IF YOUR CHILD IS LEFT-HANDED, LET HIM STAY SO

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 1, 29 September 1948, Page 7

IF YOUR CHILD IS LEFT-HANDED, LET HIM STAY SO

Parents naturally become alarmed when their children begin to stammer, imagining that there must be something organically wrong. But stammering is usually due to lack of co-ordination of the muscles which control speech. Most common causes •of this are lost confidence and deficiency in nervous control—quite natural in' a child of under four who is only just beginning to tackle the problem of speech, but more serious over that age. Many cures have been achieved by the simplest possible treatment—such as teaching the child elocution, encouraging him to sing, building up the general state of health, and never on any account bullying him about his speech troubles.

Is it true that to make a lefthanded, child, write with his right hand tends to make him stammer? Yes, because the brain is a carefully balanced piece of mechanism, in which the right half controls the left side of the body and vice versa. If you have -studied first aid, you will remember that paralysis of the left side of the body is a sure pointer to damage to the right side of the brain.

So in the naturally left-handed child the right side of the brain is preponderant. Force -him to use his right hand instead and you bring the left side of the brain into sudden activity, with confusing results. The whole balance of the brain is upset and, without realising it, the child begins to lose confidence in himself. And since the part of the brain which controls speech happens to be located in the left hemisphere of the brain, confusion becomes worse confounded. The,motto is—if a child is born left-handed, leave him that way.

Another strange thing about stammering is that three-quarters of the children afflicted are boys. Statistics show that girls’ do not lose confidence so easily.