How to know if your child is right or left handed: simple tests to check

The majority of the population is right-handed, but about 15% of babies are born left-handed. Why this condition? Is it determined in the womb or after birth? There are great myths that hover around left-handed people, such as being smarter than right-handed people, or on the contrary, in the past they were believed to be "sinister" people, a term derived from "left" or "left hand."

But the truth is that being left-handed is not better or worse than right-handed. It is one more condition, like any other feature of people. As soon as the baby is born, it is not possible to know if he is right or left handed because his laterality will be defined in the first years of life. But, How can we know if your child is right or left handed?

Why are we right or left handed?

The causes of being right or left handed are neurological, that is, it is determined by the hemispheres of the brain. When the left hemisphere is dominant, most orders are destined for the right part of the body, so we are right-handed. On the contrary, when the right hemisphere is the dominant one, most of the orders are destined for the left side, so it is left-handed.

However, this has not been demonstrated and rather it is known, according to scientific studies, that 80% of right-handers have dominance of the right hemisphere and 60% of left-handers have left dominance.

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The left-handed is a condition not only genetic, but also environmental. The predominance of one or another laterality is something that is conditioned by our genes, so there is more chance that the baby will be left-handed if there is a family history.

One of the hypotheses is that 80% of people have a dominant gene that makes them right-handed, while the remaining 20% ​​lack this gene, so they have a random chance of being right-handed or left-handed.

But the child's laterality also depends on environmental factors such as learning, school influence or habits, since the genetic predisposition to be right-handed or left-handed can be modified by immobilizing the left hand (in the case of left-handed people) and training the right hand for daily activities such as taking cutlery, use scissors, write ... Something that was formerly done and fortunately it is no longer done.

Crawling, for example, is very beneficial for babies because the coordination of the extremities that the activity requires helps establish the future lateralization of the brain.

What would happen if the child is disabled by one hand?

About this immobilization of the hand, I make a parenthesis to tell a personal experience.

My youngest daughter, 5 years old, broke her wrist when she jumped from a bench and was in a cast for 5 weeks. She is a right-handed girl (by the hand, I mean) who likes her a lot, but who paints and writes a lot. As his wrist ached when he took the pencil with his right hand, he began to take it with his left and with the training, little by little, he began to draw, paint and even write upper and lower case letters with his left hand.

As the days went by I wrote better and better with the left. We kept those drawings and writings and once cured of his wrist, we asked him to repeat them with his right hand and they were practically the same.

I am sure that if I had been in plaster for two or three more months (luckily it was not like that) I would have ended up being left-handed, or ambidextrous.

How to know if you are right or left handed

Laterality, that is, the predominance of one side over the other, not fully defined until three or four years. From that age they will begin to use the dominant hand more frequently, although there may be a transition period in which the child will be ambidextrous, up to 6-7 years in which it will be fully defined whether he will be right or left handed.

There are some tests that you can put into practice to know if the child is right or left handed. Although you must bear in mind that people are not 100% right or left handed, but there is always some degree of cross laterality. For example, it is left-handed, but right-handed in the eye or in the ear.

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Tests to find out if the child is left or right handed

Harris test

Dominance of the hand:

  • Throw a ball
  • Wind a watch
  • Hit with a hammer
  • Brushing teeth
  • Comb your hair
  • Turn the door knob
  • Tighten a rubber
  • Cutwith scissors
  • Cut with knife
  • to write

Foot dominance

  • Kick a ball
  • Write a letter with your foot
  • Jump with a limp leg about 10 meters
  • Climb a step
  • Maintain balance on one foot
  • Driving a ball for 10 meters
  • Turn on one foot
  • Raise one leg on a chair or table
  • Leg that you advance by unbalancing forward
  • Remove a ball from under a chair or table

Eye dominance

  • Sighting (15 x 25 cardboard with a hole in the center of 0.5 cm diameter)
  • Telescope (long cardboard tube)
  • Kaleidoscope - Photo camera

Ear dominance

  • Listen on the wall
  • Pick up the phone
  • Listen on the floor

Assessment:

You must mark the dominance items with a "D" when performing the 10 tests with the right hand or foot or "I" in the case of the left hand or foot. A "d" or "i" if you perform 7, 8, or 9 tests with your right or left hand or foot. "A", ambidextrous in all other cases.

For dominance of eyes and ears, with a "D" or "I" if you use the right or left side in all three tests, and "d" or "i" if you use it in 2 of the 3. "A" to All other cases.

For a complete right hand the result will be D.D.D.D. For a complete left-handed I.I.I.I. For a cross laterality D.I.D.I and for a poorly affirmed laterality d.d.D.d.

Video: Baby Test: Right or Left Hand Preference (March 2024).