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if your child is right-handed...
"the hand i write with is on my right"

i dont know if anyone else has this problem, but i am a grown woman and i still have trouble distinguishing left from right. The only thing that helps me is the fact that I have a large scar running from hip to mid thight from a surgery i had when i was 3. To this day, whenever i don't touch the scar, I mix up left and rights.

As for the "the hand i write with" - I'm left handed and doesnt work. I will be miming writing with my left hand but still have difficulty remembering which is left until i touch my scar.

chusmabilly--I learned to tell my left from my right (when I was about ten) by reminding myself that the birthmark on my hip is the right side. For a long time I would put my hands down on my hips to figure out which was which. I still have issues with left and right too (and sometimes put my hands on my hipes), but I have a few learning disabilities & forms of dyslexia, so I figure it's part of that. Such as, I'm an editor and can spell quite well, but I can't spell words out loud. I just can't--I never could do spelling bees as a kid, but the teachers put it down to shyness.

pencils - I've never been tested for learning disabilities, but i remember in the grade school, i told my parents some letters and a lot of numbers got jumbled when i read and wrote, but i got glasses instead of a dyslexia screening. I am an avid reader, but am dumb as a stump when it comes to math and sometimes still skip or jumble numbers/letters when i write.

I always just sing Beyonce ("to the left, to the left") and hope one day it will sink in.

chusmabilly - I've always had this problem. I have a writing bump on one of my fingers on my right hand and have to check it to be sure. I doubt that I will ever not have to think about it. My 3 year old has it down pat : ) I've also heard that Einstein had a problem with this.

Love this trick. My family makes fun of me, because I'm 26 years old and still discreetly do this when I need to know my left from right.

I had the child of a friend show this one to me. I was almost fifty, and had never been able to tell my right from left with any accuracy. Tried miming writing to guess which land felt like the one I wrote with , it never helped. If they had taught me that the "L" hand is the left hand, it would have saved me years of looking foolish waving my hands in the air, prevented many arguements about which direction to drive to get somewhere, and helped me feel far less stupid. Now I always know. Better late than never

I have a friend who is in her 40s and instead of saying "turn left" or "go right" when she's giving driving directions, will say "turn Mummys way" or "go Daddys way" because as a child her Dad always drove the car and Mum was always in the passenger seat - I'm sure she knows her left from right but its a very endearing quirk!

I'm one of those people who also can't always remember my left from my right. :( However, one way I learned to remember, when I was little, is thinking "Left, Right" rather than "Right, Left". So as you read from left to right, the directions move left to right.....if that makes sense.

I'm kinda dyslexic so its possibly everything I'm saying is a little mixed up, but it works for me!!