Left-Handed Children and Early Writing

About one child in ten is left-handed, and almost every worksheet, pair of scissors and seating arrangement they meet was designed for the other nine. Most of the difficulty left-handed children have with early writing is not about their hand. It is about equipment and setup that nobody thought to change.

Almost all of it is fixable in an afternoon.

First: do not decide for them

Hand preference is not usually settled before three, and often not until four or five. Before that, children swap hands regularly, and swapping is not a problem to be corrected.

Signs the preference is emerging: which hand reaches first for a spoon or a crayon placed exactly in the middle, which hand does the fiddly job when two hands are needed, which hand is steadier. Watch over weeks rather than deciding from one session.

Never move a tool from one hand to the other. If a child picks up a crayon in the left hand, that is the hand for that drawing.

The core problem: pushing instead of pulling

A right-handed child pulls the pencil across the page from left to right, away from their body, with the hand below what they have written. Everything stays visible and nothing gets smudged.

A left-handed child writing left to right pushes the pencil, with the hand traveling over what has just been written. Two consequences follow, and both are the source of nearly every difficulty:

• They cannot see what they are writing. The hand covers it.
• They smudge it. Especially with pencil, felt tip or anything wet.

The classic hooked wrist — the hand curled above the line — is a child solving this problem the only way available to them. It works, and it costs them speed and comfort later. It is much easier to prevent than to undo.

The three changes that fix most of it

1. Tilt the paper clockwise. This is the important one. A right-handed child tilts the paper counterclockwise, maybe 20 degrees. A left-handed child needs the opposite: the top-right corner of the page rotated toward them, so the bottom-left corner points at their body — often 30 to 45 degrees, more than looks right.

That tilt lets the hand stay below the writing line while the arm still moves naturally. It removes the reason to hook the wrist.

2. Hold the pencil further up. Two to three centimetres from the tip, rather than right at the point. This lets the child see under their own hand. A pencil grip placed slightly higher than usual is a reasonable prompt.

3. Light from the right. A left-handed child working with a window or lamp on their left writes in their own shadow all day. Move the light, or move the child.

Sitting and space

Elbow room on the left. At a shared table, two left-handed children next to each other is comfortable; a left-hander to the right of a right-hander means clashing elbows for both. Seat a left-handed child on the left-hand end.

Feet on the floor. True for every child and it matters more here, because a child who is bracing to stay upright cannot spare the shoulder stability that a tilted-paper position needs.

Equipment worth buying

Left-handed scissors. Not a gimmick. On right-handed scissors the upper blade sits on the right, so a right-handed grip closes the blades together while letting the user see the cutting line. Used in the left hand, the same scissors push the blades apart — the paper folds rather than cuts — and the blade hides the line. A left-handed child with right-handed scissors is failing at a task that has been made impossible, and usually concludes they are bad at cutting.

Pencils over pens, early on. Less smudging while the hand position is still settling.

Quick-drying pens later. Gel pens are the worst offenders. If a child likes them, get the fast-drying kind.

A sharpener that turns the other way, if they are sharpening their own. Minor, but easy.

What not to do

Do not correct the hooked wrist directly. Fix the paper angle instead and the hook usually resolves on its own. Telling a child to straighten their wrist without changing the tilt removes their solution and gives them nothing.

Do not use hand-over-hand from the right. Guiding a left-handed child's hand while standing on their right forces an unnatural angle. Sit on their left, or better, model beside them and let them copy.

Do not fuss about it in front of them. A left-handed child who hears repeatedly that things are harder for them will believe it. The adjustments above are quiet and take no comment.

Letter formation is the same

Left-handed children form letters in the same direction and the same order as everyone else. There is no left-handed alphabet, and mirror writing at four is as normal for them as it is for right-handers.

The stroke families are identical. Straight lines first, then diagonals, then curves, then curves joined to lines — the order is set out in our guide to the order to teach letter formation.

Worksheets and left-handers

Two things worth knowing when printing.

Watch where the example sits. A tracing row with the model letter printed at the far left will be covered by a left-handed child's hand as soon as they start. If a sheet has room, an adult can copy the model at the right-hand end as well.

Let them tilt the page. Children often try to keep a worksheet square to the table edge because it looks tidier. Tell them explicitly that turning the page is allowed — many will not otherwise.

Our tracing and pre-writing sheets work equally well tilted, and the coloring pages are the least position-sensitive thing to start with, since there is no line to follow in any particular direction.

The short version

Tilt the paper clockwise, hold the pencil a little higher, put the light on the right, buy proper left-handed scissors, and stop there. Left-handedness is not a difficulty in itself — nearly all of the difficulty comes from equipment set up for someone else, and it disappears when the setup changes.