About one child in ten writes with the left hand, and almost none of them are taught anything different from the other nine. Most of the difficulty that follows — the hooked wrist, the smudged page, the slow writing — comes from four things that take a minute each to fix, and are almost never mentioned.

First, wait before deciding

Hand preference is usually clear by four and settled by six. Before that, children swap hands, and the hand they use depends on which side you put the crayon. Do not assign a hand, and do not correct one: put the crayon in the middle of the table and watch which hand reaches for it, several times over several weeks.

Two useful checks: which hand does the child use for a spoon, and which foot do they kick with. Mixed results are common and fine.

The four fixes

1. Turn the paper clockwise

This is the big one. A right-handed writer tilts the page anticlockwise, roughly 20 to 30 degrees, so the forearm sweeps across the body. A left-handed writer needs the mirror image: tilt clockwise, so the top-right corner of the page points away.

Almost no left-handed child is told this. Without the tilt, the only way to see what is being written is to bend the wrist over the top of the line — the hooked grip that gets blamed on the child. The hook is a symptom of a straight page.

2. Hold the pencil further up the barrel

A left-handed writer’s hand covers what they have just written. Gripping close to the point makes that worse, so they hook to see over it. About 2 cm up the barrel is enough to see past the fingers. Marking the spot with a rubber band or a strip of tape works better than saying it.

3. Move the light and the elbow

Desk light on the right for a left-handed writer, or the hand casts a shadow across the line. And when two children share a table, put the left-hander on the left — otherwise the two of them fight for the same elbow space all lesson.

4. Change the pen, not the child

Left-handed writing drags the hand through wet ink. Pencil is fine and should be the default for as long as possible. If a school insists on pen, a quick-drying ballpoint smudges least; gel pens and fountain pens are the worst possible choice. Nothing here is a reason to ask a five-year-old to use ink at all.

Why ordinary tracing worksheets fail

Put a pencil in your left hand and trace a row of letters. Your hand covers everything to the left of the nib — which is exactly where the grey model letters are printed on almost every tracing sheet ever made. After the first repeat, the child is copying from memory for the rest of the row, and gets blamed for the result.

Moving the models to the right-hand end of the row solves it completely and costs nothing. That is the only difference between Left-Handed Alphabet Tracing A-Z and the standard A-Z book: same letters, same words, same order, models on the other side. A class with one left-handed child can work through both together, page for page.

Scissors are a separate problem

Left-handed scissors are not right-handed scissors with different coloured handles. The blades are reversed. With right-handed scissors in the left hand, the upper blade hides the cutting line, so the child cannot see where they are cutting and the paper bends rather than cuts.

Genuinely left-handed scissors cost very little and are the difference between a child who can cut and a child who is written off as clumsy. Check the blades, not the handles, before buying. Cutting Practice works with either hand once the scissors are right.

What is not a problem

Being slower at first. Left-handed writers often start slower and catch up entirely once the paper angle and grip are sorted.

Writing letters backwards. Normal until about seven in every child, left or right handed. It is not a sign of anything on its own.

Mirror writing. Some left-handed children write a whole line right to left, reversed, and it reads perfectly in a mirror. It looks alarming and it almost always resolves by itself. Do not make it a subject of concern in front of the child.

The one thing never to do

Do not switch a child to their right hand. It was routine within living memory, it has no benefit, and it costs fluency in writing for years. If a child reaches with the left hand, they write with the left hand.

More on this: pencil grip stages by age, and the order to teach handwriting.