have you ever been woken up with an odd subject in your head?

[lokizmom]

well...on thursday morning i was awake at 4am with this in my head:

left handed or right handed...is it in your DNA or is it learned? are people born left or right handed? if so...i should be left handed because that's what was "normal" for me as a kid. however when i went to school and before that...to my babysitter's house...i was forced to use my right hand. that has caused issues in my learning ability. i was always considered slow. perhaps it's because i wasn't thinking with the right side of my brain or perhaps it's just because school was boring to me. at any rate...if i had been left handed as was "normal" for me would my life have been different?

so...are you right or left handed? were you born that way or were you forced to change? if you are left handed...do you think things would be different if you were forced to conform?

these are the things that i wake up thinking...yeah...that's my brain for ya.

on another note:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY sausage_boy we still need to do coffee some time soon!

Comments

[eeyoredragon.livejournal.com]

wow you think the weirdest things. my dad was a lefty. he was also trained to be a righty cuz the catholic church was very against left handers. because of this his handwriting always suffered. as to left versus right brain, i forget which does what. i know my dad was way more into English, and had a weird logic all his own. both things i inherited from him, plus my terrible handwriting. but i don't ever recall being left-handed, so its quite possible his being left handed had nothing to do with it.

[lokiz-mom.livejournal.com]

yeah i know huh. my brain works in peculiar ways. i'm still not exactly sure where it came from in the first place. i mean...it's not like i was thinking about being right or left handed or that i was using my left hand for anything that day?

[eeyoredragon.livejournal.com]

considering that morning i woke up from a bad dream having to do with "abandonment issues", and someone else (Calvin i think) at dinner mentioned having a dream that echoed the feelings of my dream. i think it was just a universal "off day" for everyone. weird crap abounds. oddly i woke up this morning with a good dream to find the bed empty which cycled me back to the previous day.
would discuss this with B, however i'm so not ready to open that "can of crazy" on him.

*le sigh*

[thespatula.livejournal.com]

I'm Right handed, but due to an arm injury with i was 13 where I had almost no movement in my right arm for about 6 months, I had to learn to be left handed. I am fairly ambidextious now. I default to right hand for writting, unless left is more convienent (example, at work, there used to be tow tally boards for things to either side of where I sat, and I'd use the left to write in the lefthanded one, because it was a pain to lean over). I tend to play sports left handed though, even before then, which people tried to stop me from and it really annoyed me.

[lokiz-mom.livejournal.com]

now that i remember it...i did used to play left handed in softball. odd thing that i never did well right handed in sports.

[cheesybunny.livejournal.com]

I'm a lefty, and never had to change a thing. I'm sure I would have had problems if I did have to change, but I don't know what.

These days in schools (and good parents too) they are just supposed to encourage whatever hand they use the most. Better way to do it I think...

[eeyoredragon.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, most toddlers are ambidextrous. so really its not as common as you think to be either or. instead toddlers use whichever hand feels correct for whatever they are doing at the time. something to think on.

[sylvan.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm.... I've never really read anything about toddlers being more mixed-handedness/cross-dominent and then moving from there as they age to a single handedness. I'd be interested in where you learned that from.

The big problem is experts still don't even agree on the reasons behind handedness (though the popular theory does revolve around the whole left brain/right brain concept, but others suggest that left handers are such due to slight brain damage during birth).

[eeyoredragon.livejournal.com]

i got this from about 12 years life experience as a full time babysitter for numerous families. i honestly don't have any proof, beyond what i've seen. most kids will use whichever one feels right. most parents cannot help themselves and interfere with the process by trying to "teach" them the "right way" of doing things. you would have access to the scientific studies, but i don't know if its been explored. most toddlers will eventually settle into using one hand over the other for most things, thereby having a "dominate" hand. however i personally think people who aren't forced into one versus the other are better at doing things that require both hands to have dexterity. such as typing, or piano, etc.
but thats really a personal theory that may be full of holes.

[lokiz-mom.livejournal.com]

see and that's the thing...when tisa (my niece) was a baby she would use both hands. as she got older she started favoring her left hand. i immediately tried to get her to use her right and my sister corrected me. she did it nicely but still...i thought it was odd that i would be changing my niece the same way i was changed. it's interesting to see that now she's using her right hand to write and draw, but her left for other tasks...

[eeyoredragon.livejournal.com]

:) yeah see that kinda proves my above theory. kids will use whatever hand "feels right" to them, for the task the are doing.

you were taught at a young age "left hand wrong bad!" so it's only human that you would try and "fix" your niece. because as much as you may resent having been taught this, it stuck in your head.
and knowing you, you were also probably trying to protect her by teaching her yourself before the scary mean people made her feel bad and wrong. or at the very least i could see something to that effect also cycle through your head. :D

[sausage-boy.livejournal.com]

*huge internet hugs*
Thank you, sweetie! I was going to contact you last week while hitting our Starcrack's, but it was late and I didn't want to (potentially) wake you. When *do* you crash, by-the-by?

[lokiz-mom.livejournal.com]

YAY!

as for me going to bed...yeah i get to bed early lately. like no later than 10:30 'cos i'm old and need all the sleep i can get. if you're in the area around 7ish i could make coffee happen.

**hugs** glad you're still around