{"id":344885,"date":"2024-09-04T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-04T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/left-handers-and-dysgraphia\/"},"modified":"2024-09-04T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-04T09:00:00","slug":"left-handers-and-dysgraphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/left-handers-and-dysgraphia\/","title":{"rendered":"Left-Handers and Dysgraphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making up 10 to 15% of the world’s population<\/strong>, left-handers have long suffered society’s disapproval: writing with the “devil’s hand”<\/strong> couldn’t be a good sign. Today, despite changing attitudes, it remains undeniable that Western handwriting simply wasn’t designed for them. That said, there’s no particular reason for left-handers to suffer from dysgraphia more than right-handers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Left-handedness in (or of) writing<\/h2>\n

According to French ethnologist Robert Hertz, the law of polarity<\/strong> shapes human thought: an unforgiving system of values pairing day with night, hot with cold, birth with death, and the right hand with the left. Yet the right has always been seen as the honourable side<\/strong>, reserved for worthy tasks, naturally casting the left as associated with evil, vice, and wrongdoing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Driven by Judeo-Christian thinking, the left hand has been systematically demonised. In etiquette rules<\/strong>, for example, it must never hold the fork. At school, these rules relegated this hand to menial tasks<\/strong> (cleaning, blowing one’s nose\u2026), reserving the right hand for writing or greeting others.<\/p>\n

Western handwriting is absolutely not designed for left-handers<\/strong>: they can’t see what they’re writing, because their hand covers it as they go. They’re forced to bend their wrist into an unnatural position<\/strong> that makes them slower<\/strong> at writing, reinforcing the common but mistaken perception of laziness and clumsiness.<\/p>\n

In the 19th century, all pupils had to fit the mould<\/strong>, meaning being right-handed. Those who couldn’t were corrected: their left hand would be tied behind their back or to the table, they’d be made to wear a glove, or they’d be struck\u2026<\/p>\n

A graphotherapist’s advice for left-handers<\/h2>\n

Today, a left-handed child is free to write with their left hand<\/strong> if that’s their preferred hand for holding a pen. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re truly left-handed: only a laterality test<\/strong> can determine that.<\/p>\n

Whatever the outcome, graphotherapy<\/a> can help these pupils! These practitioners already stress the importance of not letting a young left-hander pick up bad habits<\/strong>: their hand must always stay in line with their arm, with the page tilted to extend that line, or even angled slightly to the left to give them more range of movement when writing.<\/p>\n

Handwriting professionals also stress that the way the pencil is held should be the same, whether the child is left- or right-handed<\/strong>: held between the thumb and the first joint of the middle finger, with the index finger resting lightly on the pencil.<\/p>\n

Finally, one of the golden rules is to never force the child<\/strong>. If these habits can’t easily be applied on their own, it’s best to call on a handwriting professional to correct the situation effectively and quickly.<\/p>\n

While being left-handed doesn’t cause dysgraphia<\/strong>, nothing stops you from contacting one of the professionals on the Ora-Visio platform for your child: available online, our graphotherapists<\/a> will listen to their difficulties and find solutions to make life easier for them!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Making up 10 to 15% of the world’s population, left-handers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":344886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[331],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-handwriting-therapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}