Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Dyslexic or Ambidextrous?

DS5 has had quite a few issues with writing his numbers and letters backwards. My first thought was that it was normal for a 2 & 3 year old to have a tendency to write them backwards, and then at 4, he rarely wrote any letters backwards. But lately it seems he has been writing more backwards than before. So I thought dyslexia. I have had issues with mild dyslexia myself, but DS5 doesn't have ANY difficulties comprehending words or letters when they are written or when he reads them, etc. He does sometimes say 51 instead of 15 when he sees the number 15, but it's extremely rare.

So I thought about my own issues with writing things backwards as a kid, and while I don't remember how I reacted to being told my letters were backwards or what have you, I DO remember being able to write with both hands. And I'm wondering now, if because DS5's brain is a bit more advanced than the average 5 year old brain, that maybe somewhere subconsciously, his brain is telling him to write with his right hand like he would with his left hand, as in the motions themselves. And I know you're saying, well we all write the same way, but think about it. If you write a number 5 with your left hand, the thumb and finger(s) holding the pencil don't just make a backwards c when you get to the bottom part, but they move in an outward direction - away from the palm of your hand. So, if you do the same motion with your right hand, you will actually make a c, making the 5 backwards. It's like the whole pat your head while rubbing your belly. Even if you can move your hands individually, your brain tells you to move them the same.

So, now is that dyslexia afterall or is it an ambidextrous child, who started out only using his left hand (as a small baby/toddler - even writing), but is now right handed (he was not forced), and whose backwards writing is really not a product of him being dyslexic, but that he is able to use both hands equally kinesthetically, which if you were to mirror motion with both hands, they would move in opposite directions???

Or am I just thinking entirely too much? LOL!!! (Sports Medicine was my minor, so I'm intrigued by the brain and the physical movements of the body, etc).

It's common for kids to write letters backwards; my DS9 (an early writer) was still doing this occasionally when he was 8.

I'm mostly ambidextrous and have never copied the motions of the more dominant hand. So, that's a sample size of one in your survey!

Val

GS9, 10 next month, still reverses letters which are commonly reversed. He reads very well, but his spelling is so bad that it's not unusual for him to not read his own writing. His letters will be mixed in order and sometimes reversed.
He writes & eats left handed, throws & kicks right handed, switch hits equally well(if he could catch and throw as well as he hits, he'd be a very good little leaguer!). He still prints since they didn't seem to concentrate on teaching cursive at any point in grade school, and he forms his letters backwards -- for example, when he makes an 'm' he writes it from right to left instead of left to right. That leaves his printing with uneven spaces unless he completely concentrates on being neat.
Last year I was worried about dyslexia, ambidexterity, mixed dominance, etc., but finally decided in our case that it was mild enough to not cause him a problem.

Oh, and for the record, I'm more curious about this than concerned about it causing problems for DS, which obviously it doesn't seem to just yet.

I type backwards, for the record. I'll press the J key instead of the F key, or vice versa.

My 11 year old son was ambidextrous in Kindergarten but we had him use his right hand only to practice writing. If he is holding something in his right hand while he is eating, he will use his left hand to eat. If he is using his right hand to move the mouse while on the computer, he will use his left hand to write. His handwriting is only a little better when he uses his right hand. When he is doing piano, he will occasionally play the left hand notes with his right hand. He occasionally rights 5's backwards and they look more like 2's. He sometimes writes P's backwards.

But he started reading at 2 1/2 on his own and could always spell really well. If he sees a word, he usually remembers how it is spelled. We homeschool but I never really had to have him work on spelling because he was naturally good at it and he only worked on it the year he participated in the state spelling bee.

I think my son just has motor memory issues (motor dyspraxia)and this is what caused him to have to think each time he writes the letter P or the number 2. It never became automatic for him.

Just a quick thought...
My son has vision problems and until he was about 6 we did not know if he was ambidextrous or what the issue was. He did things with both hands. Anything on the left side of his plate he ate with his left hand, anything on the right side of his plate, he ate with his right hand. Your kid very well may be ambidextrous, but in my son's case, he could not see past the midline (his nose). When looking with his left eye he couldn't see the stuff on the right and vice versa. Could he possibly have eye tracking problems? They can have perfect vision and still have eye problems that you can't see. My son went to vision therapy and although he can now see past the midline, he still uses both hands occasionally, just because that is the way he learned.

This is an interesting thread. I am ambi, my grandad on mom's side was too. Ds8 seems to be as well. He writes right, and does some sports right, and drawing with this right hand, but when tested recently on a peg board test, he is faster with his left hand. Also, just recently I noticed him fiddling with something very detailed and he gave up with his right and switched to left.

Actually, as I read this wiki article, I guess the correct term for this might be 'mixed handedness'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handedness

"Approximately 95 percent of right-handed individuals primarily process speech in the brain's left hemisphere."[5]"More than half of left-handers process speech in their left hemisphere, just like right-handers. However, about one fourth of left-handers process speech equally in both hemispheres."[5] On the balance, it appears that this theory could well explain some left-handedness, but it has too many gaps to explain all left-handedness."

Now, having completely wandered off the subject of ambidextrous people, and in no way touching on dyslexia, I am engrossed in reading this article:
The effect of handedness on earnings

(The reason I started to post was to point out that 'The Edison Trait' has an interesting couple of pages on dyslexia and whether it can be considered an advantage in certain disciplines like architecture, design, engineering, etc. (The ability to easily get away from our left-to-right framework, etc.) )

Ramble, ramble....

My dd5 seems completely ambidextrous. Since being taught how to print letters in pre-k, she has now chosen to write with her right hand (perhaps the teachers suggested it?). But when she was first starting out, she would switch hands back and forth frequently - making the big vertical line for an "E" with her left hand and the horizontal lines with her right. I'd never seen anything like it!

I think I read somewhere that being ambidextrous can be a sign of giftedness. Or maybe I made that up

DS's eyesight is perfect. And he has no issues reading words whether they are written forwards or backwards either.

Chris, I'm going to have to look at your links later. Definitely interesting!

Oh, and I forgot to say, ds8 does still reverse b and d, sometimes write his 6 backwards...I don't see it in his writing anymore, but I asked about it maybe 3 months back and he said he still has to check in his head to make sure. So, definitely more tendency to reverse letters/numbers although I expect these too will become automatic for him in another few months.

The Wikipedia article mentions birth stress as a possible cause. My son had a difficult delivery and possible mild birth asphyxia. Nobody else in my family that I know of is ambidextrous. His highly gifted half-brother is left handed and his very bright, high school football star cousin is left handed, but everyone else in the family is right handed.

Just to clarify, my son sees perfectly-having perfect vision-no actual sight problems. He is gifted in the VCI and reads at 10th grade level even though he just finished 4th grade, however, he had tracking problems/lazy eye (corrected by surgery) which caused him to use both hands. I was told by the vision therapist that tons of kids with tracking issues (can't be seen on regular eye doctor visits) use both hands. It was just a thought. Good luck to you!

Interesting... My left eye doesn't go left. I mean it will, but I have to force it. I cannot remember what exactly it's called. I was in all kinds of therapy for it, etc... I also have had the same Rx, only in that left eye, for the past 20 years. I wore reading glasses for tracking issues myself, but none of it corrected the issue with the eye itself. Now, I have an Rx in my left eye for astigmatism, hmmmmmmmmm...

My son doesn't actually use his left hand for much of anything now. But I'm guessing it could be still the issue for him.

My son took a lot of tests yesterday but we won't find out scores for several weeks. He told me he took a timed test and I think it might have been the pegboard test. I think he said he put pegs into tiny keyholes as fast as he could. He said he was 20 seconds faster doing this with his left hand. We had him write with his right hand when he couldn't seem to make up his mind which hand to use in Kindergarten.

Lori - interesting! I think 20s. might be a huge difference. I am looking up ds' numbers to see what the difference was there.

Yeah, both below 40seconds, so 20s could be a pretty substantial difference between hands.
Our ds was average on right hand, and above avg. on the left because most people are relatively slower there and his left was just a little high time wise. They also count 'drops', but ds8 did not drop any it looks like.

Not that you want to go all obsessive over this one portion of the testing, and until you have your son's numbers you can't "properly obsess" anyway, as someone else on this board once put it to me
But it does sound curious!

Y'all have me so intrigued about all this!!! I wish I could afford to test DS (and DD for that matter) NOW! Ha! Either that or take the time off of work to do more research about this!

I told my son's piano teacher about it and she thinks piano lessons might be the reason for this difference. The song he is working on for a recital has a lot more left hand activity than right.

She said most of her kids who started lessons when they were older usually have more trouble doing the left hand than kids who started earlier like my son, who started lessons at 5 after a teacher recommended it to help improve his fine motor skills.

Now there's an interesting thought as well... and it makes sense. I mean kids that start a second language early, learn it better, etc. So it would make sense that if you "programmed" your non-dominate hand to "work" from an early age, that you'd be able to use that non-dominate hand better than someone who didn't train with it at an early age.

I see that I posted my son 'just finished fourth grade'. I meant third grade...

Sounds like me. Being ambi means you can multi-task in a meaningful way!!

In the 3rd grade a very mean and wicked teacher made me choose my handedness for writing.

I still write some letters backwards with either hand. C and lowercase Q are my letters. My spelling is great except when I type too fast.

Mr W was ambidextrous from the first time he grasped stuff. I've noticed that he will mimic which hand I use to eat when he eats. He carries stuff and scribbles with both hands. He tends to favor his left for balancy stuff like steadying himself. He is not dyslexic at all.