What is the psychological impact if you were born left-handed, but yet raised to be right-handed?

Question

What is the psychological impact if you were born left-handed, but yet raised to be right-handed?

Answer 1

It can be really hard to adapt. I used to work with someone who was left-handed but while she attended Catholic schools as a child, the people there would try to make her use her right hand. She said they would do things like tie her left hand behind her back to force her to use her right hand and or hit her on the knuckles when they saw her using the "wrong" hand. She wouldn't switch and after a while, they realized that their efforts to change her were futile and they left her alone. For all these people who think they are doing left-handed people a favor by forcing them to conform, I would like to ask how they would like it if others tried to make them use their left hands? I'm sure they wouldn't like it. It's best to leave these people alone. Their brains are wired differently and it can cause a lot of confusion on their part.

Former President Ronald Reagan was left-handed but was made to use his right hand as a child. While he was president, he would sign bills with his right hand. This is what he did publicly. In private, he wrote with his left hand.

Answer 2

Fortunately, that tendency has more or less died down over here in Europe; I have to admit I am not up-to-date with the situation in the US.

Whoever forbids you to write (or generally do things) with your left hand is putting pressure on you and makes you feel that something about you isn't as it should be. That is not an impression that any child should be under as it definitely has a negative impact on your overall self concept.

Parents who do things like forcing their child to be right-handed when she's not usually put pressure on their child in some other form as well - and it is more the overall sum of those things put together that might have a very negative impact on a child. Generally, people who were left-handed but forced to be right-handed get along well; as I said it is NOT the "handed-ness" that is decisive here, but it might be one factor.

Therefore, "the" psychological impact is hard to describe and certainly impossible to generalise. :)

Answer 3

In writing it opens their brain up to better utilise their creative side - i.e. their left hemisphere is being utilised more for physical writing, while their dominant right hemisphere will be generating the ideas.

In life.. someone more qualified should answer :)

Answer 4

theres no psychological impact here , but theres adaptation to the norms of society and bad calligraphy for a while

Answer 5

havent met anyone like that

Answer 6

what?....