It’s A Left Hander’s World Too!

The world has been inquisitive, amazed and even scared of them. They have been looked upon as objects of curiosity. People never understood why they do things the way they do. The right handed population has always had the upper hand in life compared to the Left Handed.

Almost 10% of the people are predominantly left handed. About 1% of the people are ambidextrous i.e they use either hand for doing daily tasks.

In most civilizations and traditions across the world, the left hand has been considered the impure one or the unholy one. It has also been traditionally believed that the left hand brings bad luck. In India we never hand out or receive anything with the left hand.

Left handed children have often been accused of being clumsy and not being able to do things ’properly’. Quite frequently parents have tried to ‘rectify this defect’ in their child and forcefully ensure that the child uses the right hand. But the right hand for a left handed child is the left one.

The brain is divided into two hemispheres: the right and the left. The left brain controls the right side of the body and the right brain controls the left side of the brain. Research has proved that the functioning of the brain is to a great extent responsible for the handedness of a person. Left handed people thus usually have very active right brains.

Most babies begin to use both the hands simultaneously. It’s usually by the age of five that infants begin to show preferences for the use of their hands.  In most people where the right side of the body is the stronger side, inputs are taken from the right eye, the right ear and the rest of the right body and passed on to the left side of the brain. In left handed people it is seen that not only is their right brain more active, they are very comfortable with simultaneous, bi hemisphere processing of data.

There is enough research to prove that it not just the dominant side of the brain that affects the handedness of a person. A number of factors go into it like the genetics and the foetal development. Research is still trying to discover if the levels of testosterone in the womb at the time of foetal development has anything to do with being left handed as it has been noticed that among lefthanders, the majority are male.

So being left handed has more to do with genetics and brain dominance than evil and bad luck. The left handed child is not clumsy. He is a left handed child trying to manipulate things made for predominantly right handed people. From keyboard designs to door handles, to cars, everything is created for a right hander. The fact that left handers are more ambidextrous only displays the plasticity of their brains to adapt to situations. It has also been found that right handers are not as dexterous with their left one as are left handed people with their right one.

Being able to process data between both hemispheres faster and better, left handed people have an advantage in many areas of sport and learning. Research has shown that the top 20% of all Mensa members are left handed. It has also been noticed that left handed people are better at multi-tasking and yes, better at playing video games! They may be more visual based learners and hence far more oriented to follow the creative arts.

As parents you make a note of which hand is dominant in your toddler. Initially most children are ambidextrous and will soon figure out which is their own dominant hand. See what hand he uses to eat, pick up toys, write and paint.  Speak to the teacher at school so that your child is placed on the left hand side of a desk which leaves him free to be able to write.

While teaching your child how to tie shoe laces or bows sit in front of them and demonstrate. Thus they get the mirror image of what you are doing and thus is becomes easier for them to learn these skills. At the same time do not try to change too many things for the left handed child because, at the end of the day he has to navigate in a world which may not be so kind. But don’t at any time try to rewire his preferences. Left handed children learn how to negotiate a right handed world in their own way. In fact a typical qwerty keypad has 3500 words that can be typed with only the left hand while there are only 450 words which can be typed using only the right hand.

Encourage and motivate you child just in case he gets too hassled working out things for himself. Remind him that famous people like Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Clinton, Ravi Shastri, Charlie Chaplin, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Mark Twain are all lefthanders.

August 13^th is the International Left handers day. 

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