Is it normal not to be able to determine your child's dominant hand by 4 years old?

My DD will be 4 years old in 3 months and we still havent determined whether she's a lefty or a righty. The only thing she does consistently with one hand is throwing...that's ALWAYS with her left hand. Writing, eating, coloring, etc.....she switches back and forth. Some days she'll use her left, some days her right.
She's not big into coloring and writing (much more into playing with toys and pretending), so she doesn't get a lot of time to focus on that.

DS is 2.5 and we've known he's a righty for a long time. Does everything with his right hand.

I don't know what kind of answer I'm looking for... Has anyone experienced anything like this? Do I need to intervene somehow? Just seems strange to me.....

Re: Is it normal not to be able to determine your child's dominant hand by 4 years old?

My DS is almost 3.5 and I'm still not 100% convinced he's a righty. He continues to use both hands for a lot of things. He seems to prefer his right hand for eating but honestly is just fine using a spoon with his left. Same for holding crayons and markers (although like your DD, he's not into coloring but instead does lots of play, pretend play).

I see a preference but he still uses both, quite well, quite a bit.

I've read that although you can usually determine hand dominance by 3, there are childen who don't establish dominance until ages 5-7.

Is it normal not to be able to determine your child's dominant hand by 4 years old?

My DS is 3.5 and he does things with both hands. He seems to perfer his right hand most days but then other days will do stuff completely left handed.

Re: Is it normal not to be able to determine your child's dominant hand by 4 years old?

My son is 5 and I never even believed that people can be ambidextrous but in a way he is. He eats left handed about 90% of the time, absolutely writes right handed and is just starting to play most sports but not all, as a rightly. I say he is not really ambidextrous because a true ambidextrous person will be able to switch back and forth and there is no way he can do that with writing. He seems to want to settle on one hand for each activity but it is not the same hand for everything. He was learning to bat a ball in the fall and we went back and forth a few times but I think he will have a better instinct about it this summer. Your child will be fine!

Message edited 3/10/2013 12:32:50 AM.

Re: Is it normal not to be able to determine your child's dominant hand by 4 years old?

My daughter was the same way. She is in kindergarten now and doing great. She has settled on lefty for writing, but cuts with her right hand. She is not a neat writer, but she keeps up fine in school.

Message edited 3/10/2013 8:19:50 AM.

Re: Is it normal not to be able to determine your child's dominant hand by 4 years old?

I have heard if you give your child 2 sticks to bang together, like say during a pretend parade, whichever hand/arm they use to bang on top is the dominant one. Not sure if that answers your question, but I am sure your DD is just fine!

Is it normal not to be able to determine your child's dominant hand by 4 years old?

My son is 3 1/2 and he does some activities with his right hand and most activities with his left-hand. in my opinion as long as they have strength in the activities I wouldn't worry.

Re: Is it normal not to be able to determine your child's dominant hand by 4 years old?

Someone else told me to hand her things or have her pick something up with one hand, and whatever hand she uses is her dominant hand. I don't know how true all that is, but she used her left hand every time.

I wouldn't say that I'm really worried about it... I guess I'm just more curious than anything. I hope it doesn't hold her back with writing when she starts up preschool in the Fall.