Loving Lefties: How to Raise Your Left-Handed Child in a Right-Handed World [Paperback]

Jane M. Healey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2001

For a left-handed child in a right-friendly world, tasks that should come easily can seem confusing and frustrating. Parents of the more than 400,000 lefties born annually in the United States have had no resource that deals seriously with the learning difficulties their children face -- until now.

Loving Lefties is the first ever guide to address all the issues pertinent to left-handedness: the biology, the physiology, and the psychological and practical effects of being a left-handed child. An essential aid for parents, teachers, and professionals, it covers the history and mythology of the left-handed brain, and offers sound advice on:

• recognizing left-handedness in a child

• making your child's home and school lefty-friendly

• giving your child appropriate direction and encouragement

• identifying the advantages of being left-handed

• helping your child learn the skills his right-handed parents, instructors, and siblings consider basic.

Filled with resource lists, guidelines, quick tips, answers to frequently asked questions, case studies, and anecdotes, Loving Lefties is the essential guide for raising a happy, healthy southpaw.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This book by left-handed child psychologist Healey (Mount Sinai Medical Ctr., New York) provides information about and for the approximately 30 million lefties in the United States and Great Britain. Healey seeks to share her research and experience with parents and teachers because, she says, "we are uneducated on the subject of handedness." Clearly presented are questionnaires for testing handedness and pragmatic information on how to assist left-handed children in the development of fine motor skills, all with tips and case studies to demonstrate her points. The resources section provides several web sites as well as the addresses and phone numbers of retailers specializing in a variety of items for left-handers. In addition, Healey's introduction provides reference librarians with easy access to additional information about left-handedness, and she lists her practice's phone numbers and encourages readers to call with their questions. Detracting from the quality content are lists of left-handed celebrities that do not detail how their left-handedness may have influenced their lives. Still, this book is recommended for larger public libraries and school media centers. Lisa Powell Williams, Moline P.L., IL
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Jane M. Healey, Ph.D. has been an assistant professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York for the past fifteen years. She received her predoctoral neuropsychology training at Montefiore Hospital and Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and her postdoctoral neuropsychology training at the Boston VA Medical Center. She has extensive teaching and research credentials in the areas of left-handedness, dyslexia, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Atria Books; Original edition (October 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743407504
• ISBN-13: 978-0743407502
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,092,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Unexpected Pleasure, December 10, 2001

By 

"dikker-bibbe" (Philadelphia, Pa.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Loving Lefties: How to Raise Your Left-Handed Child in a Right-Handed World (Paperback)

An unexpected pleasure, that's the only way I can describe this book. Initially, I purchased "Loving Lefties" for a friend who has had a lifelong interest in her left-handedness. It was not something I would have chosen to read, even if I was left-handed, but when I began paging through it, I found, to my surprise, that it is very well written, quite entertaining, and informative. Rather than overwhelming the reader with an endless spate of technical jargon, or writing down to her audience as is too often done, Ms. Healey (or her "writer," a Grant Jarrett? whom she aptly praises in the book's acknowledgements) draws the reader in and educates in a tone and language that keeps you reading and learning about an unexpectedly intriguing topic. I couldn't be more enthusiastic about this book.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Waste of time and money, February 1, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Loving Lefties: How to Raise Your Left-Handed Child in a Right-Handed World (Paperback)

To be honest, this book was pretty badly written. The author seems to have trouble leading the reader from one sentence to the next. Also, the information presented in the book are not very useful for someone who just has SOME form of access to general reading material like news, magazine and internet articles. All the book does is telling us the obvious in a different way. I don't learn anything new from reading this book. If you are totally clueless about lefties, you may learn something. Otherwise, don't buy this book. It's a waste of your time and money.

20 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I wanted to call the publishers, September 26, 2004

By 

S. Hayes (MN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Loving Lefties: How to Raise Your Left-Handed Child in a Right-Handed World (Paperback)

Obviously, anything can get published nowadays. I wouldn't want to be rude to the author, and I didn't find anything wrong with her writing. If you want to know how to raise a left-handed child in a right-handed world, I'll save you the money here. Just raise him/her like any other child. It has nothing to do with what hand is dominant. Seriously, I think the self-help books are getting a bit carried away, now. I'm left-handed myself, but there were a lot of things that didn't necessarily apply to me. I can't see any reason why you would need a book like this. It's all stuff you've already heard. I'm calling her publishers to see if they'll publish my book on the proper way to inhale when you exhale without hurting your child's self-esteem.