Accueil - News - I’m upset
Date : 29 Aug 2025Categories : NewsParentingSchool
I’m upset today. Yes, I get that a lot. I’m upset because we’ve run out of coffee, because my man is moaning because he loves moaning, because the sun won’t come out for more than two days in a row, because my banker doesn’t answer my (very) numerous messages, because my keyboard stutters with i… in other words, I’ve got lots of reasons to be upset, but I’m especially upset because I still hear here and there that we upset left-handed children! I’ve already written an article on this subject about the history of annoyance, so I won’t go into that again.
So, yes, we no longer tie children’s left hands behind their backs, and we no longer slap their left hands with a ruler to make them use their right, but unfortunately, right-handedness is still a more or less insidious injunction. In a class of 25 pupils old enough to learn to hold a pencil, it’s easier for teachers, who are usually right-handed, to teach all the children to draw or write in the same way.
I learnt to knit or tie my shoelaces from right-handed people. I’m realising, with my dear children, both left-handed, that I’m incapable of doing these gestures like a left-handed person. So I perpetuate this annoyance myself. But I seem to have a wooden head, so I’ve found a technique: instead of standing next to them, I stand opposite them, like a mirror. Hey, I’ve done it! Well, more or less, because at 14, I’ve got one who’s still got shoelaces dragging on the pavement. Unless it’s a fashion thing I’m not used to yet. But then, I hear he’s past the age of velcro…
OK, so it would be easier to do the same thing for everyone when you’ve got a majority of right-handers in your audience, but going from being annoyed by torture to being annoyed by laissez-faire isn’t a panacea either. It’s a little mistreatment, admittedly, but mistreatment nonetheless! As Dr Michel Galobardès says in his excellent book Comprendre et accompagner l’élève gaucher: “Being left-handed is innate, hereditary or organic. You are born left-handed and you remain left-handed. If we change our gestural habits, we remain left-handed in our cognitive mechanisms”.
As far as mothers-in-law are concerned, it’s all over. Trying to convince them that left-handedness is not a handicap is like peeing in a string orchestra. Although! I had a 77-year-old grandmother on the phone who wanted to find materials to help her 6-year-old grandson learn to write. Unfortunately, teachers are still poorly trained. Are they taught that it would be better to put the left-handed pupil not only on the left of the desk, but also in the classroom itself? Do they provide pupils with tools adapted to their left-handedness?
Some children find themselves in difficulty when they reach the age of learning to write. Studies show that these are most often pupils who do not use the “right hand”, because they have been forced to do so for sociological or religious reasons, out of convenience or family mimicry (a right-handed older brother or sister), or because they are temporarily or permanently unable to use their preferred hand. It’s easy to detect a child’s natural laterality: just throw an object at them and see which hand they use to try and catch it. You can interfere as much as you like with writing, but certain reflexes remain. After that, whether you’re left- or right-handed, you may not be able to catch a thrown object, which is my case #lastchoseninteamsportatschool
If, as a parent, you realise that your child has inadvertently been annoyed, if they are not yet a bent-over teenager with both thumbs on their phone, there may still be time to take action. Finally, if the child in question is receptive and has great difficulty drawing with the right hand. It’s more difficult if the child has already learnt to write, but nothing is impossible! To help them do this, they will of course need the right tools: pens, pencils, a double decimetre, etc. and they will need to draw lines, just as they would draw scales in music. There’s no secret to it, as with so many things, it’s a question of practice and getting used to it. With a little patience and good eyesight, you could fit a watermelon into a mosquito’s mouth, so relearn how to write…