I’m assuming they are mostly talking about kids and teens?
I had a terrible time with right vs left until high school. I started wearing a watch when I was 13 and it was on my left wrist. I used it as a crutch to know which side was left. After a year or two I finally just “knew” which side was which.
I never understood why other kids found left/right so intuitive. Adults always acted like we were retarded if we didn’t know left from right. Glad there’s proof it has to do with how our brains are wired.
I’m assuming they are mostly talking about kids and teens?
I had a terrible time with right vs left until high school. I started wearing a watch when I was 13 and it was on my left wrist. I used it as a crutch to know which side was left. After a year or two I finally just “knew” which side was which.
I never understood why other kids found left/right so intuitive. Adults always acted like we were retarded if we didn’t know left from right. Glad there’s proof it has to do with how our brains are wired.
I’m in my mid 20’s and it happens occasionally. I just have to stop and think for a second and I remember which is which nearly immediately, but it does take that moment of thought.
I had trouble until someone told me around age 11 or 12–“Make a gun with each of your hands like a cowboy, you know index pointing out and thumb straight up. Turn the guns sideways. Which one looks like an ‘L’?”
The one that looks like an L is the Left hand.
Whenever I have to choose left or right I have to do a mental image of myself and my hands. It only takes a split second but it is there. God help me if someone says “turn clockwise”. Then I want to ask, from above or below, because I need to see a mental image of myself with a clock.
I’m not terribly bad at it, but I have my moments. I think driving is the worst - being told to turn left or right can take too long for me to process.
The “make an L with your hands” never worked for me because I couldn’t remember which way an L faced (seriously).
Now I just take a second and think which hand I write with. I still can’t know instinctively, tho.
I found out at some point that my friend from school had the same problem as me, and he was by far the smartest kid in my class so I never worried about it much.
I have pretty significant left-right issues even today. I don’t remember being confused about the fact that my right was my “writing hand”; it’s the functional applications of the concept that causes a problem – I can “lose” it in stressful situation like if I’m lost while driving and someone says “turn left!” when I’m not expecting it I’m just as likely to turn right.
Another problem area is in conforming my body to someone else’s description, like a yoga teacher saying, “cross your legs with your right leg on top” I have to think a second to get that sorted out.
I have problems with it, which I have always blamed on being left handed, although I honestly don’t know if that is relevant or not. I always have to think carefully when I’m giving someone directions, and even then, I often have to correct myself.
I didn’t just have a problem with it, I had a philosophical problem with it.
I remember being four, and my dad trying to teach me the difference. “Okay,” I said (and I may be slightly paraphrasing here), “That way, toward the kitchen, is left, and that way, toward the bathroom, is right. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” my dad said.
So I turned around. “Left!” I said, pointing to the kitchen, and “Right!” pointing to the bathroom. I was very pleased with the imperviousness of my logic.
When my dad failed to concede the obvious point, I burst into tears.
I’m much better than I used to be, but I couldn’t get it AT ALL when I was a kid. I was surprised when the concept was explained to us in kindergarten that everyone else seemed to have heard of this “left and right”. It was a completely new concept to me. This is partly because my mom suffers from the same condition.
I think I was in my late teens before I started to really get it. I think years and years of practice have helped but I occasionally still fail, under stress is most likely as someone else has said.
the L trick doesn’t work for me. Also, yoga class is tricky too, but I think it is helping the more I have to follow directions like “lift your left leg into the air…your LEFT leg”
age 42
(I’m great with knowing my location in space. I almost never get lost, can intuitively find places and use the directions North, South, East and West much more easily than most people seem to)
No, but I still mix up east and west. I think it’s because the way we say them is backwards. East, then west. I read (and consequently, think) left-to-right. East comes first, so east must be left. But it’s on the RIGHT side of the compass rose.
The way I tell east-west on a map is to go through the entire compass rose, every single time (North… East… South… West). I’m also fairly directionally-challenged. It’s a good thing we have GPS, or I’d never get anywhere.
I’m usually okay if I say “towards the ocean” (west) and “away from the ocean” (east), and “towards the US” (south) and “towards the Yukon” (north).
The only time this is a problem is freeway exchanges, when I have to make a split-second decision to go (say) I-5 North or I-5 South. Even in the city where I grew up and learned to drive, I occasionally read the sign, get it backwards, and go the wrong direction.
I remember learning left / right and taking a little while to get it, but that was when I was very small. Since then, no problem.