So, I tried googling it and can’t tell the difference. Can you explain why the left-hand grip should be different? I get that paper orientation is different and it is especially important for left-handers to hold the pen further from tip so their hand stays below the writing (helping with smudging). This is good for right-handers too. It helps with fatigue for right-handers. What else is different? Or is it that there is a more efficient/comfortable way for left-handers to grip than the resting-on-middle, directed by thumb and forefinger? I know many left-handers but most do the crab-writing thing.
With a left-to-right writing system, a right handed person never has their hand covering what they have just written. A leftie needs to keep their hand out of the way of what they have just written so they can see their writing. Thus, it is completely inappropriate to show a mirror image of a right handed person writing and claim that that is the correct way for a leftie to write.
If you can’t see your writing, you run into get all kinds of problems with maintaning consistent spacing, avoiding going off at a slant, losing track of what you’ve just put down, etc. That’s why lefites tend to curl their hand around into a crab claw, so they can see what they are doing.
eta: there’s also the forward leaning slant that cursive writing is supposed to have. For a right handed person, it comes naturally. For a leftie, the crab claw is one of the few ways you can get that slant to happen.
8 Likes
Almost everyone here teaches their kids to use chopsticks, so hand strength/dexterity is not an issue.
This reminds me of growing up and playing mumbledeypeg in the schoolyard. (Until the teachers decided that was too dangerous, and we had to revert to our backup game, playing with mercury culled from thermometers brought from home.)
We did the same as parents, but with Kleenex. It is amazing what you can build with Kleenex.
My parents sent us off to play with the “Lincoln log”. Which was a real log in the back yard. (And Thomas Lincoln told his son Abe to go play with…never mind.)
7 Likes
I can tell you from volunteering in local schools that I do have to teach people in their teens how to use screwdrivers. Many (probably most, really) don’t have the ability to hold a screwdriver shaft aligned with a screw while simultaneously turning it, until I teach them and they get some practice. Sometimes I have to stand behind them and push their shoulders and wrists into the right places.
But they were all superb thumb typists! I have no such skill.
Edit: @d_r, thanks for making me remember mumblety-peg!
5 Likes
We rented our house out once to some youngsters (in their 30s) while I was spending the year visiting another university. When we came back the blades on a couple of our best screwdrivers (Bahcos) were broken, no doubt from using them as chisels. Fortunately we could still unscrew things, as they had also broken the tips off some of our knives.
7 Likes
You have a K’Nex room? Hell with boring adult conversation. I’d rather build.
16 Likes
Thanks! I think I understand now. I write below the line, though I am right-handed. I developed that from drawing. I find it helps fatigue. So, the difference between what a left-handed writer would do and what I do didn’t seem apparent. But if someone is writing on the line, then yeah, that would cause problems for someone using their left hand.
As for that slant in cursive. pfffft. stupid thing. I hate cursive and generally refuse to write in it.
Thanks for answering. I find it really interesting to see a different perspective. We live in a really right-hand biased world. I knew about school desks and number pads and the placement of computer mice. But found it really fascinating when someone pointed out vending machines are right biased.
3 Likes
We had a kid in our parochial school with the same grip… 8 years straight. Best student in the class. Became a prof.
2 Likes
For select adults, I’ll get the legos out.
6 Likes
Even if this is true, the framing is still bullshit. It’s being sold as “Kids are screwed up because they use touchscreens instead of traditional toys” rather than “Kids are screwed up because they don’t use a stylus with their touchscreen” which would be an equally valid, if not better, solution to the issue.
I’m also fairly sure it would be better for kids to use tablets and phones in moderation. You know, like every other thing there is, but this is the wrong way to argue for it.
2 Likes
Basically, a right handed person can hold the pen any which way they feel like and it works for writing left to right. A leftie has two viable choices: crab claw and below the line.
A couple more bits I got by googling the issue: Right handed people have it easy with left to right writing systems: they are pulling the pen across the paper away from their bodies. Lefties have to push the pen across the paper towards their bodies, which is fundamentally harder and takes more work. (Reading between the lines of that link, The “officially correct” way to write works for right handers because they don’t have as much work to do. Lefties need to muscle the pen more, which means it’s not easy to emulate the “officially correct” way of writing, hence we end up doing the crab claw.)
If lefties try to write while the paper is oriented more or less vertically in front of them, as that textbook I ranted about illustrated and everybody always just assumed when I was in school, then crab claw is really the only way to go. Ditto if you’re trying to do cursive the way the textbook shows it, with a right leaning slant. Teachers are sadly not usually taught any protocols for helping leftie children learn how to write, so tons of us end up using the crab claw.
Evidently if you slant the paper quite dramatically so your hand is moving down and in towards your body as you write, then a less cramped handwriting style becomes possible. I wish someone competent had taught me that when I was learning to write. Far too late now.
3 Likes
Also so you don’t smear the ink.
Yeah, that infographic also rubbed me the wrong way. Haven’t we learned from all the brutal attemoted lefty-conversion therapies and scissors? It was also a weird insert because it was only somewhat related to the thesis of the article, but dominated the page real estate. It seemed like someone just dropped in a graphic leftover from a diagram about how mean nuns can be…
I no longer have the ability to write essays by hand. Even writing a few paragraphs on a greeting card makes my hand cramp. But, that has little effect on my life, since I type everything. There is no pen near my desk. On those rare times that I need a pen, I have to go hunting around the office for one. I doubt that kids these days will be significantly impacted by not being able to hold a pencil.
1 Like
Yes, but how exactly did the “cavemen” actually held sticks?
A relative trained in nursery and kindergarten care told me they deliberately get 2-year-olds onwards to look at things (e.g. a series of pictures) on a blackboard from left to right, giving their eyes ‘muscle memory’ - ie training them in how they will later need to address words. And that they try hard to get kids to hold spoons and forks and brushes and crayons the ‘right’ way, so that when they pass them on to schools at 5, they are primed and ready for the primary school teacher to build on this. Not so many kids get into such kindergartens, and too many parents don’t put in the effort or don’t even realise it is needed. Parents who don’t have insight into the why, do point a finger at the words when reading them stories, even if there is no chance of the kids understanding the words. If kids don’t get this early ‘conditioning’ then it is really hard work for teachers to catch them up. Some don’t ever catch up.
1 Like
As someone who deals with screws every day I avoid hand screwdrivers like the plague, horrible for my wrists. I’ve got a range of battery power ones for every occasion. I love my little dual speed Ryobi. I couldn’t believe it when a warranty tech came to fix my range and sat there hand removing all the screws on the back that I would have had zipped out in a moment. Pathetically inefficient.
Don’t get me started on the horrors of slot head screws, I buy Robertsons if at all possible.
2 Likes
The preschool we have our spawn is part of an education program for both the kids and adults. Every week a parent or caregiver spends a week at the school working, and the same parent or another spends time in parenting classes. The program is run through the local city college.
Recently this, lack of hand strength and pre-printing skills in kindergarten, came up. The educators running the program noted that pens, good old fashioned felt pens, were one significant culprate. Parents were encouraged to provide crayons, as they provide work to get color on a page, v.s. a pen, that was easy. They noted that crayons built up hand strength. The school has low self reporting of computer and screen time by their kids.
That said, as a dysgraphic, I had hour upon hour of remedial pencil holding skills practice for years. Writing is crap inducing, but I had more time than most kids holding a pencil. Was paraded in front of classes a penmanship failure (also berated during a spelling bee, and for my reading, etc…) None of it helped me learn to write. The joy I had in drawing disappeared, and I loathed to tell stories. My writing became perfunctory and simple. Once I was introduced to a computer and later the typewriter, I found freedom and jow in writing.
My spouse has saved postcards from me for decades, long before we ever dated. Even when a boss explained why decided not to give me a pen, (a practice of his) “Let’s face it, your [hand]writing 's shit. It would be a waste.”, I didn’t stop writing. That day, in fact, I went out and bought a n inexpensive Lamy fountain pen that I still use today. My love has lots of postcards and letters from around the world, and that more than anything has encouraged me to still send postcards and letters, sometimes when I am out and about with the kids. (I’m not sure text messages will be saved forever.) The letters maybe poorly printed, but they are lovingly created and help grab thoughts and moments and make them tangible.
I digress. Crayons, let them use crayons. They are so much more work for them to get color on paper and … the walls, floors and siblings.
2 Likes
Yeah. As one who is very very willing to predict dire DIRE consequences of all this screen time, this article smells of BS. More specifically, it smacks of the increasing pathologization of ordinary variation in development and skill-acquisition. It’s not as if there have not been kids in the past who had issues with handwriting. I did. My father did (his printing looks like that of an inept child). We did not have screens. I believe we played with blocks and such (I played with lego, and sewed, and coloured, and drew…)
Zoom to nowadays – my son was “diagnosed” by the school’s occupational therapist as having too weak a grip in grade 3, and assigned pencil holding warm-up exercises as well as being told he should use a special grip etc etc… Did my son have crummy pencil grip? Yes. Does he have lousy handwriting? Yes. Was he playing on screens? Uh, no. We don’t even have smart phones ourselves. And he played with lego, and building blocks, and lincoln logs and drew, etc etc…
This has nothing to do with screens. It might have something to do with not having children spend hours doing handwriting drills anymore. But mostly it’s human variation, and not even especially worrying variation. So not all kids have equally great pencil skills, just like they don’t all have equally great hand eye coordination, or endurance, or eyesight, or memory, or emotional regulation, or attention, or what-have-you.
I would love to blame it on the screens, but the occupational therapists seem a far more likely culprit.
2 Likes
I worked with a hand physical therapist who said that’s the least stressful grip!
1 Like
