Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional unusual upside down writing in preschool...

DD is only 3.5, but we are noticing one oddity - although we don't really practice writing, I noticed that she is writing her name upside down. If you turn the paper 180 degrees, it is correct in all details of the letters (so she writes right to left upside down and gets the letter orientations correct for upside down). And she asked to spell her brother's name, so I wrote it down for her... and she did the same thing - all details perfect - but upside down. When I see her practice random letters and numbers (I think they have been doing some tracing at her school), it is all upside down... I am not too concerned right now, but wondering if others have seen it and if kids outgrow it.

I have not said anything to DD at all other than how nice her name looks, I just let her do whatever she wants on paper (I just wish she would stop trying to write her name - upside down - on everything from pillows to tables, so I am more focused on that than what or how she is writing).

I wouldn't worry she is only 3.5 and ahead of the game. Writing the letters upside down isn't a big deal at this age. This is really not uncommon. First time my son wrote his name & then the alphabet at around 3 some of the letters came out upside down. But otherwise a great job. Corrected himself without any prompting or correcting within months.

Thanks, bluemagic! we do see certain letters backwards in DS5.5 and see those on the works from his classmates, so I know those should work itself out. It is just odd that she would be writing right to left and letters upside down so that if you turned it 180, it would be correct and left to right (one teacher mentioned it was interesting she did that to me today so it did seem to stand out to a few others too). But we are not commenting on it at all with her - everything else she does is right side up so far (her figures, flowers etc) so I am hoping it just naturally switches over time.

That is interesting. I taught kindergarten for a few years and while many children reverse occasional letters, I've never seen a child write completely upside down with the accuracy you are describing. I agree, it's not very alarming at 3.5, but certainly interesting.

Kids often see people writing from opposite them rather than beside them. At 3.5 she may interpret that as the person writing upside down - she may not be aware that the person writing doesn't see what she sees.

You may want to brace yourself for possibly having an extreme visual-spatial kid on your hands. To DH, a symbol rotated in space is still the same symbol, and he really can't understand why other people don't see it that way.

we still have some cool robot drawings where ds@4, now 15, labeled the various robot parts with mirror-writing. very boggling!

You've received great responses so far. I especially second what puffin and Platypus101 shared.

I'll just add that many auto-didactic (self-taught) kids learn things the way they see them and may benefit from being shown the way something is typically done. This may be especially true with printing. Since she is practicing her printing by writing her name on many things, she seems to enjoy printing and this may be a great time to coach her on printing left to right. Practice paper which shows the formation of each letter in stages (sometimes with tiny arrows and numbered strokes) may be helpful.

When you read aloud to her, you might want to consider moving your finger along the words on the page from left to right so she can get used to seeing the progression of words from left to right.

Somewhat related, auto-didactic kids who later acquire new vocabulary through reading alone (rather than also hearing the new words in conversation or being read aloud to) may mispronounce words and therefore may not recognize a word when they do hear it. Kids are typically not as successful when they are completely self-taught as they may at some point need to unlearn a portion of what they've acquired.

My DD13 did the same thing for a while when she was younger. She still does it sometimes for fun, she knew that she was writing upside down and backwards and thought it was more interesting to do so than to write the correct way. It also allowed her to write this way to my mom, who used to send her letters written upside down and backwards in cursive.
This eventually lead to her being able to read upside down as well. A skill that is also pretty rare, but very helpful when having to share a book in school or when helping others out who sit behind you.

My DD5 did this exact same thing at that age. I was also shocked. She now writes normally.

I have a gifted DD7, but we have not had DD5 tested yet. DD7 has always been so obviously gifted that we've just assumed DD5 is our "normal" one. However, her preschool teachers and family members tell me she is definitely not normal. I guess we'll see how she does as she starts elementary.

thanks, everyone! I talked to one of the teachers today who noticed it and she told me that DD was aware she was writing upside down, and was doing it on purpose (she said she has taught kids who will write some letters upside down but when asked, would have no idea it is upside down, while DD told her "I am going to write this upside down" so it does appear she is very aware of the orientation). I had purposely not said anything about orientation to DD since I did not want to cause any frustration or perfectionism. The teacher I talked to told me she was surprised at how aware DD was of the spatial orientation of her letters... I guess it will be interesting to see what unfolds.

makes me think of that commericial of a woman painting - and then you realize she was painting an elephant upside down.

this may be a sign that a child is more prone to finding the unusual way to do *anything*... from using a broom to long division. A lot of times my son does stuff the 'hard' way...but sometimes he comes upon some really cool ways of doing things, too.