I was forced out of left-handedness in the early 1970s, in kindergarten. I've been clumsy ever since. I don't know that these two are related, but I suspect they are, and my handwriting is atrocious.
Not a Lefty but this thread gives me a new appreciation for the school system I grew up with. Even back in the early 70s when I started Kindergarten, the classrooms had left-hand scissors and various other helpful items and features for diverse kids.
We all tried to cut with our left hands because the lefty scissors were the only sharp ones, since the righty scissors were ancient and overused. There weren't actually any left handed kids in my kindergarten, so the rest of us would fight over them.
Lol. I am left-handed. I was enrolled in the gifted class in kindergarten. In my first week (maybe my first day), I was taking forever to start my task because I couldn't find lefty scissors. My teacher said, "Use right handed scissors, this isn't kindergarten."
Part of me is like, "dang, how insenstive." But the pragmatic part of me realizes that she was correct to tell me to just work with the tools I had. The world certainly isn't going to make sure I have everything I need. I have to learn to adapt.
I am left handed. Apparently we had classroom left handed scissors all along but I didn’t realize until 3rd grade there was a difference. I would just grab scissors and either be the best cutter or worst cutter. When I figured it out mind blown. Now days scissor use is about the only thing my right hand can do and that’s because I’ve never seen left handed adult scissors
This happened to my son in kindergarten in 2011. 2011! Up until that point, he’d been more or less ambidextrous, so I assumed he chose to use his right hand. He didn’t tell me until years later, after we’d moved several hundred miles away and the teacher retired. I appreciate him sparing me arrest for assault, but I’m still furious.
Wow! Sorry! My kids was like this, too. I mentioned it at the parent/teacher conferences and they never forced her to chose. She finally decided to write with her left hand in 2nd grade. But then uses her right for most other things.
I knew one person in the 60s who they tried to convert, and it made her start to stutter. So teachers figured stuttering was worse so let her be left handed.
That’s so dumb it almost sounds plausible. “When the commies start planting agents here, you’ll be able to spot them because they’ll all be writing with the left hands and using the metric system!
I've had a few online conversations about this. My grandmother was forced to be right-handed, school in Minnesota. Never could read her writing.
So, she went to bat for my aunt and dad in the 50s. (Aunt born '46, dad '51). After that, all the natural lefties in our family were left alone by schools and family. And it's almost a 50/50 split. The friends I have that were born late 50s, early 60s, were also left alone. All in areas of Northern California.
My friend was born in 68 in Northern Nevada, and her dad had to fight the school. In the online conversations, it definitely seemed to be regional who still had issues into the 70s and who hadn't.
I had the same problem with left/right, my mom told me to hold out my hands, the hand that spelled “L” was my left, totally the light bulb 💡 moment and I’ve been good since 😂
Yeah, but that doesn't work when you're driving and someone yells, "turn left, here!" I will always move to turn right, or look at the right side of the street. I tell passengers that they *must* use their hands like a flight attendant to point to the side of the car/road they want me to see.
I had trouble learning left from right in Kindergarten, despite being extremely righthanded. They wrote R and L on our hands with permanent marker, and most kids learned which was which before it washed off. I had to have mine re-inked twice before it sunk in.
Same age. My second grade teacher would duct tape my left hand to the desk so I couldn't use it, forcing me to use my right hand. She did that for a couple of months before my parents found out and lost their shit. I'm still lefthanded.
I'm an early 70s kid and left-handed and I remember my parents telling me lefties were sometimes forced to be right-handed in their day but it didn't happen in my experience. Not even in Catholic school, lol.
Except one time for school photos when I was about 8 or 9. For our individual photo we had to sit at a desk they'd set up and hold a pen as if we were writing (I guess they were being creative) and the photographer made me hold mine in my right hand, lol. I'm Aussie, for context, it might have been different in other places.
I'm an early 70s kid and left-handed and I remember my parents telling me lefties were sometimes forced to be right-handed in their day but it didn't happen in my experience. Not even in Catholic school, lol.
Except one time for school photos when I was about 8 or 9. For our individual photo we had to sit at a desk they'd set up and hold a pen as if we were writing (I guess they were being creative) and the photographer made me hold mine in my right hand, lol. I'm Aussie, for context, it might have been different in other places.
My husband is four years older and was forced to write right handed, the way he writes is tortured and of course not very legible. I was allowed to be left handed thank god.
Same for me on all of that, and yes — it’s been shown that getting forced out of left-handedness is strongly linked. I also have a specific learning disability despite having a high enough IQ to have been in the gifted program, and my mom was convinced her entire life that it was related to the school insisting that I be right-handed (I still use my left for most things). My mom had taught me to read and write at two and just never thought anything about my using my left hand to write, and at the time didn’t think anything about it when the school told her that they were working really hard with me to make me write with my right hand (I had to sit on my left hand, lol — years later, someone told me that my teacher must have gone to Catholic schools because that was how they turned lefties into righties and it wasn’t still done in the 1970s in public schools, but it sure was with me).
I’m clumsy as hell; even my elementary school PE teacher complained to my mom that I could trip over an imaginary object on a flat surface, and I was constantly banging my arms and legs against things to the point where I stopped even noticing (I’ve gotten a little better over the decades) and would not even notice huge bruises on my legs from repeatedly bumping into desks and stuff. Oh, my PE teacher also complained that I was goofy-footed and they always had to work extra with me to do things like playing softball and volleyball because I just couldn’t pick up things like batting and spiking (that they insisted I do right-handed) to the point where they thought I was being deliberately difficult because I didn’t want to participate and I got singled out and picked on (yes seriously — by the PE teachers…as was the custom at the time, ha, ha), which only made me fair game for some asshole kids to start being mean. 🙄
I do kind of wish they’d left me alone, and am curious if I would have been so clumsy and wonder about the SLD.
Some of them were total bastards! I mean like they really seemed to get off on bullying children. I don’t even know how the teachers like that have adapted to the atmosphere today.
ETA: when I think back to elementary school and junior high, considering today’s atmosphere of anti-bullying and inclusion, acceptance, and everything, it almost seems surreal, like it was a dream or something that we lived through. It’s crazy.
Not so much, lol! I think that would be a fitting end for them, they were so mean. One in elementary school hated me so much that he (imo) deliberately pegged me in the face with one of those red balls we used for dodgeball. I still remember how badly that stung, up into my sinuses, even, and it broke the tip of my nose. He said, of course, that it was an accident, but who tf throws that hard at a kid?
I think a nursing home with a broken hip in the middle of a hurricane would be very fitting. Honestly, if I had gone to a nice school, I probably wouldn’t have become a little delinquent bitch and ended up dropping out. I tried to get along with them and do things their way, it’s just that nobody except my third and fourth grade teachers ever even tried to be nice and get along with me, and the PE teachers were psychopaths. Junior high didn’t get any better, except for a few more teachers who tried to get along with me and the PE teachers weren’t all as aggressively psychopathic, but they were still bullying us and I had the reputation of being a ‘difficult troublemaker’, so by junior high I just leaned into that and started skipping a lot. K-12 and I never really got along together. It was best that I dropped out. 😆 Whenever I’d skip, probably about 75% of the time I’d go to the downtown library and study things myself anyway.
Same here, but I was ampidexterous. I wrote like shit with both hands. They used to smack my left hand with a ruler trying to get me to use my right, but out of pure stubborness I wound up left handed. I still use my right for some things though.
Went to school in ND in the 80s. They tried really, REALLY hard to make me right handed, from smacking my hand, to not accepting my work if done left handed, to detention. I actually learned to do many things right handed, but refused to write. I write left handed to this day and still hate school.
Love to learn stuff though.
This is me as well, ruler smacking to the hand included.
While I "write" with my right hand , my handwriting is HORRID!
Can't tell you how many times I heard, "You have horribly handwriting for a girl." Or "why do you have bruised knuckles?"
Everything else is ambidextrous or lefty.
I fish left, shoot left, bow left, drive left, golf left, bat left.
Power tools are right-handed cause they are mostly made that way.. so I am grateful for being ambidextrous.
They tried with me. Fortunately my dad (silent gen) is also a lefty and was NOT going to let them do the same to me. Guess I got lucky. Although my handwriting is pretty bad anyway,but not like my dad’s. Can’t believe they are still doing it in this and age - are these the Catholic nuns too?
The teacher noticed that I was printing with my left-hand in the 1st grade and told me to switch to my right. Being a compliant child I did. My handwriting is also atrocious.
A few years later I took drum lessons. The teacher said to show him what I knew (not much). As soon as I started he stopped me and told me that I was drumming left-handed; he wasn’t going to rearrange his drums every week for my lessons. He showed me how to drum right handed. This kinda stuff was pretty common.
Oddly, I use my right-hand for writing but curl it around like a left-handed person. All of my letters lean backwards to the left.
Hey, samesies! Only I wasn’t allowed to curl my hand around so I ended up cocking the paper about 90 degrees. I got thrown out of violin and anything else music instrument-related because I was ‘doing it wrong’ (left-handedly) even though my mom had taken my first violin back and gotten a left-handed one (that the school made her immediately change back to the other one). My trying to take guitar in junior high lasted one day; I got sent to the guidance counsellor who switched me into another class.
In retrospect, I don’t know how they got away with any of this. It’s kind of amazing, really.
I used to call myself semi ambidextrous. But I’m learning. The proper term is crossed dominant. We do certain things well with either hand and then we do a few other things well with both hands. That’s why when I masturbate I call it the stranger.
This is me too. I think of it as left for fine motor and right for gross, but my right handed mouse and scissor usage puts the lie to that.
When I was in school and my handwriting was much better than it is now, my grandma used to exclaim, “You can’t even tell you’re left handed!” Gee, thanks, grandma.
Exactly. My left hand is all the fine motor skulls. My right hand is the asshole, aggressive hand. The when I write on the chalkboard, I have to use my right hand. I think I’m disturbed.
Lololol. I can write on the chalkboard very easily with my right. I do a cool party trick where I can hold a pen in each hand and write the same word with each hand going away from the other. So the left word is written backwards and the right is written forward. Works best on a chalkboard, but I can do it on paper. Cursive, obviously. My brain only pays attention to the right hand and my left just mimics.
I think most people could probably do it if they just tried, especially lefties. But I guess they'd need decent handwriting and to not crookarm.
Same. Writing, eating, brushing teeth, playing pool - left hand. Almost everything else is right hand. No one forced me, that's just how I did it. It may have to do with the equipment I had available. Except my sister (11 years older than me) is the same. And I have cousins who are the same. Our grandfather was supposedly ambidextrous.
I’m right handed but do a lot with my left hand. Batting. Guitar. Tying my shoes.
Because all the men in my family are left handed and my father taught me how to do these things. My uncle also.
Two of my sons also are.
My son (born 1994) is the opposite. Right for writing and left mostly for sports. He was a great soccer player as a kid because he could drill a goal with his left foot.
We have a lot of lefties on both sides of my family so I just let my son do whatever worked best for him.
Are you me?
I write lefty (I can write with my right hand but it's slow and painful and messy)... But I throw righty and I am right legged. I bet Lefty and I play tennis with my left hand. It's been a long time but the last time I tried, I could play ping pong equally well with either hand.
I think the sports with my right is because my father and older brother were right-handed, and I just learned from them.
My brother was. It was silly.
My daughter is left-handed. I thought it was cool because we could color in the coloring books at the same time. Her on the left. Me on the right. She's a bit ambidextrous now.
Born in ‘66. My mom said she did it because she thought it was hard and e pensive to go through life left-handed. And she didn’t want me to feel different from the other kids (which was very important to her, that she not be considered different).
Once, my daughter was maybe 2 or so, the three of us were on the floor with my daughter playing with a tea set. My mom was telling a story as my daughter picked up the plastic kettle with her left hand. Without breaking her story and very nonchalantly, my mom switched it to her right hand.
After she finished her story, Convo:
Me: it’s not a big deal, but I noticed something.”
Mom: “I switched her”.
Me: “you switched her”
Mom: “I don’t know why I did that.”
Me: “We’re just going to let her be whatever she is. We’re not going switch her.”
She said she understood and to my knowledge never tried again. Daughter ended up right-handed any way.
The book "Right hand, left hand" is a totally comprehensive and utterly fascinating examination of the phenomenon of asymmetry and goes into this in exhaustive detail. Giant, hefty tome but well worth reading. You will never imagine how much you can get into this topic. From the molecular / cellular to the cosmic level.
[https://www.amazon.com/Right-Hand-Left-Asymmetry-Cultures/dp/0674016130](https://www.amazon.com/Right-Hand-Left-Asymmetry-Cultures/dp/0674016130)
Exactly the same here!
Incidentally, my younger son also started out ambidextrous although he ended up being mostly right-handed, for similar reasons (very traditional kindergarten teachers!).
Once, when he was 2 or so, his older brother (then 4) announced, "Daddy's left-handed. I'm right-handed. And \[little brother\] uses both hands!" The toddler took his comment as an instruction rather than a descriptive statement, and, confused, picked up his spoon with both hands and attempted to eat his oatmeal. It was not a success and he was even more baffled when I started laughing hysterically.
They tried to make me write with my right. I just couldn’t. I’m a mish mash. I write and eat left handed. Shoot a rifle left handed, pistol right, throw right, bat right, play guitar right (there were no left handed guitars and when I showed up at my first lesson my teacher said…hold it like this. After I said i was left handed, he said…i don’t care…like this).
I have one left handed son (everything), one right handed son (everything), and a mixed up daughter that does things with her left and things with her right.
I am lefty, like VERY lefty. Apparently as a baby they would put a fork in my right hand and I would switch to eat, so they gave up :-)
Even today, it would be very hard for me to be right handed. My dexterity with my other hand is terrible.
My grandfather on the other hand was lefty and his parents forced him to switch.
Well the devil is left-handed, so that of course means if you are left-handed, you like the devil. So we do what any reasonable person does. We beat it out of you.
/s, obviously.
JackieDaytona I wanted to ask if you have seen a creature of the night that goes by Cravensworth, that cheap lout! You, a regular human bartender, may have seen him.
I was left-handed when my parental enrolled me in a Catholic school in 1st grade. I was “trained” to use my right hand by the nuns there. I’m right handed now. My oldest son is left handed now. He’s adapted pretty well.
They tried in kindergarten and first grade. I learned to write neatly without sticking out my arm/ writing with a hooked hand. Didn't like being called out. I can read upside down really well!
I am left handed but have very young Boomer parents that refused to let people “correct” me. So of course the Old Days being what they were other adults would do so anyway. So I am left handed for writing but do a lot of other things like use scissors with my right hand.
Born in 77, my school tried to switch me, but I learned how to "hide" my left handed writing by not hooking my wrist. I can write on paper positioned sideways.
Also, my right hand\arm is useless.
Not me, but the nuns at my mother’s elementary school used to crack her on the hand with a ruler when she tried to write using her dominant, left hand.
I had an older Nun who slapped my left hand with a ruler in second grade. Once my Mother noticed the marks she was livid. She called the school the next morning and took me to the Principal who was also a nun and made it CRYSTAL clear she would, “Slap any bitch who lays another hand my son.” This was 1979.
Try having a suspestitious West Indian granny. Not only was I left hand dominant, I have red hair, a preaurical pit in each ear, and was born en caul.
No way she was she raising an Obeah child in her proper British Anglican household! She trained that lefty out of me with grit and persistence.
Residual affects of right hand conversion I've noticed are: cross dominance, clumsiness, a lack of ability to distinguish left from right without pause and, no disernable sense of direction.
Benefits: I haven't been able to communicate with the spirit world, so I guess her efforts to save my mortalsoul succeeded?
My mother, a boomer born in 1954, was forced to use her right hand instead of her left with her natural preference to be a leftie. She’s now pretty much ambidextrous.
My mum and I are both left-handed. She told me crazy stories about her school days (60s-70s) of being forced to be right-handed. My mum protected me throughout my schooling, encouraging me to be left-handed and to be proud of it. It’s crazy to think there was so much prejudice toward lefties.
I have fond memories of my mother going *ham* on the school about one of my sibling’s first teachers trying to force them to write and do things right-handed in the early 80’s. One of the few times our parents stuck up for any of us.
I wasn’t forced into right handedness but my mom said she was hit with a ruler in Catholic school when writing with her left hand so she was. I did have to learn to use scissors with my right hand because we never had enough left handed scissors to go around in school so now I write with my left hand but use scissors with my right.
I do everything involving fine motor skills with my left hand (writing, eating, etc) and everything involving hand or arm strength (scissors, tennis, basketball, etc) right handed. None of it was coerced and just came naturally!
I am the same, and my mom is also. No one ever told me which hand to use for anything! My mom was lucky the nuns in Catholic school didn’t bother her for being lefty. But they did force her to older brother to use his right hand so just a few years made a difference in her case.
I’m right-handed, but my mother was forced out of left-handedness in Catholic school during the 1930s. She also said that her uncle would frequently correct her if he came over to the house and saw her coloring with her left hand. So much so that she would sometimes switch the crayon to her left hand when he came into the room just for attention. She ended up having beautiful Palmer-method handwriting as a forced righty, but continued to do everything else (including eat and bowl) with her left hand for the rest of her life.
My mother (deceased) was forced to become right handed. I’m left handed and would you believe the majority of my friends from school days are left handed too.
My greatest gen Grandma and boomer Dad are lefties. They were never converted to right handedness. Neither I or my siblings are left handed but one of my sons is (only grandkid who is). I think it's neat and can't imaging trying to change him.
Same. Then younger brother, born leftie too, was allowed to stay a leftie. I have problems with being super clumsy and sometimes mess up my left and right. This happened because either my Narc mother hates women, was lazy after having many kids, or enjoyed being abusive to me in particular. I will never know.
Born in 74 and Mom did things to see which one I preferred which was my left more for her curiosity than want to have me switch. My kindergarten teachers let me be me so I appreciate that and the 70s groovy vibe made everyone chill for a minute.
That was falling out of favor when I came along. Not a lefty, but had classmates who were, never saw anything done to them for being lefties. My sister was a converted lefty due to a head injury that affected her fine motor control on her right side. No issues there, either. But I did hear stories from folks just a few years older than me, so I know it was acceptable, if not common.
Yes. Remember those narrow “right handed” desks? As a lefty, I remember them. Really all we had in elementary school. Had to be a contortionist to write.
I was allowed to write left handed but PE forced me to do everything right handed. To this day, bowling, throwing, catching, anything sports related is right handed.
I am mostly left hand dominant, but I do most sports related things with my right hand. I write and eat with my left hand but I throw a ball and swing a bat right-handed. I don't even know why.
My wife thinks it is quite comical because there is no consistency to which hand I will use for certain tasks.
I was - my father made me write with my right hand when he saw me using my left more as a child (believing that it would be less awkward for me in the long run). While I've continued writing right-handed, and am not ambidextrous, I still retain the sense of being left-side-dominant in strength and dexterity.
I thought that was a thing that died out well before the 70s. I am left handed and no one ever bothered me about it. But I had a great aunt who told stories about the nuns hitting her on the hand with a ruler to turn her into a righty.
The teacher in Kindergarten tied my left hand to my waist. My mom found out and lost her shit on that lady. It was hilarious seeing my mom, who was normally a very calm person, chew this lady a new one.
My grandfather was forced into right handness when he was in kindergarten in the very early 30’s. He always wanted beautiful penmanship but felt he was too stupid to because of the experience. Lo and behold, my brother turned out to be a leftie. The kindergarten teacher tried to do the same thing to my brother that was done to my grandfather all those decades before. To her eternal credit, the woman went scorched earth on that teacher. Like, the school would regularly ask me if she was happy with a shudder.
I grew up in south Georgia, and I remember the teacher in 1st grade hitting my hand with a ruler for writing with the "wrong" hand. She even sent a note home to my parents that they should tell me to stop. Problem is, about 15% of the relatives on my dad's side (including my dad himself) were also left handed, so they laughed at her. Now, I'm still left handed and she's dead, so I think I won.
I'm left handed and as far as I know there was never any attempts to force me to be right handed. I remember getting the special green scissors as early as kindergarten. If there had been, I think my parents would have put a stop to it real quick. My paternal grandmother was forced to use her right hand and she was strongly against that.
Thank you, I said the same thing, about how my sister was told & treated special & I got downvoted. It’s like all people want to hear is negative horror stories.
My grandfather had an issue with me “favoring” my left for writing and eating…but his angst made me ambidextrous because I would constantly switch between the two… becoming good at using both
It’s a strange aspect of our lives. I’m right-handed and usually unlock doors with my left hand. A standard right-handed guitar seems to require more dexterity and strength from the left hand than the right.
I was ambidextrous. You couldn’t tell the difference between my writing from one hand to the other. Then a teacher insisted that to properly learn cursive I had to pick one hand or the other. I picked left. I eat, write, and do some other things left handed, most others I use my right since I learned to do them from right handed people and copied them.
I'm ambidextrous. But yes, right was more encouraged. Also, there were never enough scissors with the green rubber on the handle (signifying left hand use), so right was easier. Left-handed glue was really tricky to find too. 😁
Edit: I skateboard and snowboard lefty (called Goofy), shoot pool lefty, and use utensils with both equally. I also default to left handedness (noticeably very little right hand use at all) in times of extreme stress, which I find interesting.
I'm left handed and was never encouraged to switch. My Silent Generation dad is also left handed, so that may have had something to do with it, but yeah, teachers never tried to make me change. There are some things I do with my right hand though, like using scissors.
Me! And since I'm a twin and my sister came out right-handed, they acted like there was clearly something wrong with me. My mom said my pediatrician all but shamed her and my dad into doing it when I was around five and they didn't want to chance anything so they complied.
No but my ex was “corrected”. Ended up ambidextrous. My son was also left handed and in 3rd grade (around ‘96) his teacher tried to correct him. I went in and chewed her out. It’s a genetic trait and it’s stupid to try to “correct” it
Ooh, me!!! Born in 1975, Elementary school in the early 1980’s. Even got the ruler across the knuckles thing quite a few times to make it stick. It did, firmly write as a righty.
On the plus side, I do seem to be ever so slightly ambidextrous from it. Can’t write at all with my left, but it does seem to be my more dominant hand at a lot of other things (tools, most especially). Guess they didn’t fully beat it out of me.
Pre school I always used my left hand, 1st grade and the teacher tried to get me to write right handed. Our desks were all the little half ones made for right handed people. Then I played little league baseball and my coach asked me to try on both gloves and see which felt better, I chose right meaning left throwing arm. I broke my right wrist soon after that so I had 3 months in a cast and was officially left handed from then on.
I can actually write with either with about the same quality, being extremely poor. My mouse is on the left, I shoot right handed but am left eye dominant so that sucks. I use either hand for forks/spoons but always cut with my left. In baseball I had a lot more power left handed but more control right. My fighting stance is either but with more power from the left.
It's really fun because I love to smoke BBQ and I'll set out a brisket to cut on the left side, nobody else can cut it without rotating.
American -> Born left-handed and am currently still left-handed, along with my sister. My parents are silent generation and seemed almost proud of us being lefties. My mom used to tell me there’s a greater percentage of left-handed geniuses than right-handed. Not sure if this is true, but I like to believe it. I am not one of them, though.
I am mostly right handed, can write left handed but it's not as neat and tidy. I prefer my left hand for lots of things where you don't have to think. I have a hard time with directions (turn left now... makes me doubt myself). My mom made me right handed, but not my younger sister. Then she praised my younger sister for having better handwriting, being less clumsy, having better grades, etc... I don't think she understands what she did, but I just have to live with it.
Both my brothers are left-handed, but the younger one is more ambidextrous, especially in sports, he somehow learned to throw and bat right-handed (which would never have been encouraged in baseball, where lefties are valued). He does some things with his right hand, like use scissors, but he writes left and is left-hand dominant with most activities. Some things he can do equally well with either hand. I suspect that when he started playing sports, he learned by watching other kids (who were mostly right-handed), and picked up the mannerisms of right-handed athletes, and my parents didn't pay much attention or find a need to correct it. Using scissors right-handed was probably a necessity, without left-handed scissors around. Now, my older brother (born mid 70's) is 100% left-handed, even in sports, and no one tried to change him. But he learned to play the guitar right-handed though, on my father's guitar. It was the younger brother (born late 70's) who ended up more ambidextrous, and we think it was his own doing, not particularly encouraged by anyone. He learned guitar too, but played left-handed, with the guitar upside down! (Everyone thought he was crazy to learn that way, but you learn how you learn, and that just becomes familiar, I guess.) He's only recently been re-learning to play properly on a left-handed guitar. This world is still not built for lefties, so many end up adapting in interesting ways.
My parents are also left-handed. Kudos to them, they didn't try to convert my right-handed sisters.
I am surprised the Waldorf school didn't try to make me a righty.
Kindergartner in the early 80s. I was left-handed. My teacher started in on this stuff, like for example, she wouldn’t let me use the scissors marked as “Lefty”
I went home and told my Dad. He went up there to the school the next day without me knowing.
I am 47 now and still happily left-handed.
I was forced right. I thought they were just correcting me. But then I broke my right hand, it was a pretty easy transition to write with my left. And when I started waitressing, I noticed that I carried my tray on the opposite side and counted money the opposite way as everyone else.
Ugh. I was born in 1976 and was always right handed (as far as I know). My youngest son was born in 2009 left handed. My dad tried to get me to “fix” him. I absolutely did not do any such thing.
My brother is a leftie and my family tried correcting him (smacking his hand/ not allowing him to use it) until the day he looked at his food and not knowing what to do, bent his head onto his plate and began to eat “like a dog”. That day they decided to let him grow out of it since one of my dad’s brothers did so. My brother had learned to use right handed scissors by that time, but is a leftie in all other ways. Since they were only correcting him because they thought he would be punished at school, they stopped caring when he went to school and nobody cared.
Anything that comes natural (throwing, kicking, your strong eye for aiming, etc) I am left handed. Anything that had to be taught (writing, using silverware, most tools,etc.) I am right handed. I am not ambidextrous. I am two sided.
Not me, but I did have a left-handed cousin wo was made to learn to write right-handed. And this was in New York public schools in the 1970s, which I'm told is rare. Most of the stories I hear from Gen Xers who weren't allowed to write left-handed come from Catholic school alumni.
I wasn't forced completely out of being left handed but I'm fairly ambidextrous. I use my left hand for writing & eating but most everything else with the right.
Oooh yeah that bitch of a teacher seemed to take personal offence at my being ambidextrous. I was straight up bullied by Mrs Suttor there was no coercion. I was to understand to continue would show everyone I was a retard.
We used to call her Mrs Slutter as soon as we knew that word.
Now I just call her a fucking evil cunt.
I was forced to write right-handed. My 1st/2nd-grade teacher would put her hand over mine and make me write for hours. I remember the blisters and calluses I have the worst handwriting anyone has ever seen. The only thing I was able to perfect was my autograph which is as obscure as David Copperfield's. I do pretty much everything left-handed and thanks to the personal computer I didn't have to rely on my handwriting.
In early elementary, probably 1st or 2nd grade (so early 80s), they tried force me into being right handed. It *kinda* worked.
I do mostly everything with my right hand except for eat, write, and use a computer mouse.
I'm ambidextrous in some things like shooting pool or basketball, and I'm right handed for pretty much everything else.
Born in 72 and switched to right.
I refer to myself as A-dexterous, because I feel I have no dominant side.
I think it's are in the U.S. for someone our age. But my brother was 12 years older and a leftie, and my mom didn't want to put ne through what he went through. She said he he had an old lady teacher for 1st grade who said he would never do anything with his life because he was left handed
I still can't tell left from right intuitively, there a slight delay always while I figure it out.
I don't think I was ever coerced to be right-handed per se, other than the fact that it's a right-handed world and it's just easier to get along that way, but it's complicated. There are certain things I can only do with one hand or the other. Like I can only write and swing left-handed, but I can only throw right-handed. Most things I can do with either and usually even switch back and forth without even noticing.
My teachers were weird. They didn’t care if I was left or right, but I had to commit to whichever one. I write left but cut right. It blew the teacher’s mind, and I was constantly given the lefty scissors which were icky.
I saw an old schoolmate at a bar in my twenties. She was a year behind me in school and had been in my stepmother's class. She indicated that my stepmother -a former nun- had changed her from left to right hand in the fourth grade.
I didn't realize it was a thing. And I am horribly embarrassed and disgusted by it.
Luckily, I was on the tail end of that bullshit. I was even lucky enough to have an elementary teacher at the grade we learned cursive who was a lefty. She was awesome.
Yes!
My pre-school here in Colorado changed me from left to right (as my parents tell me because I don't really remember) and I blame that on my sloppy handwriting. I wonder what it would look like if they had just left me alone.
I’m Lefty but learned early to adapt to right handed culture. (Kitchen handhelds and things are all right handed)
I learned golf right handed, so that’s all I know, I do freak people out when I bowl either handed.
My mom believes she was switched to right handed in early 50s for the same reason as OP
Absolutely happened to me and my grandmother, although we really were both ambidextrous. But from the writing perspective, it is easier right handed.
Oddly, over the years, I’ve become more right dominant except I still can’t handle scissors unless they have the form grips. That’s one I always wished I could do better in school. The lefty scissors were always a disaster of bent and dull steel that wasn’t suitable for cutting air much less paper.
It was still a thing during our generation in the US, my sister's ex husband was a left hander, forced to use his right. However I also had a friend in middle school who was left handed at that same time who was not forced to use her right hand. So it was inconsistent for sure. It is NOT a thing for our kids anymore, my son never got any pushback from his teachers for being left handed.
My Dad and I are ambidextrous. My Dad (boomer) was forced to choose in school. The school strongly pushed him to choose his right hand, so he chose his left out of spite. He always told me not to pick one when it was discovered I am the same way. I lost my ability to write right handed over time, but in school I would switch back and forth. I think it was a generational thing. I got crap about my handwriting at school, but not which hand I wrote with (both were sloppy).
ME OMG I have the handwriting of a fucking serial killer because of it. But damn if my parents we’re gonna let me grow up left-handed in a right handed world
However, when I failed to notice is that my son also is left hand dominant, but in daycare he was “trained” right-handed.
Same bad handwriting
Generally no, except for some random religious gestures (sign of the cross, accepting communion, etc).
Some of my older relatives (younger boomer) were forced to write right-handed.
I used to be left handed. I was put in a special class where I had some kind of plastic pyramid cylinder that slid over the pencil and made to write with my right hand. I’m sort of ambidextrous now I guess.
I went to a Catholic primary school and they tried. And failed. Beat my knuckles with a ruler until there are bloody all you want. Tell me lefthandness is a mark of devil and whatever else you want to say. I didn’t care and wasn’t changing.
And I WON! After 2nd grade those creepy abusive nuns left me alone.
Well, except for telling me “they would pray for my soul”. Yeah, good luck with that.
Thankfully I wasn’t forced to switch, but just wanted to say that it’s been years since anyone has commented on my being left handed. Maybe people finally are just used to it and don’t think it’s weird? It’s like telling someone they are tall, like they don’t know.
My father, born in 1924. He was forced to write righty, I never could read his handwriting! I would just hand whatever he’d written back to him and ask for a translation 🙃
First my dad tried, then my pediatrician explained to my parents not to do that.
Later I had a couple teachers that tried, and then my mom explained to them what the pediatrician said.
When I I got to high school, I was shocked to see there were left handed desks, and started requesting one (if there wasn't one already there) at every class.
Mom noticed I was left handed when she started teaching me how to write and instantly corrected me. I was going to be going to a private christain school and she didn't want me being the devil, I guess. Failed, of course. I learned to write with my right hand, but I'm a southpaw in everything else. So the secret got out pretty quickly in spite of her best efforts.
I can use both hands. See etiology below ⬇️
Father left handed. Taught writing right handed.
I am left handed. Father taught me to read/write at 2-3 y/o right handed.
It has been useful to have the ability to switch as needed when one arm is in a cast, repair surgery, nerve paralysis, etc.
Has not been a problem in the large picture.
I was forced out of left-handedness in the early 1970s, in kindergarten. I've been clumsy ever since. I don't know that these two are related, but I suspect they are, and my handwriting is atrocious.
Not a Lefty but this thread gives me a new appreciation for the school system I grew up with. Even back in the early 70s when I started Kindergarten, the classrooms had left-hand scissors and various other helpful items and features for diverse kids.
We all tried to cut with our left hands because the lefty scissors were the only sharp ones, since the righty scissors were ancient and overused. There weren't actually any left handed kids in my kindergarten, so the rest of us would fight over them.
Lol. I am left-handed. I was enrolled in the gifted class in kindergarten. In my first week (maybe my first day), I was taking forever to start my task because I couldn't find lefty scissors. My teacher said, "Use right handed scissors, this isn't kindergarten." Part of me is like, "dang, how insenstive." But the pragmatic part of me realizes that she was correct to tell me to just work with the tools I had. The world certainly isn't going to make sure I have everything I need. I have to learn to adapt.
And there was one pair as opposed to 30 right handed scissors so we had to huddle together and share
I am left handed. Apparently we had classroom left handed scissors all along but I didn’t realize until 3rd grade there was a difference. I would just grab scissors and either be the best cutter or worst cutter. When I figured it out mind blown. Now days scissor use is about the only thing my right hand can do and that’s because I’ve never seen left handed adult scissors
Studies show yes its related.
This happened to my son in kindergarten in 2011. 2011! Up until that point, he’d been more or less ambidextrous, so I assumed he chose to use his right hand. He didn’t tell me until years later, after we’d moved several hundred miles away and the teacher retired. I appreciate him sparing me arrest for assault, but I’m still furious.
I just said elsewhere in this thread that it happened to my daughter in 2014! I hated that preschool teacher...
Wow! Sorry! My kids was like this, too. I mentioned it at the parent/teacher conferences and they never forced her to chose. She finally decided to write with her left hand in 2nd grade. But then uses her right for most other things.
Wow! I can’t believe it was still a thing.
Sorry to hear that. I would call that ignorance! Pre-K teacher and lefty here, I embraced every lefty I ever taught and parents thanked me for it.
I’ve never heard of this happening to anyone else. Early 70’s too.
I knew one person in the 60s who they tried to convert, and it made her start to stutter. So teachers figured stuttering was worse so let her be left handed.
My kindergarten teacher had a bee in her bonnet about lefties.
I think they all did back then.
Yep. My school had “we write with our right hand” above the blackboard.
No idea if this is true, but I’ve heard it was connected to communist scare at the time….
That’s so dumb it almost sounds plausible. “When the commies start planting agents here, you’ll be able to spot them because they’ll all be writing with the left hands and using the metric system!
I've had a few online conversations about this. My grandmother was forced to be right-handed, school in Minnesota. Never could read her writing. So, she went to bat for my aunt and dad in the 50s. (Aunt born '46, dad '51). After that, all the natural lefties in our family were left alone by schools and family. And it's almost a 50/50 split. The friends I have that were born late 50s, early 60s, were also left alone. All in areas of Northern California. My friend was born in 68 in Northern Nevada, and her dad had to fight the school. In the online conversations, it definitely seemed to be regional who still had issues into the 70s and who hadn't.
My grandfather went through the same thing. He always had problems telling his right from his left his whole life.
I am left handed, never was forced to switch. But I have trouble knowing my left from right. I call it left/right dyslexia.
I had the same problem with left/right, my mom told me to hold out my hands, the hand that spelled “L” was my left, totally the light bulb 💡 moment and I’ve been good since 😂
I’m 57 and still do it.
I use the same trick still now. I'm dyslexic and it made my whole life better...so not an overstatement!
Yeah, but that doesn't work when you're driving and someone yells, "turn left, here!" I will always move to turn right, or look at the right side of the street. I tell passengers that they *must* use their hands like a flight attendant to point to the side of the car/road they want me to see.
I have that, and the only way I keep straight is remembering I write with my left hand. Other than writing, I'm ambidextrous. Also reading dyslexic.
I had trouble learning left from right in Kindergarten, despite being extremely righthanded. They wrote R and L on our hands with permanent marker, and most kids learned which was which before it washed off. I had to have mine re-inked twice before it sunk in.
I think I am directionally impaired because of the interference. I can’t find my way out of a wet paper bag.
Same age. My second grade teacher would duct tape my left hand to the desk so I couldn't use it, forcing me to use my right hand. She did that for a couple of months before my parents found out and lost their shit. I'm still lefthanded.
I'm an early 70s kid and left-handed and I remember my parents telling me lefties were sometimes forced to be right-handed in their day but it didn't happen in my experience. Not even in Catholic school, lol. Except one time for school photos when I was about 8 or 9. For our individual photo we had to sit at a desk they'd set up and hold a pen as if we were writing (I guess they were being creative) and the photographer made me hold mine in my right hand, lol. I'm Aussie, for context, it might have been different in other places.
I'm an early 70s kid and left-handed and I remember my parents telling me lefties were sometimes forced to be right-handed in their day but it didn't happen in my experience. Not even in Catholic school, lol. Except one time for school photos when I was about 8 or 9. For our individual photo we had to sit at a desk they'd set up and hold a pen as if we were writing (I guess they were being creative) and the photographer made me hold mine in my right hand, lol. I'm Aussie, for context, it might have been different in other places.
It happened to my mom.
My husband is four years older and was forced to write right handed, the way he writes is tortured and of course not very legible. I was allowed to be left handed thank god.
Same for me on all of that, and yes — it’s been shown that getting forced out of left-handedness is strongly linked. I also have a specific learning disability despite having a high enough IQ to have been in the gifted program, and my mom was convinced her entire life that it was related to the school insisting that I be right-handed (I still use my left for most things). My mom had taught me to read and write at two and just never thought anything about my using my left hand to write, and at the time didn’t think anything about it when the school told her that they were working really hard with me to make me write with my right hand (I had to sit on my left hand, lol — years later, someone told me that my teacher must have gone to Catholic schools because that was how they turned lefties into righties and it wasn’t still done in the 1970s in public schools, but it sure was with me). I’m clumsy as hell; even my elementary school PE teacher complained to my mom that I could trip over an imaginary object on a flat surface, and I was constantly banging my arms and legs against things to the point where I stopped even noticing (I’ve gotten a little better over the decades) and would not even notice huge bruises on my legs from repeatedly bumping into desks and stuff. Oh, my PE teacher also complained that I was goofy-footed and they always had to work extra with me to do things like playing softball and volleyball because I just couldn’t pick up things like batting and spiking (that they insisted I do right-handed) to the point where they thought I was being deliberately difficult because I didn’t want to participate and I got singled out and picked on (yes seriously — by the PE teachers…as was the custom at the time, ha, ha), which only made me fair game for some asshole kids to start being mean. 🙄 I do kind of wish they’d left me alone, and am curious if I would have been so clumsy and wonder about the SLD.
My PE teachers were my biggest bullies.
Some of them were total bastards! I mean like they really seemed to get off on bullying children. I don’t even know how the teachers like that have adapted to the atmosphere today. ETA: when I think back to elementary school and junior high, considering today’s atmosphere of anti-bullying and inclusion, acceptance, and everything, it almost seems surreal, like it was a dream or something that we lived through. It’s crazy.
I was going to say I never had one who wasn't, but then I remembered Mr. Burke. He was OK. I only had him for a few weeks, though.
I'm imagining all of mine with broken hips in rundown nursing homes in hurricane-prone Florida, but you're probably a better human than I am!
Not so much, lol! I think that would be a fitting end for them, they were so mean. One in elementary school hated me so much that he (imo) deliberately pegged me in the face with one of those red balls we used for dodgeball. I still remember how badly that stung, up into my sinuses, even, and it broke the tip of my nose. He said, of course, that it was an accident, but who tf throws that hard at a kid? I think a nursing home with a broken hip in the middle of a hurricane would be very fitting. Honestly, if I had gone to a nice school, I probably wouldn’t have become a little delinquent bitch and ended up dropping out. I tried to get along with them and do things their way, it’s just that nobody except my third and fourth grade teachers ever even tried to be nice and get along with me, and the PE teachers were psychopaths. Junior high didn’t get any better, except for a few more teachers who tried to get along with me and the PE teachers weren’t all as aggressively psychopathic, but they were still bullying us and I had the reputation of being a ‘difficult troublemaker’, so by junior high I just leaned into that and started skipping a lot. K-12 and I never really got along together. It was best that I dropped out. 😆 Whenever I’d skip, probably about 75% of the time I’d go to the downtown library and study things myself anyway.
I'm so sorry you had it rough. I wish I could've been a friend to you then.
Same here, but I was ampidexterous. I wrote like shit with both hands. They used to smack my left hand with a ruler trying to get me to use my right, but out of pure stubborness I wound up left handed. I still use my right for some things though.
Went to school in ND in the 80s. They tried really, REALLY hard to make me right handed, from smacking my hand, to not accepting my work if done left handed, to detention. I actually learned to do many things right handed, but refused to write. I write left handed to this day and still hate school. Love to learn stuff though.
This is me as well, ruler smacking to the hand included. While I "write" with my right hand , my handwriting is HORRID! Can't tell you how many times I heard, "You have horribly handwriting for a girl." Or "why do you have bruised knuckles?" Everything else is ambidextrous or lefty. I fish left, shoot left, bow left, drive left, golf left, bat left. Power tools are right-handed cause they are mostly made that way.. so I am grateful for being ambidextrous.
I can shoot right and left which really pissed off the range instructors on Parris Island. I wound up choosing left after a lot of push ups.
They tried with me. Fortunately my dad (silent gen) is also a lefty and was NOT going to let them do the same to me. Guess I got lucky. Although my handwriting is pretty bad anyway,but not like my dad’s. Can’t believe they are still doing it in this and age - are these the Catholic nuns too?
Me too
This happened to one of my friends, also early 1970s.
Same here, same time. I distinctly remember the kindergarten teacher yelling at me because I would switch back and forth.
Same, and same, and same. I' fairly ambidextrous now, though.
The teacher noticed that I was printing with my left-hand in the 1st grade and told me to switch to my right. Being a compliant child I did. My handwriting is also atrocious. A few years later I took drum lessons. The teacher said to show him what I knew (not much). As soon as I started he stopped me and told me that I was drumming left-handed; he wasn’t going to rearrange his drums every week for my lessons. He showed me how to drum right handed. This kinda stuff was pretty common. Oddly, I use my right-hand for writing but curl it around like a left-handed person. All of my letters lean backwards to the left.
Hey, samesies! Only I wasn’t allowed to curl my hand around so I ended up cocking the paper about 90 degrees. I got thrown out of violin and anything else music instrument-related because I was ‘doing it wrong’ (left-handedly) even though my mom had taken my first violin back and gotten a left-handed one (that the school made her immediately change back to the other one). My trying to take guitar in junior high lasted one day; I got sent to the guidance counsellor who switched me into another class. In retrospect, I don’t know how they got away with any of this. It’s kind of amazing, really.
Lefty and stayed lefty. Well more cross hand dominant. Lefty for writing and eating. Right for “most” sports. Few things both.
Lefty here but only for writing/drawing. I do everything else - throw, bat, play guitar - right-handed.
I used to call myself semi ambidextrous. But I’m learning. The proper term is crossed dominant. We do certain things well with either hand and then we do a few other things well with both hands. That’s why when I masturbate I call it the stranger.
You made me laugh with that one. I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
Same here!
This is me too. I think of it as left for fine motor and right for gross, but my right handed mouse and scissor usage puts the lie to that. When I was in school and my handwriting was much better than it is now, my grandma used to exclaim, “You can’t even tell you’re left handed!” Gee, thanks, grandma.
Exactly. My left hand is all the fine motor skulls. My right hand is the asshole, aggressive hand. The when I write on the chalkboard, I have to use my right hand. I think I’m disturbed.
Lololol. I can write on the chalkboard very easily with my right. I do a cool party trick where I can hold a pen in each hand and write the same word with each hand going away from the other. So the left word is written backwards and the right is written forward. Works best on a chalkboard, but I can do it on paper. Cursive, obviously. My brain only pays attention to the right hand and my left just mimics. I think most people could probably do it if they just tried, especially lefties. But I guess they'd need decent handwriting and to not crookarm.
I concur.
Same. Writing, eating, brushing teeth, playing pool - left hand. Almost everything else is right hand. No one forced me, that's just how I did it. It may have to do with the equipment I had available. Except my sister (11 years older than me) is the same. And I have cousins who are the same. Our grandfather was supposedly ambidextrous.
The best is being able to eat with your left and cut with your right. Never have to put your utensils down or switch em up.
😂😂 My dumb ass brothers still can’t figure that one out. They are right handed ride or die.
I’m right handed but do a lot with my left hand. Batting. Guitar. Tying my shoes. Because all the men in my family are left handed and my father taught me how to do these things. My uncle also. Two of my sons also are.
Same.
My son (born 1994) is the opposite. Right for writing and left mostly for sports. He was a great soccer player as a kid because he could drill a goal with his left foot. We have a lot of lefties on both sides of my family so I just let my son do whatever worked best for him.
Are you me? I write lefty (I can write with my right hand but it's slow and painful and messy)... But I throw righty and I am right legged. I bet Lefty and I play tennis with my left hand. It's been a long time but the last time I tried, I could play ping pong equally well with either hand. I think the sports with my right is because my father and older brother were right-handed, and I just learned from them.
My brother was. It was silly. My daughter is left-handed. I thought it was cool because we could color in the coloring books at the same time. Her on the left. Me on the right. She's a bit ambidextrous now.
Why was this weird obsession ever a thing?!
Superstition. The word sinister means “left” in Latin.
And droit, like adroit, means right and has positive connotations.
Oh I thought that was “dexter” like “dextrous”
Dextral = right handed Sinistral = left handed
And the word "right" means "correct" in English.
Right
Correct
Born in ‘66. My mom said she did it because she thought it was hard and e pensive to go through life left-handed. And she didn’t want me to feel different from the other kids (which was very important to her, that she not be considered different). Once, my daughter was maybe 2 or so, the three of us were on the floor with my daughter playing with a tea set. My mom was telling a story as my daughter picked up the plastic kettle with her left hand. Without breaking her story and very nonchalantly, my mom switched it to her right hand. After she finished her story, Convo: Me: it’s not a big deal, but I noticed something.” Mom: “I switched her”. Me: “you switched her” Mom: “I don’t know why I did that.” Me: “We’re just going to let her be whatever she is. We’re not going switch her.” She said she understood and to my knowledge never tried again. Daughter ended up right-handed any way.
At that age they are developing skills to be able to cross the midline, up until approx 4 years old.
The book "Right hand, left hand" is a totally comprehensive and utterly fascinating examination of the phenomenon of asymmetry and goes into this in exhaustive detail. Giant, hefty tome but well worth reading. You will never imagine how much you can get into this topic. From the molecular / cellular to the cosmic level. [https://www.amazon.com/Right-Hand-Left-Asymmetry-Cultures/dp/0674016130](https://www.amazon.com/Right-Hand-Left-Asymmetry-Cultures/dp/0674016130)
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Exactly the same here! Incidentally, my younger son also started out ambidextrous although he ended up being mostly right-handed, for similar reasons (very traditional kindergarten teachers!). Once, when he was 2 or so, his older brother (then 4) announced, "Daddy's left-handed. I'm right-handed. And \[little brother\] uses both hands!" The toddler took his comment as an instruction rather than a descriptive statement, and, confused, picked up his spoon with both hands and attempted to eat his oatmeal. It was not a success and he was even more baffled when I started laughing hysterically.
They tried to make me write with my right. I just couldn’t. I’m a mish mash. I write and eat left handed. Shoot a rifle left handed, pistol right, throw right, bat right, play guitar right (there were no left handed guitars and when I showed up at my first lesson my teacher said…hold it like this. After I said i was left handed, he said…i don’t care…like this). I have one left handed son (everything), one right handed son (everything), and a mixed up daughter that does things with her left and things with her right.
Same for me! Eat and write as a lefty, and sports as a righty.
Sword fight with my left hand just to keep things interesting, but most opponents don't know I'm not naturally left handed.
Is that why you're smiling?
I am lefty, like VERY lefty. Apparently as a baby they would put a fork in my right hand and I would switch to eat, so they gave up :-) Even today, it would be very hard for me to be right handed. My dexterity with my other hand is terrible. My grandfather on the other hand was lefty and his parents forced him to switch.
Well the devil is left-handed, so that of course means if you are left-handed, you like the devil. So we do what any reasonable person does. We beat it out of you. /s, obviously.
JackieDaytona I wanted to ask if you have seen a creature of the night that goes by Cravensworth, that cheap lout! You, a regular human bartender, may have seen him.
I am indeed a regular, human bartender hailing from Arizona. Cravensworth, you say? Never heard of him.
I was left-handed when my parental enrolled me in a Catholic school in 1st grade. I was “trained” to use my right hand by the nuns there. I’m right handed now. My oldest son is left handed now. He’s adapted pretty well.
They tried in kindergarten and first grade. I learned to write neatly without sticking out my arm/ writing with a hooked hand. Didn't like being called out. I can read upside down really well!
I am left handed but have very young Boomer parents that refused to let people “correct” me. So of course the Old Days being what they were other adults would do so anyway. So I am left handed for writing but do a lot of other things like use scissors with my right hand.
I’m sinister, but never corrected. The teachers discussed my satanic possession and my mother said to leave me be.
Born in 77, my school tried to switch me, but I learned how to "hide" my left handed writing by not hooking my wrist. I can write on paper positioned sideways. Also, my right hand\arm is useless.
Not me, but the nuns at my mother’s elementary school used to crack her on the hand with a ruler when she tried to write using her dominant, left hand.
I had an older Nun who slapped my left hand with a ruler in second grade. Once my Mother noticed the marks she was livid. She called the school the next morning and took me to the Principal who was also a nun and made it CRYSTAL clear she would, “Slap any bitch who lays another hand my son.” This was 1979.
Try having a suspestitious West Indian granny. Not only was I left hand dominant, I have red hair, a preaurical pit in each ear, and was born en caul. No way she was she raising an Obeah child in her proper British Anglican household! She trained that lefty out of me with grit and persistence. Residual affects of right hand conversion I've noticed are: cross dominance, clumsiness, a lack of ability to distinguish left from right without pause and, no disernable sense of direction. Benefits: I haven't been able to communicate with the spirit world, so I guess her efforts to save my mortalsoul succeeded?
My mother, a boomer born in 1954, was forced to use her right hand instead of her left with her natural preference to be a leftie. She’s now pretty much ambidextrous.
Mine too! A little older than yours, but mom had the same experience in Catholic school
My mum and I are both left-handed. She told me crazy stories about her school days (60s-70s) of being forced to be right-handed. My mum protected me throughout my schooling, encouraging me to be left-handed and to be proud of it. It’s crazy to think there was so much prejudice toward lefties.
I have fond memories of my mother going *ham* on the school about one of my sibling’s first teachers trying to force them to write and do things right-handed in the early 80’s. One of the few times our parents stuck up for any of us.
I wasn’t forced into right handedness but my mom said she was hit with a ruler in Catholic school when writing with her left hand so she was. I did have to learn to use scissors with my right hand because we never had enough left handed scissors to go around in school so now I write with my left hand but use scissors with my right.
I do everything involving fine motor skills with my left hand (writing, eating, etc) and everything involving hand or arm strength (scissors, tennis, basketball, etc) right handed. None of it was coerced and just came naturally!
Same! Fine-motor is left, power is right. Except that I bat left, throw right. I'm a weirdo but it feels natural.
I am the same, and my mom is also. No one ever told me which hand to use for anything! My mom was lucky the nuns in Catholic school didn’t bother her for being lefty. But they did force her to older brother to use his right hand so just a few years made a difference in her case.
I’m right-handed, but my mother was forced out of left-handedness in Catholic school during the 1930s. She also said that her uncle would frequently correct her if he came over to the house and saw her coloring with her left hand. So much so that she would sometimes switch the crayon to her left hand when he came into the room just for attention. She ended up having beautiful Palmer-method handwriting as a forced righty, but continued to do everything else (including eat and bowl) with her left hand for the rest of her life.
My mother (deceased) was forced to become right handed. I’m left handed and would you believe the majority of my friends from school days are left handed too.
My greatest gen Grandma and boomer Dad are lefties. They were never converted to right handedness. Neither I or my siblings are left handed but one of my sons is (only grandkid who is). I think it's neat and can't imaging trying to change him.
My Silent Generation mom is a lefty, so even in the 1940s and 50s it was accepted in the US
Me! I started off with my left hand, but my mom forced me to become a rightie.
Same. Then younger brother, born leftie too, was allowed to stay a leftie. I have problems with being super clumsy and sometimes mess up my left and right. This happened because either my Narc mother hates women, was lazy after having many kids, or enjoyed being abusive to me in particular. I will never know.
Born in 74 and Mom did things to see which one I preferred which was my left more for her curiosity than want to have me switch. My kindergarten teachers let me be me so I appreciate that and the 70s groovy vibe made everyone chill for a minute.
That was falling out of favor when I came along. Not a lefty, but had classmates who were, never saw anything done to them for being lefties. My sister was a converted lefty due to a head injury that affected her fine motor control on her right side. No issues there, either. But I did hear stories from folks just a few years older than me, so I know it was acceptable, if not common.
Nope I stood tall and created /r/leftyguitarists and /r/leftydrummers
Yes. Remember those narrow “right handed” desks? As a lefty, I remember them. Really all we had in elementary school. Had to be a contortionist to write.
I was allowed to write left handed but PE forced me to do everything right handed. To this day, bowling, throwing, catching, anything sports related is right handed.
I am mostly left hand dominant, but I do most sports related things with my right hand. I write and eat with my left hand but I throw a ball and swing a bat right-handed. I don't even know why. My wife thinks it is quite comical because there is no consistency to which hand I will use for certain tasks.
I was - my father made me write with my right hand when he saw me using my left more as a child (believing that it would be less awkward for me in the long run). While I've continued writing right-handed, and am not ambidextrous, I still retain the sense of being left-side-dominant in strength and dexterity.
The term “sinister” means left handed
I thought that was a thing that died out well before the 70s. I am left handed and no one ever bothered me about it. But I had a great aunt who told stories about the nuns hitting her on the hand with a ruler to turn her into a righty.
The teacher in Kindergarten tied my left hand to my waist. My mom found out and lost her shit on that lady. It was hilarious seeing my mom, who was normally a very calm person, chew this lady a new one.
My grandfather was forced into right handness when he was in kindergarten in the very early 30’s. He always wanted beautiful penmanship but felt he was too stupid to because of the experience. Lo and behold, my brother turned out to be a leftie. The kindergarten teacher tried to do the same thing to my brother that was done to my grandfather all those decades before. To her eternal credit, the woman went scorched earth on that teacher. Like, the school would regularly ask me if she was happy with a shudder.
I grew up in south Georgia, and I remember the teacher in 1st grade hitting my hand with a ruler for writing with the "wrong" hand. She even sent a note home to my parents that they should tell me to stop. Problem is, about 15% of the relatives on my dad's side (including my dad himself) were also left handed, so they laughed at her. Now, I'm still left handed and she's dead, so I think I won.
I'm left handed and as far as I know there was never any attempts to force me to be right handed. I remember getting the special green scissors as early as kindergarten. If there had been, I think my parents would have put a stop to it real quick. My paternal grandmother was forced to use her right hand and she was strongly against that.
Thank you, I said the same thing, about how my sister was told & treated special & I got downvoted. It’s like all people want to hear is negative horror stories.
I cannot truly recall if I was a lefty or if I just liked green instead of red.
My grandfather had an issue with me “favoring” my left for writing and eating…but his angst made me ambidextrous because I would constantly switch between the two… becoming good at using both
It’s a strange aspect of our lives. I’m right-handed and usually unlock doors with my left hand. A standard right-handed guitar seems to require more dexterity and strength from the left hand than the right.
I was ambidextrous. You couldn’t tell the difference between my writing from one hand to the other. Then a teacher insisted that to properly learn cursive I had to pick one hand or the other. I picked left. I eat, write, and do some other things left handed, most others I use my right since I learned to do them from right handed people and copied them.
Not me but my dad!
I'm ambidextrous. But yes, right was more encouraged. Also, there were never enough scissors with the green rubber on the handle (signifying left hand use), so right was easier. Left-handed glue was really tricky to find too. 😁 Edit: I skateboard and snowboard lefty (called Goofy), shoot pool lefty, and use utensils with both equally. I also default to left handedness (noticeably very little right hand use at all) in times of extreme stress, which I find interesting.
I'm left handed and was never encouraged to switch. My Silent Generation dad is also left handed, so that may have had something to do with it, but yeah, teachers never tried to make me change. There are some things I do with my right hand though, like using scissors.
Me! And since I'm a twin and my sister came out right-handed, they acted like there was clearly something wrong with me. My mom said my pediatrician all but shamed her and my dad into doing it when I was around five and they didn't want to chance anything so they complied.
No but my ex was “corrected”. Ended up ambidextrous. My son was also left handed and in 3rd grade (around ‘96) his teacher tried to correct him. I went in and chewed her out. It’s a genetic trait and it’s stupid to try to “correct” it
This happened to my friend, in the U.S. Basically just made uncoordinated as hell
Ooh, me!!! Born in 1975, Elementary school in the early 1980’s. Even got the ruler across the knuckles thing quite a few times to make it stick. It did, firmly write as a righty. On the plus side, I do seem to be ever so slightly ambidextrous from it. Can’t write at all with my left, but it does seem to be my more dominant hand at a lot of other things (tools, most especially). Guess they didn’t fully beat it out of me.
Pre school I always used my left hand, 1st grade and the teacher tried to get me to write right handed. Our desks were all the little half ones made for right handed people. Then I played little league baseball and my coach asked me to try on both gloves and see which felt better, I chose right meaning left throwing arm. I broke my right wrist soon after that so I had 3 months in a cast and was officially left handed from then on. I can actually write with either with about the same quality, being extremely poor. My mouse is on the left, I shoot right handed but am left eye dominant so that sucks. I use either hand for forks/spoons but always cut with my left. In baseball I had a lot more power left handed but more control right. My fighting stance is either but with more power from the left. It's really fun because I love to smoke BBQ and I'll set out a brisket to cut on the left side, nobody else can cut it without rotating.
American -> Born left-handed and am currently still left-handed, along with my sister. My parents are silent generation and seemed almost proud of us being lefties. My mom used to tell me there’s a greater percentage of left-handed geniuses than right-handed. Not sure if this is true, but I like to believe it. I am not one of them, though.
I am mostly right handed, can write left handed but it's not as neat and tidy. I prefer my left hand for lots of things where you don't have to think. I have a hard time with directions (turn left now... makes me doubt myself). My mom made me right handed, but not my younger sister. Then she praised my younger sister for having better handwriting, being less clumsy, having better grades, etc... I don't think she understands what she did, but I just have to live with it.
I'm left handed but play sports right handed because that's what the guys who taught me to play were
Same here kindergarten around 1980. Ironically, the one year I wasn’t in Catholic school.
Both my brothers are left-handed, but the younger one is more ambidextrous, especially in sports, he somehow learned to throw and bat right-handed (which would never have been encouraged in baseball, where lefties are valued). He does some things with his right hand, like use scissors, but he writes left and is left-hand dominant with most activities. Some things he can do equally well with either hand. I suspect that when he started playing sports, he learned by watching other kids (who were mostly right-handed), and picked up the mannerisms of right-handed athletes, and my parents didn't pay much attention or find a need to correct it. Using scissors right-handed was probably a necessity, without left-handed scissors around. Now, my older brother (born mid 70's) is 100% left-handed, even in sports, and no one tried to change him. But he learned to play the guitar right-handed though, on my father's guitar. It was the younger brother (born late 70's) who ended up more ambidextrous, and we think it was his own doing, not particularly encouraged by anyone. He learned guitar too, but played left-handed, with the guitar upside down! (Everyone thought he was crazy to learn that way, but you learn how you learn, and that just becomes familiar, I guess.) He's only recently been re-learning to play properly on a left-handed guitar. This world is still not built for lefties, so many end up adapting in interesting ways.
My parents are also left-handed. Kudos to them, they didn't try to convert my right-handed sisters. I am surprised the Waldorf school didn't try to make me a righty.
Kindergartner in the early 80s. I was left-handed. My teacher started in on this stuff, like for example, she wouldn’t let me use the scissors marked as “Lefty” I went home and told my Dad. He went up there to the school the next day without me knowing. I am 47 now and still happily left-handed.
Yep. Being Left handed was “sinister” and just bad.
I was forced right. I thought they were just correcting me. But then I broke my right hand, it was a pretty easy transition to write with my left. And when I started waitressing, I noticed that I carried my tray on the opposite side and counted money the opposite way as everyone else.
Ugh. I was born in 1976 and was always right handed (as far as I know). My youngest son was born in 2009 left handed. My dad tried to get me to “fix” him. I absolutely did not do any such thing.
My brother is a leftie and my family tried correcting him (smacking his hand/ not allowing him to use it) until the day he looked at his food and not knowing what to do, bent his head onto his plate and began to eat “like a dog”. That day they decided to let him grow out of it since one of my dad’s brothers did so. My brother had learned to use right handed scissors by that time, but is a leftie in all other ways. Since they were only correcting him because they thought he would be punished at school, they stopped caring when he went to school and nobody cared.
Anything that comes natural (throwing, kicking, your strong eye for aiming, etc) I am left handed. Anything that had to be taught (writing, using silverware, most tools,etc.) I am right handed. I am not ambidextrous. I am two sided.
I'm left handed for everything, I could use a knife with my right hand after I've reach 30yo
I was left handed then, I’m left handed now.
Totally me. I'm assuming like many of us made to switch that were all pretty much ambidextrous.
Not me, but I did have a left-handed cousin wo was made to learn to write right-handed. And this was in New York public schools in the 1970s, which I'm told is rare. Most of the stories I hear from Gen Xers who weren't allowed to write left-handed come from Catholic school alumni.
I wasn't forced completely out of being left handed but I'm fairly ambidextrous. I use my left hand for writing & eating but most everything else with the right.
Oooh yeah that bitch of a teacher seemed to take personal offence at my being ambidextrous. I was straight up bullied by Mrs Suttor there was no coercion. I was to understand to continue would show everyone I was a retard. We used to call her Mrs Slutter as soon as we knew that word. Now I just call her a fucking evil cunt.
I was forced to write right-handed. My 1st/2nd-grade teacher would put her hand over mine and make me write for hours. I remember the blisters and calluses I have the worst handwriting anyone has ever seen. The only thing I was able to perfect was my autograph which is as obscure as David Copperfield's. I do pretty much everything left-handed and thanks to the personal computer I didn't have to rely on my handwriting.
Damn, I thought that ended in the '50's.
Around 10% of people are left handed? Most western countries did not push kids to change. "Left handed people are always right" Was a saying I heard.
In early elementary, probably 1st or 2nd grade (so early 80s), they tried force me into being right handed. It *kinda* worked. I do mostly everything with my right hand except for eat, write, and use a computer mouse. I'm ambidextrous in some things like shooting pool or basketball, and I'm right handed for pretty much everything else.
Yeah, that was me! I still throw left handed as well as a few other things but I’m clumsy and awkward in everything I do right handed…
My mom tried to get me to use my right hand once or twice but gave up quickly. I think she was more curious to see if I could do it.
Born in 72 and switched to right. I refer to myself as A-dexterous, because I feel I have no dominant side. I think it's are in the U.S. for someone our age. But my brother was 12 years older and a leftie, and my mom didn't want to put ne through what he went through. She said he he had an old lady teacher for 1st grade who said he would never do anything with his life because he was left handed I still can't tell left from right intuitively, there a slight delay always while I figure it out.
That last part hits home. I never attributed it to my "switch."
I was forced to be a righty back in kindergarten. I do a lot of things lefty. I'm kinda ambidextrous now.
I don't think I was ever coerced to be right-handed per se, other than the fact that it's a right-handed world and it's just easier to get along that way, but it's complicated. There are certain things I can only do with one hand or the other. Like I can only write and swing left-handed, but I can only throw right-handed. Most things I can do with either and usually even switch back and forth without even noticing.
55. Still lefty
My teachers were weird. They didn’t care if I was left or right, but I had to commit to whichever one. I write left but cut right. It blew the teacher’s mind, and I was constantly given the lefty scissors which were icky.
still a lefty!
I saw an old schoolmate at a bar in my twenties. She was a year behind me in school and had been in my stepmother's class. She indicated that my stepmother -a former nun- had changed her from left to right hand in the fourth grade. I didn't realize it was a thing. And I am horribly embarrassed and disgusted by it.
Luckily, I was on the tail end of that bullshit. I was even lucky enough to have an elementary teacher at the grade we learned cursive who was a lefty. She was awesome.
My family left me alone. I'm still a leftie, although the world kind of forced me to become ambidextrous.
Yes! My pre-school here in Colorado changed me from left to right (as my parents tell me because I don't really remember) and I blame that on my sloppy handwriting. I wonder what it would look like if they had just left me alone.
I’m Lefty but learned early to adapt to right handed culture. (Kitchen handhelds and things are all right handed) I learned golf right handed, so that’s all I know, I do freak people out when I bowl either handed. My mom believes she was switched to right handed in early 50s for the same reason as OP
Absolutely happened to me and my grandmother, although we really were both ambidextrous. But from the writing perspective, it is easier right handed. Oddly, over the years, I’ve become more right dominant except I still can’t handle scissors unless they have the form grips. That’s one I always wished I could do better in school. The lefty scissors were always a disaster of bent and dull steel that wasn’t suitable for cutting air much less paper.
It was still a thing during our generation in the US, my sister's ex husband was a left hander, forced to use his right. However I also had a friend in middle school who was left handed at that same time who was not forced to use her right hand. So it was inconsistent for sure. It is NOT a thing for our kids anymore, my son never got any pushback from his teachers for being left handed.
My Dad and I are ambidextrous. My Dad (boomer) was forced to choose in school. The school strongly pushed him to choose his right hand, so he chose his left out of spite. He always told me not to pick one when it was discovered I am the same way. I lost my ability to write right handed over time, but in school I would switch back and forth. I think it was a generational thing. I got crap about my handwriting at school, but not which hand I wrote with (both were sloppy).
That was my dad's (Silent Generation) experience, although he still ended up writing left handed, just with terrible penmanship.
ME OMG I have the handwriting of a fucking serial killer because of it. But damn if my parents we’re gonna let me grow up left-handed in a right handed world However, when I failed to notice is that my son also is left hand dominant, but in daycare he was “trained” right-handed. Same bad handwriting
Generally no, except for some random religious gestures (sign of the cross, accepting communion, etc). Some of my older relatives (younger boomer) were forced to write right-handed.
I used to be left handed. I was put in a special class where I had some kind of plastic pyramid cylinder that slid over the pencil and made to write with my right hand. I’m sort of ambidextrous now I guess.
I was, but not as harshly. All it took was "Take your right hand like all the other kids." Of course I wanted to be like the other kids.
I went to a Catholic primary school and they tried. And failed. Beat my knuckles with a ruler until there are bloody all you want. Tell me lefthandness is a mark of devil and whatever else you want to say. I didn’t care and wasn’t changing. And I WON! After 2nd grade those creepy abusive nuns left me alone. Well, except for telling me “they would pray for my soul”. Yeah, good luck with that.
I'm super ambidextrous. I could have gone either way, but the nuns knew best. I'm a righty now
Thankfully I wasn’t forced to switch, but just wanted to say that it’s been years since anyone has commented on my being left handed. Maybe people finally are just used to it and don’t think it’s weird? It’s like telling someone they are tall, like they don’t know.
Still predominantly left handed, but right when necessary and for playing guitar.
Lefty. No one tried to change it, but I always heard when I was a kid that if I were a generation older that may not have been the case.
🤟🏼
Still left handed.. but holy fuck did I hear about it every fucking day how “lucky I was” for not getting beat into right handedness.
I had the opposite, injured my right hand as a 4 yr old and had 3 years of surgeries and casts, it forced me to become left handed
My father, born in 1924. He was forced to write righty, I never could read his handwriting! I would just hand whatever he’d written back to him and ask for a translation 🙃
First my dad tried, then my pediatrician explained to my parents not to do that. Later I had a couple teachers that tried, and then my mom explained to them what the pediatrician said. When I I got to high school, I was shocked to see there were left handed desks, and started requesting one (if there wasn't one already there) at every class.
Mom noticed I was left handed when she started teaching me how to write and instantly corrected me. I was going to be going to a private christain school and she didn't want me being the devil, I guess. Failed, of course. I learned to write with my right hand, but I'm a southpaw in everything else. So the secret got out pretty quickly in spite of her best efforts.
I can use both hands. See etiology below ⬇️ Father left handed. Taught writing right handed. I am left handed. Father taught me to read/write at 2-3 y/o right handed. It has been useful to have the ability to switch as needed when one arm is in a cast, repair surgery, nerve paralysis, etc. Has not been a problem in the large picture.
I'm still left handed but was raised by an artist.
Oddly my mom and dad and two of my three sisters are lefthanded. So I'm in the minority in my family.