LF and the lefty factor.
I am not left handed by nature. I taught myself to write backwards in high school to irk teachers, and learned that in your brain, backwards and left handed are done the same for a right handed person. Now I write more legibly than some natural lefties I've known. In my family, left hand dominance is common. Out of my mother and her 4 siblings there is one, and out of my father and his four siblings there is one. I also have a left handed brother, and a left handed cousin. I have left handed friends, and LF's biodude was left handed. When LF showed signs of being left handed as a baby I was assured that it didn't mean anything. The first time he picked up a crayon and touched it to the paper, I was sure. Being as lefty savvy as I assumed I was, I didn't worry about the challenges ahead in teaching LF to write his letters and draw his shapes. If anything, this thinking made the actual teaching process harder. I may have started earlier, in hopes of having him ready for school had I not been so cinfident in my own left handed ability. It turns out that we are far from even making a semi-straight line. His letter "A" is all squiggly, as though penned by someone who had more than one too many drinks. I remember the challenges my mother had with my own left handed brother, and now I worry about him falling behind his classmates in kindergarten because things will be harder for him. I try to allow myself the luxury of thinking that things will be fine, and that there are plenty of left handed kids that do fine. Unfortunately, worrying is one of my strongest faults. I wonder how other parents do it. So, blogosphere, do any of you have lefty kids? How do you help them out?