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 used to do it, I’m autistic and genuinely couldn’t tell the difference between a 3 and an E. along with b and d.
Other letters were the same, couldn’t tell if I had wrote them backwards until it was pointed out to me.
Took me till around age 10 to actually start being able to tell the difference.
Even at 23 I struggle with reading and writing. Despite being supported by school and college.
Fortunately I’ve gotten a job as a mechanic apprentice and the company is actually pretty supportive as they know I’m autistic.
I’m not sure about other children but that was me only difference is I can remember it due to how long I had problems with it.
They’ve learned a shape. They haven’t yet learned that the orientation matters too. That’s an additional detail and another level of understanding on top of simple shape matching.
I know this might sound crazy but there is this book called “Is this your child” by Dr Doris Rapp it is an old book I read when my kids were small and it goes into dyslexia and a bunch of other things like you are describing and links to allergies sometimes. As a teacher I found it worth the read, goes into also adhd and others stuff as well backed up with pictures and examples. The book is cheap but worth the read.
I still can’t tell which way b and d go until after I write them. And I’m middle aged. Dyslexia!
…i couldn’t distinguish left from right until i was about fifteen years old, and i frequently reversed letters when i was younger…to me, differences in chirality seemed arbitrary, so i never understood how it mattered topologically and i couldn’t perceive the distinction…
Are you sitting across from him or next to him when teaching?
I thought it was normal.
Just when they’re learning rhe alphabet and numbers.
At some point not too long after they learn to do it the right way around.
I remember it happened for me, and all my lil siblings.
Think about a door. Closed? Door. Slightly open? Still door. All the way open? Still door. Looking at it from outside versus inside? Yep, still door. All other objects as they flip or shift are still the same object. Letters are a unique exception : p is not b is not d
Is your kid left handed. It happens to a lot of us. We try to mimic your exact motion but with the wrong hand. As an example, 6. A right handed person starts at the top right and loops in (as if toward the center of their chest) and down on the page. A left handed person doing that same thing will loop in, but from the opposite side.
I remember this vividly when I was learning English for example back when I was like 6 or 7.
It was the letter N and S that I was writing backwards.
At a young age I had this uncanny ability to be self-aware in everything that I do and I would often try to figure out why I did things a certain way or why I thought a certain way and where those ideas came from.
Basically, once I learnt the proper way to write letters, I realised that the reason I was writing the letter N backwards was because it just felt more natural to start from the top and end up on the bottom.
If you try to write the letter N now, you realise that the only way to do it in one stroke to start on the left hand bottom and end up on the right hand top.
The only way you can start on the right hand top is if you do it in two strokes.
Therefore doing it in one stroke and starting on the left hand top just seemed more natural.
I do have to note though that by this age I had already learnt how to read from left to right, line by line, from the top of the page to the bottom of the page.
As for the letter S, this was a similar reasoning as well. In order to write it you have to start on the top right and work your way down to the bottom left.
Since we read from left to right that will be no logical reason to think that letters should be written right to left.
Another letter I had trouble with was the letter E. If you try to do it in the minimum amount of strokes possible, the only way to do it properly would be to start on the top right and work your way down to the bottom right.
I guess this is why most people write E in three strokes as opposed to one, since it just feels more natural to start on the left, work towards the right, and to move from the top to the bottom.
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