strong in our blood and my right-handed husband takes my gloating with a certain amount of grace. We are far from the norm though; left-handedness is actually pretty rare in the general population. According to a CNN article, “about 1 in 10 people are left-handed,” while another site marks left-handedness at 15%.
There are other published statistics, none of which my family fits. Most sites, such as this one and this one list the percentages at about 20% for parents of mixed handedness, while a pair of southpaws has a 25% chance of duplicating their sinister ways. Right-left handedness was considered an evil thing back in the day, often being referred to with derogatory or “evil” terminology.
I did some digging to find out how may of my Facebook friends are left-handed, had left-handed children, or had left-handed relatives, and was provided a good slew of answers. Those answers gave me a vast array of information that makes coming up with percentages impossible for someone like me who is horrible at math. I was shocked, however, to find so many of my friends had input on the topic and it created some good opportunities for conversations. For instance, one friend had a grandparent and one cousin who were left-handed. We then had a conversation about how she thinks left-handedness skips a generation. A newer friend revealed in private messages that she faces some difficulties having a left-handed child as a right-handed parent. This was good insight on how daily life may be different for others with a mix of handedness in their families.
This information aside, there are a few ways you may be able to tell your little one’s preferred handedness early in life. Many of the sites I came across state that around the age of two toddlers may start showing a desire to use one hand over the other. Some children even show these tendencies as early as 18 months; the first telltale signs may be your tot reaching for objects or food, using utensils, or even making a fist with a certain hand. Within that article I found another source that said handedness would fully develop around age five.
Both of my children have shown a preference for their left hand, starting even earlier than 18 months. My oldest started eating early — that kid LOVES food — and around eight months was shoving left-handed fists of food into his mouth. He throws, kicks, and writes with his left hand. I bought left-handed scissors, tools to improve his pencil grip, and am accepting almost any advice on coaching him on fine motor skill development, because I’m that weird lefty who holds my pen like a righty, uses my right hand to cut, and kicks or even dances with a right foot lead.
