how many left handers here were made to become righthanded?

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how many left handed people here had to become right handed?
ME! :bounce: 14%  14%  [ 2 ]
not me. :| 57%  57%  [ 8 ]
where's my sinister strawberry ice cream? :chef: 29%  29%  [ 4 ]
Total votes : 14

auntblabby
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30 Aug 2025, 1:08 am

they tried at first to make me right-handed, but when that failed miserably, then they made me change the way I held my writing instrument, I used to have an odd grip that was honestly tiring. but then again writing has always been arduous for me. when my left arm was shattered in a 2012 accident I was forced to learn how to do everything right handed for a year until it healed back into usability.



Sweetleaf
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30 Aug 2025, 2:28 am

My sister is left handed, and luckily, she didn't really get too much crap about it, but I think she was also cheeky about it so idk if she just deflected the attempts...she did master sarcasm at a pretty early age and well she's still left handed so I figure they never were able to teach that away. I know she also hated the left handed scissors and did not find them helpful and just prefered to use the regular kind even if she held it a little weird. That said back in the 90's the left hand scissors always seemed like something they pulled out of the very back closet that would be all rusty and I'd even be thinking...'really that is what you're going to make that kid use'? A pair of scissors that is so bad none of the kids will be able to stop looking at it. So I think my sister actually kind of faked it....to avoid the humiliation of being given the back closet scissors.

That sounds stupid, but thinking back thats how kids think, and like maybe the scissors werent so rusty and it reallly was an effort to be inclusive to left handed people, but it would sometimes come off as 'oh well I guess there is a left hand pair in the back of the closet' rather than introducing to the class here are the community scissors these ones are left hand these ones are right handed to make sure everyone is included. It was always still kind of like, oh a bit of a hassle to get a special utensil for this one specific kid, so still came off as othering kids who happened to be born left handed.

I could never even understand how it mattered, not like left handed people cant function they just have the opposite dominant hand than most, maybe they have to put their mouse for a computer on the left side rather than the right side to be more comfortable, but that doesn't effect the functionality of using the computer.


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Last edited by Sweetleaf on 30 Aug 2025, 2:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

ASPartOfMe
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30 Aug 2025, 2:33 am

Fortunately they stopped hitting lefty kids in the knuckles with a ruler in my elementary school a few years before I went there.


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30 Aug 2025, 3:06 am

I'm left handed, as is my father, but it's never been something anybody's made a big deal about. Nobody's ever tried changing the fact either. I was writing before starting school and I know I hold pencils "weird", by right-handed standards. Apparently I don't do alot of the things that are supposedly common for left-handed people to do while writing either though - like I don't have the paper angled or sideways.
I can't write cursive. That was something they taught in school, but they told me I'd have trouble with it and not to worry much over it. I hear that these days they don't even teach cursive anymore.



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30 Aug 2025, 6:45 am

My father was born left-handed but was made to become right-handed. He ended up two-handed.


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babybird
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30 Aug 2025, 6:51 am

My dad was forced to become right handed as well


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Jakki
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30 Aug 2025, 11:40 am

Mum tried to teach me to be Right handed when very small. Eventually she just gave up . As she was trying to teach me to write . I would automatically pick things up with my left hand to start writing . Became alittle ambidexterous .After a fashion, But the experience since little did seem to cause me to be alittle dyslexic about which was my right or left hand.
Never was sure which side of my body was right or left ."Until late teens" . Would get confused for years about how to grab door handles. For some reason ,my brain started deciding that handles on door were put on the wrong side for left handed people . Even thinking doors were backwards on houses.????


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Irulan
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30 Aug 2025, 12:42 pm

Not me but as I already wrote in that other thread viewtopic.php?t=428601 , I had some tendencies in this direction as a baby :lol:



babybird
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30 Aug 2025, 1:42 pm

I can write with my left hand a lot tidier than with my right hand but that's only because I have to concentrate a little bit more with it

I am naturally right handed though


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lostonearth35
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30 Aug 2025, 2:20 pm

I'm left handed, as I've mentioned only probably about a thousand times, and I was never forced to use my right hand. I was lucky to be born in an era when being a leftie is usually tolerated, at least in most developed western countries. Although my brother, who is right-handed, would tease me by saying left-handers die younger and other nonsense. Both our parents are left-handed, but of course he would never say anything negative about it to them.

I can also draw and write well, but it can be a huge pain trying not to smear the ink or pencil. When I was younger I'd be writing or drawing a lot, and then there would be a big grey smudge on the side of my left hand afterwards. And at least one person has said to me "You write really well for a left-handed person". A left-handed compliment if I ever heard one.



auntblabby
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30 Aug 2025, 3:15 pm

^^^^yes, the old edge of hand smudge, I long have had to write with a piece of paper underneath my left hand so as to avoid the smudge. a benefit of writing with my right hand is no smudge.



nick007
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31 Aug 2025, 4:54 pm

My dad was a lefty who was forced to use his right hand in school. His handwriting has always been very messy but learning to use his right hand turned out well for him. He learned to be ambidextrous & that was/is a big help in his life. He worked in construction since before I was born till he retired a couple years ago. He's also a big DIYer. My parents share the desktop computer & the mouse has always stayed on the right since mom & I needed it on the right & the mouse was USB wired & my dad could use it that way.

As for myself, I'm a righty but I have the pen grip of a lefty. I don't have great fine motor-skills & I need to brace my pen against my hand to hold it stable. My fingers can not hold it the correct way. Putting those triangle things on my pens actually made my writing worse because I still held my pen the same way & the point of the triangle was resting against my hand so the pen was less stable. I write very slowly & my handwriting was barely legible the entire time I was in school. My hand also cramped up after writing a bit. Writing was the main time my hand cramped up but I tend to avoid things related to fine motor-skills. I'm not sure what my diagnoses was but I did receive some extra help in school & worked with a paraprofessional once or twice a month till I started high-school. Luckily my hands work fine for video-games & using my computer mouse :mrgreen: I wish I could take after my dad because I might of been a lot more successful in life. Maybe surprisingly the three jobs I had involved menial labor, first was washing dishes but a lot of the hard work was done by the machine & my other two jobs were custodial. I did the basic stuff better than lots of others but I wasn't quite as fast, I focused on quality instead of speed & I have some OCD & other issues.


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Lost_dragon
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31 Aug 2025, 6:00 pm

Left-handed but thankfully I wasn't forced to be a rightie. It's always kind of funny when someone sees me writing and they say "Oh, my sister's best friend's cousin is left-handed! Do you know them?"

:lol:


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Edna3362
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01 Sep 2025, 10:18 pm

I might be ambidextrous when I was younger instead.
And just ended up with right handed practices. I wasn't forced to, more like in my case, it's just left in the open and someone else just decided it for me.

I ended up using left on random for other things that using my right hand felt weird sometimes.


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CockneyRebel
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17 Oct 2025, 9:58 am

I'm lefthanded and I was never forced to use my right hand.


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17 Oct 2025, 5:54 pm

My bride was born a lefty in 1954.

Her maternal grandmother—born in the 1800s in rural France—helped a lot with her upbringing. And she thought being a lefty was evil so she pressured the child into using her right hand.

Partial success! My bride is not a lefty, she is a clumsy.


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