Before she grows out of it, maybe you could get her a job painting “ecnalubmA” on the front of their trucks.
My right handed 5 year old daughter also mirror writes on occassion. (Which deflates the left hand theory a bit, but where are all the boys who do this?) She doesn’t do it all the time, and will even mix mirror writing with normal on the same page.
Then again, the direction of writing is an arbitrary rule in any language. Some languages write right to left, some up and down, and some switch back and forth. So it seems reasonable to me that a child just learning to write may not adopt that specific rule right away. Not sure if that explains the letters being backward.
Funny. My right-handed five-year-old son does this all the time, but my seven-year-old southpaw never did. Go figure.
I always just point out the backwards letter & move on. He seems to be reading OK for a child of his age, so I’m not worried about it. 
Me too on all accounts (except the gifted class was in middle school) however, I wouldn’t say it’s not a cause for alarm. I think my teachers did me a disservice by telling my parents that it was “normal” to write backwards when I was in kindergarten, and then only expressing concern to me in the 7th grade but reassuring me that because I read so well, I probably didn’t have a LD. (why would you tell a 12 year old that? At that age I wasn’t in a position to realize the teacher may not have been fully informed; I don’t even know if I mentioned it to my parents.) I should have been tested as a child, because there is obviously something that doesn’t compute in my brain when it comes to spelling and numbers- I see them normally, but there’s something wrong in the traslation. I spell a lot better now than I did growing up, but only because I spent a great deal of energy memorizing the spellings- I can’t sound things out because the sounds aren’t distinctly different to me despite my hearing being within the normal range. I confuse all my vowel sounds, usually in pairs (o and u, i and e), and even things like the letters “d” and “t” which I know should sound very different.
JohnW77707 remember that you are your daughter’s advocate. I worked with special ed kids, and while the staff avocated for the kids, the parents were able to get more results than the staff when it comes to getting aprovals from the school board for tests and IEPs. If you think there’s a problem, go with your gut instinct, not by what the classroom teacher might tell you.
My kid mirror-wrote too. Once, in kindergarten (5 years old), he drew a picture of himself in a Pokemon shirt that said “Got Ya!” with the entire design, and all of the letters, completely reversed.
He is now in 3d grade, and only occasionally reverses b & d, but that is all. No more “j” and “g” and 7 and 5 and 2 reverses. As his pediatrician expected, he simply grew out of it. It’s considered developmental at your daughter’s age, and only becomes a problem if she doesn’t grow out of it.
Interesting bit, though–I just love this board–my husband is an engineer, and my son already says he is a “junior engineer.” He goes nuts with Lego[tm] or K’Nex[tm] type building toys, and is excellent at visualizing and building in three dimensions. I never connected that with his letter/number reversals!
Verrrrrry interesting…
I heard a story of a child sitting in front of her mother when her mother was reading to her, and learning to read by following along. She thus learned to read upside down.
Thanks for all of the replies and insight.
I feel confident that all is well; I was just wondering. I think her school is a good school and so if anything were out of bounds I’m sure they would let me know. She is reading OK for her age. I guess it is just something she will work out of. It’s frustrating to her – “Daddy, does the 7 go this way or that way?” – but since it won’t bother me (for the next couple of years, at least), I won’t let it bother her . . .
John
monica, I also learned to read upside down in the same way. I can still read upside-down nearly as fast as I can right side-up.
Well, as a child I used to write right to left… the letters were all the right way but I’d start with the last letter and end with the first. I do remember why I did it though, I preferred to have my writing on the right hand side of the page and I liked it to be neat and finish exactly on the edge. So I’d write backwards…
I could also write and draw with both hands.
I grew out of both and I lost the ability to use my left hand equally.
In fact “d” and "t’ are very similar phonetically. They are articulated in virtually the same way, with the tip of the tongue touching the back of the teeth and/or the alveolar ridge. The only difference lies in the fact that the “d” is voiced (meaning the vocal folds are vibrating).
As for the vowels, “o” and “u” are both pronounced in the back of the mouth with a high tongue and rounded lips. “U” happens to be a bit higher, but otherwise pretty much the same (assuming we are talking about the vowels that are found in “boat” and “boot”). “I” and “e” are also pronounced similarly, this time in the front with a high tongue and spread lips (assuming that we are talking about the two vowels in “beet” and “bet”. These sounds, and the sounds of the “o” and the “u” are the canonical sounds associated with these letters).
In 1st grade, I wrote my “J” backwards. Our class liked to draw various people “in jail,” and I drew a picture of my teacher and her dog in jail. She saw it and told me she was going to put ME in jail for making the J backwards! After that, I got it right, and I’ve been a spelling and grammar Nazi ever since. Don’t worry, your daughter should be fine. Kids do grow out of things, you just have to find creative ways to set them straight.
Does there remain a General Question on the table?