I’m sure I was pretty old, relatively. I was also a bit old learning left from right. I remember watching the fish swim to and fro in our fish tank and suddenly having that ‘bling!’ of understanding that they were going one way, then the other way, and OH! that’s what everyone means about left and right! The same day, I learnt to tie my laces, though it’s not in the usual way. I was about 6 at the time (maybe 7?).
Apparently my elder brothers and sisters were also late when it came to learning to tie their laces, and we all do it the same odd way, probably because we saw each other doing it that way.
My daughter’s only recently learnt to tie her laces (but still needs help), and she’s ten, but she’s mildly autistic and doesn’t really know forwards from backwards, let alone left to right, so I’m just pleased she’s learned it at all.
Mine still don’t stay done up without a double knot.
I was 4. I distinctly remember sitting on our green nubby couch in the house in Florida*, and having Eugenia, our housekeeper, show me how. I am wearing Keds tennis shoes: the kind that were red canvas and half moon white rubber toekick. My legs extend across the couch cushions, with just my feet hanging off. Slowly I copy what Eugenia had shown me again and again (she had the patience of a saint, that woman–I was the youngest of 5 kids). I show her proudly that yes, I can tie my shoes.
As a reward, she gave me a packet of Necco wafers–like crack for me then. I pretended to be Gretel (of “Hansel and” fame) and placed the icky brown and black ones around the coffee table in front of the green couch as a “trail”. Eugenia made me clean them up.
It is one of my strongest and earliest memories. I hope I didn’t put anyone to sleep.
*We moved to Chicago shortly afterward, leaving Eugenia behind.
None of my kids learned before age 6; the youngest is still a bit wonky on it and he’s almost 11. I blame Velcro shoes and my inherent laziness.
I kid you not. It was not easy being an 8yo who couldn’t tie your own shoes in 1975. I’ve had insidiously subtle LDs like this my whole life.
The guy at the sporting goods finally taught me to make both loops first, then cross 'em over. Simplicity itself. He was Polish and said it was the “Polish way.” I’m not and I picked it up instantly.
Probably 4. It was pre-grade school, of that much I am certain.
I was at Grandma’s house. I asked her to tie my shoes for me. She sort of scoffed, then said that it was time I learned to tie them myself. I remember being kind of shocked at being called out like that. My parents had always been very loving but fairly…soft on me.
She didn’t use any cute mnemonics. Just - this end over this end, then pull. Make a loop, etc.
Of course, learning to tie them was like 100x better than having them tied for me. I still remember how proud I felt when my dad came to pick me up and I couldn’t wait to show him what I had learned.
My grandma is a tough old lady. I’m glad she made me learn for myself.
I’m ashamed to say my son is nearly 13 and he has a tenuous grasp at best. He just started junior high school and they have uniform shoes with laces, so he’s stuck with getting it right now.
He’s mildly learning disabled (probably dyslexia but we live in Japan where help is not given for any but the most severe problems) and still isn’t too hot on left and right.
We kind of gave up on shoe laces and went for velcro fastenings in the whole mess of getting him up and running smoothly academically, and this is Japan where EVERYONE treads the backs of their shoes down!!!
I could never grasp the proper method for shoelace-tying at a young age (bunnies going around logs or some such, etc.) Eventually I learned the alternative way - making two loops (“bunny ears?”) and essentially tying the loops into a granny’s knot. To this day, I still tie my shoes the cheap way. I’m sure I could learn to do it “the real way”, but honestly, it’s just engrained in my fingers at this point.
Well I have a pretty clear memory of it, so I’m guessing I was 5 or 6.
It was only in a thread here on the SDMB that I learned that some people use some kind of rhyme or something? “The bunny goes around…something…and goes around something…else…”
Obviously I don’t recall what the little rhyme was, but I didn’t know til I was reading about it that such a thing existed. I have a feeling it might’ve helped me learn how more quickly…
I was four years old, the youngest child in the class (as I would be for the rest of my academic career). Being so young, I was a little bit behind developmentally. I was one of the last to write my name, one of the last to count to one hundred on the abacus, never got good marks in coloring, etc.
But I was THE last to learn how to tie my shoes. I remember sitting at a table by myself, fumbling with my little wooden shoe and laces, while the rest of the children had song and story time on the carpet.
Eventually, I figured it out. Not with the teacher’s help- apparently they had tried so many times to show me that I was deemed hopeless, which was why I was banished to the table alone to puzzle it out for myself.
I was five. It was sometime before I was to start first grade. (No kindergarten then.) Mom told me I had to learn to: make my bed from scratch (also no fitted sheets), button my dresses up the back, and tie my own shoes. I probably would have done a lot more than that, I wanted so badly to go to school.
Some time years later my dad watched me tie my shoes and told me I did it backwards. I don’t know what he meant by that, but it works for me. I thought I was doing it the way he taught me.
I was 4. Our housekeeper Eva Braun (yeah, odd coincidence, innit?) taught me how to tie them so that I’d be able to tie my 2- and 3-year-old brother’s shoes too. I learned to do it backwards, sorta, since I imitated exactly what she demonstrated and she was facing me. She was not patient, but I learned. I was not patient with my younger brothers who persisted in not wanting to learn how to do things themselves.
Eva wasn’t all bad. She allowed me to have white bread and ketchup for breakfast until my mother noticed (after months of this). She was very strict, but that’s a whole lot of other boring stories.
5 or 6, at school. Every now and then they gave us blue footprint-shaped cutouts laced with string and showed us how to do it. We all got it eventually. I remember when I figured it out I decided to be funny and laced up the cutout with my foot in it and it cracked up the whole class for a good minute. I guess everything’s funny at that age.
