DON'T LET YOUR CHILD
BE A LEFTY!
By ABRAM BLAU, M.D. as told to Jerry Klein
"Tt looks to me like Johnny is going to be left-
handed, and I certainly wish it weren't so.
But I'm not going to try and change him because
I know that correcting him will only make him
nervous and maybe even cause him to stutter."
How many times have you heard parents speak
that way of a child who showed signs of becoming
a confirmed "lefty"? No doubt they thought they
were being "modern" and "progressive" parents
by not trying to get their child to do something
which seemed to be against his nature. But how
wrong such an attitude can be!
Being left-handed in a right-handed world is no
small handicap. And in the great majority of cases,
I believe a child's left-handedness results not from
any inborn cause, but because unknowing, negli
gent parents fail to train him as they should. -
Right at the outset, let me say that children
usually have equal capacity to become either
right- or left-handed. It is the adults' obligation
to see that they become righties. And normally any
tendency toward left-handedness can be overcome
without causing any undue stress or damage be
cause, despite popular belief, handedness is not
something you are born with but is a trait formed
in youth just as the child develops his language
and other cultural inheritances.
The heritage of preferring the right to the left
is something that dates back thousands of years
to the Bronze Age of mankind, and before that
time it may not have mattered whether a person
was righty or lefty you could lift a rock or punch
an adversary equally well with cither hand. ,
But at that point in human development more
complicated tools began to appear one-sided im
plements which could be used more efficiently with
one hand than with the other. For some unknown
reason, it happened that the right hand became
the favored one. Gradually, social attitudes de
veloped around that fact until today being lefty
is an abnormality which puts a person at a genu
ine disadvantage besides exposing him to false
suspicions that he is somehow "out of step."
Our language calls for right-handed writing,
right-eyed sighting, and rightward reading. School
rooms, lighting, and many other tilings arc ar
ranged for the convenience of righties. Many tools
are designed for the right-handed exclusively. Be
ing a lefty may be fine if you're a major-league
baseball player, but in many other occupations it
is an awkward handicap that makes things more
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Training a youngster to right
handedness won't warp his
personality just straighten him
out for our right-handed world
difficult not only for the lefty but for his right
handed associates.
One of my favorite examples is the girl who
would have made an excellent switchboard oper
ator at the telephone company. She had to find
another position, (jowever, because, being left
handed, she was constantly snarling wires with
the right-handed operator sitting at the board to
her left.
Babies are born ambidextrous; that is, they can
manage just about as well with one limb as
with the other. Normally, parents make them
right-handed without ever consciously thinking
about the matter as, for instance, when they play
fully shake hands with an infant. My point is that
leaving the matter of handedness to the infant
to decide willy-nilly really amounts to neglect on
the part of the family, who should be instilling the
right-handed habit in their offspring.
The first signs of hand preference become ap
parent when the baby is about nine months old. A
decided preference is established around the iqe
of two years.
The left-handed habit can usually be broken,
but of course the older a child becomes, the
more deeply rooted the habit grows and the more
difficult it becomes to alter. The methods required
to reform the older child will vary from case to
case, and it may be necessary for parents to seek
professional guidance. If the youngster resists too
hard and long,- or if there are emotional factors in
volved, it may be unwise to persist.
Only in a relatively small number of cases is
left-handedness due to some inherent mental,
physical, or emotional state which first needs to
be changed itself. In the main, simply because an
individual is a lefty does not suggest he is nec
essarily lacking in any way; indeed, many superior
citizens in every field have been left-handed-such
artists as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo,
and Picasso, and such recent world leaders as King
George VI and President Truman.
Nevertheless, the world is easier for righties,
and it is experience and learning that determine
which side a person will come to prefer. And so
I say; don't be misguided into thinking you'll do
a child damage by training him to be a righty; the
dangers of such training are virtually nonexistent.
As a parent, you owe it to a lefty to help him get
on the right side of things.
COVER:
Pliciloyinpit'i' Arthur Li'i;ic; focuses on
H'iliiiiili "Mac" M eldn ins, fishing off Flor
ida's Gul Const. Only 50 and 51, AfcWnms
(Mid his wife Kocuior have already made
(heir retirement (renin come li ne. Sec p. 6.
WooJily
LEONARD S. 0AVI0OW f'rrlrnl ami l'W,.rr
WAITER C. DREYFUS IV. f-rrauft-rtl
PATRICK E. O'ROURKE .l..',-rl..r ),,, lr
MORTON FRANK llirrrlor t,f Mi..t rMnli
Send all advertising communication! lo Family Weekly
153 N. Michigan Awe.. Chicago 1, III.
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Family Weekly. 60 E. Soth St.. New Yock 22. N. Y.
i lMI. FAMILY WEEKLY MAGAZINE, INC.,
March 5. 1961
Board of Edilori
ERNEST V. HEYN tMlor-in-Ckir)
BEN KARTMAN Krmltrr rVrfilnr
ROBERT FITZOIBBON .Ifiinncmicl f.'iMn
MARGARET BELL fYn(rr tVifiltir
PHILLIP OYKSTRA Art flirrrfor
MELANIE DE PROFT FihhI Kiiitor
Bob Dri!coll, John Hochmann. Jerry Klein, Harold London,
Murray Miller, Jock Ryan; Peer Oppenheimer, Hollywood
113 N. Michigan Are.. Chicago 1, III. All rights reerred