INTERESTING

12/05/2021

Early stimuli. Julieta Echeverriaga, a 10-year-old left-handed girl who is in fourth grade, no longer finds it annoying to write in her notebook. "If I find it difficult to write on the blackboard, I have to support my elbow so as not to erase what I put," she says. Little left-handed delicacies, learned from the earliest childhood. After much searching, she finally found scissors for her, in a much more limited range than if she were right-handed: "There are very few designs, there are only one color; no, they are not so pretty." For a child, these kinds of things are important. Psychomotorists are always attentive to the development of laterality, says Ms. Nancy Peré. The natural tendency to use mostly one of the hands appears from an early age. "When adults notice that it is usual for children to use their left hand in preference, it is good to start incorporating new experiments with that hand. Currently, left-handed scissors are easily available. In this way, we are helping to consolidate learning in manual skill and collaborating to a harmonic development ", he adds. The psychopedagogue Agustina Ponce de León, on her side, rules out that the left-handed woman has a relationship with any cognitive learning difficulty. "But you do notice more children with difficulties because they live in a world that is not designed for them. You read them from left to right. And left-handed people have a problem of spatial orientation. At other times they have a bad grip on the pencil, they get their hands stained writing. Although they are later corrected, it may be more difficult for them to learn the spelling rules. " The same in more everyday activities such as tying shoelaces: "They do 'the little round' with their left hand." Peré points out that many times, when the child begins to make his first strokes prior to drawing, the adults "go ahead" and place the marker or crayon in his right hand, "generating certain confusions" if the manual predominance of him is at hand. the left. At least it is done innocently. In the Facebook account Mundo Zurdo there are many stories about adults who were forced to be right-handed as children, by force of regulation or left arms tied to the body. Psychomotor Peré, who is also left-handed, recommends that all children be taught to tilt the page when writing with their skilled left hand. "In this way, the realization of the lines gains fluidity and speed. If the sheet is left straight, as usual, as the lines advance, the writing is covered, becoming truly intricate the process of eye-hand coordination essential when writing ". So, she adds, lefties tend to type more slowly. For her, the challenge "is not so much to be left-handed but rather that the stimuli are presented from a right-handed feed". Ponce de León, a psychopedagogue, who did a master's degree in Emotional Education in Spain, argues that negative phrases related to being left-handed ("sinister", "getting up with the left foot") can negatively affect the child. However, times are changing. Today there are already specific geometry sets and knives with the edge for both sides. And, above all, naturalization. "It can only generate confusion that they try to change the laterality with which they were born," she says.