I’ve been practicing the ABCs and 123s with my son and notice that certain letters (J N P S Z) and numbers (4 6) he always writes backwards/mirror imaged. I’ve seen other kids, and even my own writings as a child, have the same quirk. Is this pretty much universal?
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I can remember struggling with my b’s and d’s in primary school, until I was told bed looks like an actual bed.
It was easy after that.
I neeb mnemonics to rememder and unberstanb stuff.
Try learning a new alphabet that you don’t know, like Hebrew or Arabic. It’s super hard. We forget how hard it is to learn these symbols because we did it so long ago and we know them so well now that we can’t not read them when we see them.
Off topic… I am left handed, but forced to use right hand. I recently discovered and I can write right to left mirrored with my left hand.
I remember doing this as a kid while learning to write all because I’m left handed and my teacher made a comment along the lines of “oh you’re backwards since you use that hand”. Went into 2nd grade or something writing my name on everything mirrored and teachers thinking I was slow just because I was told I was backwards for being left handed.
Many of the autistic kiddos at our special education center write mirror image letters & numbers well into their teen years. It tends to be associated with fine motor imitation difficulties.
I think it’s due to being brand new at it. Kind of like a new 15-16 year old new driver over-steering in a car, or hitting the brakes to hard, even though writing is now old-hat for them. Young kids don’t have the muscle memory nor experience to *make* them write a direction-sensitive letter or number correctly. They have to think about each letter every time, and make up new rules in their heads to help them remember. With 26 new symbols and 10 numbers to learn, there’s a lot to remember for a kid. Fortunately it only takes a grade or two to get that all sorted out.
I remember learning to write in school and having these issues, I’d call over my teacher and flip the paper over and be like “See? It’s the same!”
While it is normal for kids to do this when they are learning. Keep an eye on it as they get further along in school. I have a learning disability called dysgraphia. I still at 38 years old write my letters backwards and upside. And struggle sometimes trying to figure out which way to write d’s and b’s, p’s and q’s. I struggle with letters that are mirror images of each other.
Thanks for asking this! My daughter (4) writes her whole name mirror image and upside down. It like she writes it the same as when her teachers are writing it.
It is very common, and not a huge cause for concern. Best way to explain it is this: when children are first learning what a chair looks like, they learn “a chair looks like this, even when we turn it over, even when we turn it around, even when we flip it upside down. This is always a chair.” Then, a few years later, we say “the letter d looks like this, but not when we flip it over! Then it’s a b. But not when we flip it upside down, then it’s a p!” Their brains need to unlearn the original chair concept, and begin to grasp the letters placement concept. It’s tough!
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