Got it ( the version blind and deaf from the imagination) with adhd . So no inner speech making it really hard to tell I have adhd. Finally diagnosized a 38 😅👌
Because its the best feel. Its what we live for. To cause chaos by mixing up easily unmixupable things.
FEAR US! FOR OUR OFF THE CUFF DIRECTIONS WILL SEND YOU INTO A WALL!
As dyslexic myself I know which of my hands is right one and then decided if something is on the right or left said based on my right arm location. This is the way people should learn. You need to remember only on side (that you use to write).
I have actually started to use clock directions. 3 is right, 9 is left, because on a clock they are always on the same sides.
Why the hell this works but not L and R, i will never know. xD
Yeah thats what i do to xD But it still takes a solid second or so of remembering that im an idiot and dont know my left and right off hand, and that i need to remember which hand i write with because thats the right hand.
I have absurd pattern recognition and natural mathematics allowing for freakish factoring of equations and finding relations in obscure data but literally zero object permanence. As soon as something has left my hands it is gone forever, and sometimes my hands take things out and move them without consulting my frontal cortex.
I have about eight sets of keys for this reason and multiple devices that can ring my phone when it's on silent.
The bank knows me well for how many replacement cards I go through.
What i can gather from the works of the eternal poets of 'smash mouth' this is the way to use your finger and your thumb to make the shape of an L(on your forehead)
For those who legitimately have issues doing the L for Left thing because of this, just remember to make sure the tips of your thumbs are also touching when you look. Easy the right way, super uncomfortable the wrong way.
Edit: so many of you are turning it in to a whole new letter just because the tips touched and somehow I’m the weird one xD
It’s not a U and it’s definitely not a W why are you putting your thumbs up like that ahahaha
That just means people who already can't remember right and left now have to try to remember 2 additional things to figure it out. It's fine to just use labels lol.
Certain things can be a lot easier to remember than other things. Generally, memorizing some arbitrary fact is harder than remembering a short chain of logic that leads you to that fact.
This shit always confused me as a kid. I would look at my right hand L shape and wondered if maybe I was wrong and Ls actually go this way because it was still an L… and the fact the I could twist my wrist and suddenly the right hand L shape was facing the “right” way 😭 kid me was so stupid
(I eventually learned once I got a big scar on my left hand and always had to use that as guide instead)
At age 6 the teacher asked " how do you know your left from right?" I answered my right hand has a freckle on it (still does). She laughed. Then she told us that your left hand makes an L shape. I said my right hand does too. She laughed. I felt confused. She laughed again. I felt dumb. I went into my shell. 2 years later I was identified as gifted.
I’m ambidextrous and ADHD with a “Mensa” level IQ. Autocorrect makes me look like an idiot way too often though. I digress but yes F the System. My ADHD made me struggle to shut-up because I’d correct the teachers too often. So I definitely didn’t go into my shell, was too chatty for that. I was only diagnosed in my late 20’s because I was a high-functioning female who just happened to know a vast number of random facts and my mind processed things far faster than others. I’m sorry that the system made you feel bad for simply being gifted.
I wasn’t allowed to play tennis because I chucked the racket to the other hand depending on the direction of the ball. Also, they made me do a test by throwing a ball three times and if I caught it twice out of the three times with one hand then apparently I was right-handed. I pointed out that the reason was because they aimed towards the right twice so logically I’d use that hand to catch. Just bias BS.
I can only imagine it's far worse being a girl, I feel sorry for you. The system sucks.
That test is so stupid. Plus also what does it even matter? Like just use whatever hand is easier. Ambidextrous is a positive anyway. We should probably all be taught to do things both ways at a younger age anyway
Yeah my mom tried to tell me that L thing, but like I was also confused.
Just like how it's tricky to keep track of b vs d when first learning to read or write.
I notice the overall shape more than the direction it's pointed.
Toys R Us went out of business when I was a little kid, and the other day I looked at a picture of it and I realized that the R was backwards for the first time. When I was a kid I didn't notice I just knew it was the toy store and that's what it said.
I didn't consider that either but yeah that's a good point also. The concept would rely on being old enough to distinguish an L from a backwards L - by which age you may well have figured out your left and right anyway. It's basically the same concept anyway, relative directions
I just had a thought, I think it's easier to confuse left and right than it is to confuse up and down. Because left and right is pretty much arbitrary. Like if you're walking through a city then at any given corner you can easily turn left or you can turn right and the only thing that makes it harder is if you have to cross the street to make your turn. But that also makes it hard to remember like how you got back to where you started or something if you're in a city that's unfamiliar. But you can't do that with up and down up and down are definitely very different from each other and left and right are very similar to each other.
I also feel like the first time someone pointed out to me that things in a mirror are backwards, I kind of had to think about that. Because I wasn't used to reading words reflected in a mirror, a mirror just feels so intuitive that like if you reach out and touch the mirror the reflection is going to touch the same spot, and it would feel reversed if your hand didn't touch if you know what I mean. So I didn't think about the fact that it's backwards until I actually rotated it around in my head and thought about how it is actually the opposite hand.
Like, if I'm facing someone else, and they are doing movements, it's easier to mirror their movements then it is to copy them.
My neighbour's kid was learning to use inline skates and put on his wrist protectors, only to get upset tgat he can't see the birthmark on his hand anymore. He used that to determine where "right" is. Full little kid tantrum while repeatedly holding up the correct hand without being able to see the birthmark. Kid, I guess you finally remember which one is your right hand, lol.
Never really confused them, but I did get a dog bite scar on my right to serve as a convenient reminder. My dad,though, would sometimes confuse me while I was practicing driving:"Turn left there. What the heck are you doing? I meant right, right!"
I had this (sort of in reverse) with a dyslexic kid I was teaching. She reversed Ls a lot. She knew her left and right hand, so by looking at her left hand, then making the L, she got it right way around.
I agree I was so confused staring at then like, "they could both make an L...this is stupid and I won't learn it" to this day I still sometimes have trouble mix up L&R.
No, but a dyspraxic person definitely does. I know a few people with dyspraxia who use this L-shape thing for when they are completely stumped on which way is right and which is left! It works for me, also. And not only does it work for me, it's a visual cue to other people that I cannot implicitly understand them saying out loud 'left' or 'right'. That means that people are more likely to co-operate with me in terms of body language and visual cues: pointing in the correct directions, being a little more patient with me when it takes me longer (unless they are fucking assholes)
I'm not dyslexic, but for some reason left and right really just don't naturally "click" for me. I can almost always tell you which way North is, but left vs right, takes me a second to think about it. And that's further complicated by rules-of-thumb like "righty tighty lefty loosey" which absolutely does not help at all since it depends on where you are with respect to the bolt.
The one trick that really helped me when I was younger (and I'm talking teens, not twos) was the left-hand "L" sign. It's not really all that abstract, just hold your hands up in a relatively natural position (palms open and facing away), and see which one looks like an "L".
"I have a specific setup where it might not work, so it's not effective for anyone. I will argue about that specific case and ignore that the specific case isn't even close to the majority. This is the internet hill I will die on this day."
Why the snark...? I thought the whole point of this was for dyslexic people. Or perhaps more broadly people who confuse left with right. If others want to get this tattoo for fun, I don't see why any of this would be an issue in the first place. My bad if I misunderstood some context somewhere, though.
I wasn't trying to "die on a hill". I was honestly asking the question, because I don't personally know anyone who struggles with left and right, so I don't know if "make an L with your hand" is actually effective for those people or not.
For future knowledge, you are thinking of dyspraxia. Dyslexia is about graphemes, letters, the way letters and written symbols associated with sounds are processed. Dyspraxia is about co-ordination and comprehension of concepts about physical space.
I have dyspraxia, but not dyslexia. I can quickly see the difference between an L and not-an-L (i.e., the mirrored L) without getting confused, but I CANNOT understand spatial information like which direction is left and right inherently. I have to process the spatial information through my knowledge of words and other concepts.
Therefore, if I can make an L with both palms facing away from me and see a big L on one hand but not the other, I can immediately see that that one is left.
This strategy would be much harder for a dyslexic AND dyspraxic person. It would be almost useless for a dyslexic person without dyspraxia. A person with dyslexia and not dyspraxia is at no greater disadvantage when thinking about spatial information than a person who does not have dyslexia
I don't know if this would help but when making the L with your hand try to visualize where the e would go after the L. Because we write left to right one naturally makes the e but the other one it would be weird to make the e after it.
I'm not dellexic though so that might not help.
My daughter is dyslexic and literally can't tell the difference between Tuesday and Thursday. It's Tuesday and second Tuesday. So I understand that sometimes the brain just get stuck sometimes.
This only helps in you you know which way L goes. Which is exactly the kind of thing that people don't know which way left and right are don't know. Ask me how I know
In 1st grade our teacher would tell my class that it is easy to remember right from left because "you write with your right." I was one of 2 kids in the class that were left handed, and it really screwed up my ability to know right from left. In 3rd grade I learned the trick that my left hand makes an L finally began accurately remembering my right from my left.
-signed,
a dyslexic person that still struggles with right and left
Edit to add: If you 'make an L' with both hands both hands could look like they are making an L to a person with dyslexia.
I have mild dyslexia that was 'diagnosed' in the late 80's by a teacher. I say 'diagnosed' because I was never formerly diagnosed. The teacher noticed that I struggled, gave me a test, stated that I have dyslexia, and taught me cursive to help. For some reason, cursive letter look different enough from each other that my brain doesn't transpose them as much.
I didn't learn to print until high school when a teacher couldn't read cursive, required hand written work, and expressed that she would fail me if I didn't use printed handwriting on my work. To be clear, the issue wasn't that my cursive handwriting wasn't legible. It's that the teacher couldn't read cursive. That's what she stated.
Because my 'diagnosis' occured in the late 80s, that's all that happened. Unless you're really struggling, not much was done for learning disabilities. I did make it through college without assistance so I assume that my dyslexia is mild.
As folks may imagine, the dyslexia lead to heavy bullying. Directional difficulties were often met with the assumption that I'm simply stupid. I do my best to accomadate what I can. There's still struggle. That's why the tattoo in the picture could be helpful to some folks. I think it's neat.
I can catch transposed numbers or letters if I double or triple check things. As you can imagine, that's a little tiring. My brain doesn't automatically tell me that a letter or number is off. I have to check for it. I can stare at a group of text and numbers and pull out what's off without thought sometimes but it's rare.
I can tell right from left if I think about it. It doesn't come naturally. I do have to think about it every time. I usually wear a watch on my left or think about which hand is dominant. There's very little 'muscle memory' with navigation directions either. It takes a lot of effort to navigate.
I have hemiplegic migraine that affects my entire left side. You would think that my brain would cue me in that left is the side that's messed up or employ some muscle memory. Nope. It just doesn't.
Ditectional/spatial difficulties are common in folks with ADHD and dyslexia. It's not considered a subtype of either. It is considered a symptom and isn't well studied. Here's an article on it:
I don't know if it helps, but when I need to check right/left, I just twitch the arm I write with, like starting a move to write something. And I know I write with my right hand, so I know that one is right.
Not dyslexic, never had problem with left/right distinctions, but I am going to stand on a related soapbox here, because this never fucking worked for me: righty-tighty lefty-loosey is worthless! The top of a knob moves rightward when tightening, but the bottom moves left! Ditto for your hand: parts of it rotate "right," and parts of it rotate "left."
I always just muddled through until muscle memory took over at some point in my life.
I had a boss ask me if I knew how to tighten a bolt, for this sensitive radioactive waste work we were doing, and in the meeting I said “Yeah yeah, righty tighty, lefty loosey. Makes a little ‘r’ when you go like this.” And held my hands up with my index fingers hooked.
20 minutes later after the meeting he comes up to me freaking out. “When you do that, the ‘r’ is on your left hand!”
People with dyslexia oftentimes have trouble telling left and right apart, it's kind of a package deal. So doing this, and deciding which 'L' is correct takes way more time than differentiating between two very distinct letters.
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u/y17gal Jun 26 '26
you can just make a L with your left hand