Is life more difficult for a lefty? He is not only left-
handed, he is one whose left side is the dominant side. The
left hemisphere of the brain of a right-handed person is
larger than the right side. This part of the brain controls
speech, among other things. The two sides of the brain are
more symmetrical on the left-handed person and the power of
speech is distributed on both sides. Thus, if someone has a
stroke in the left side of the brain, speech will only be
affected if he is right-handed. A left-handed person is less
likely to lose his speech altogether even if the stroke is on
the right side.
Ninety percent of the world's population is right-handed.
Parents soon notice if a child seems to be doing everything
with his left hand. Up to the age of two, many children are
ambidextrous. Some children might take another year or two to
sort themselves out, until one side of the body is more
dominant. If a child is still writing and drawing with either
hand indiscriminately by the time he is five, he needs to
have therapy in order to strengthen one side.
One of the signs of a learning disabled child, or perhaps
only a slow learning child, is his showing lack of preference
for either hand/leg,eye and ear, but that is less obvious. A
small minority of children have mixed dominance. This means
that they have a marked preference of the left hand, but the
right eye is the stronger one. In this case, an optometrist
will prescribe exercises for the child to do at home to
strengthen the muscles of the other eye, too.
Incidentally, most parents, especially those with a large
number of other children, find it almost impossible to insist
that the child do these exercises every single day, and do
them conscientiously. Nevertheless, if you have already paid
for the advice of an optometrist, for whatever reason, get
someone else to sit with the child in order to follow the
professional's instructions.
After the Second World War, the British launched an inquiry
as to why 53% more left-handed soldiers had accidents or were
killed. They came to the conclusion that revolvers and other
weapons were made for the use of right-handers. In the same
way, left-handed children seem to be clumsier than their
counterparts. Unless they are very markedly left-handed, very
young children are clumsier, till the dominance is
established.
Otherwise, lefties function just as well as others if they
can only obtain the right tools and machinery suitable for
them. Special scissors are sold for the use of lefties. In
New York, there is a shop called "The Left Hand." They sell
everything one can possibly imagine to make life easier for
people who have had to cope with a right-handed iron, for
example, where the wire gets terribly twisted in use. Any
public library in England will tell you if there is a similar
shop there.
Every parent and teacher who has encountered left-handed
children will experience problems if they are sitting in
close proximity trying to eat their lunch, or trying to write
and draw. Let them change places and peace will reign.
Why is a child of two right-handed parents born left-handed?
The gene of the right-handed one is stronger than the other,
so normally most of the children will be right-handed.
However, in the same way as two blue-eyed parents cannot have
a brown-eyed child, but two brown-eyed people produce a blue-
eyed child (brown being the dominant gene), so can two right-
handed people produce a lefty. Moreover, some parents may
have been coaxed or bullied into using their right hands when
they were little, so they are not truly right-handed. They
still carry the left-handed gene.
In many langauages, the word `left' is synonymous with
negative connotations. For instance, in Hebrew they say,
"He's got two left hands." In Latin, from which other
European languages have evolved, the term for left is
`sinister.' This does not only mean left but menacing,
foreboding, threatening. No wonder that in former days, they
almost forced children to become right-handed. In fact, in
Thailand, less than one percent of the population writes with
the left hand, as they still insist on right-handedness in
schools.
Alber Einstein was left-handed (and also dyslexic), as were
several famous artists. It is a fact that many left-handed
people are highly intelligent. It is also a fact that many
dyslexic people are left-handed. The only reason Jewish
parents may be troubled about a left-handed boy is that he
will have to put on tefillin on his weaker hand, which
is his right one, marking him out as different from other
people.
As long as they remember to tell the man who makes the
tefillin that he has to make them for a lefty, there
is no other problem. As I was going to put some money into a
tzedoko box as a child, my mother remarked that one
uses the right hand to do a mitzva.
Does a lefty use his dominant hand? Has any reader done any
research into this matter?
