Rhayn and the Mirror Image

A few months ago I noticed that occasionally, when copying words, Rhayn will write a mirror image of what she is seeing. I talked to Will about it, as well as my Mom. Neither seemed concerned. I was, but since they weren't, I let it go.

Today was my first parent teacher conference with Mr. T, Rhayn's first grade teacher. He showed me some of her work. They have three books that they work in, they are like sketch books, one for form drawing, one for letters and one for numbers. Here are some examples of what the Waldorf school work books looks like. At a mixer he held last week, he showed us examples of the 8th grade work books that he had from last year, and they were phenomenal, quite similar to the 8th grade page shown in that link. The work is amazing.

So far, Rhayn and her class are doing very simple things. Their pages have a simple border of one color, and a form drawing, a letter, drawing, word, or roman numeral. The drawings that Rhayn does are really impressive for her age. Mr. T said she is artistic, and loves to draw. She often spends free play time drawing. He also said she likes to organize the room. She loves to rearrange her toys and special bits in her room, so it seems natural that she would do that at school as well.

We were flipping through the form drawing book, and came across a page with an L and a R on it. The premise of the picture was that you start "from sky to earth" when drawing lines (basis of writing letters) and then from left to right. Only she had written the R on the left and it was reversed. The L was written the correct way, but was on the right. Mr. T mentioned that he was slightly concerned because she often copies words down backwards. He mentioned that it may be a developmental stage that she is stuck at. Or it is possible that she is right hand dominant and left eye dominant. He plans on doing a dominance profile on each of the children, to find out if any of them have problems with dominance.

I believe, after talking to him, that I may be right eye dominant and left hand dominant. I have problems with a few of the items he told me to look out for. Then I told him that I write with my left hand but do many other things with my right (using scissors for example.) He asked me to throw him a bean bag. I throw with my right more than my left. I know that Will has some of the same "issues" with dominance that I do. He writes with his right hand, but does many things with his left. Is this something genetic that we have passed on to Rhayn that is going to make some things more difficult? Possibly. Luckily for Rhayn, her school is on top of it. They have already started things such as Bal-A-Vis-X, which should help them "cross the midline" as well as develop balance and rhythm, and concentration.

For the moment we are not taking any special action with Rhayn and her mirror image writing. We plan on keeping an eye on her. If it gets worse, she starts doing it every time she writes or it increases at all, I am supposed to talk to Mr. T. If it gets to a point that she is no longer doing it at all, then he wants me to talk to him about that, as well. I really like her teacher. He is so caring, and knowledgeable. You can tell he has a passion for the school and the Waldorf method of teaching. You can hear the way he wants these kids to do their best, to BE the best they can.

In Waldorf schools the teacher moves on with the class. They stay with their students until they are in 8th grade. This is awesome, because then the teacher knows what the student has been through, where they have come from, what hurdles they have crossed on the way to where they are. He will really know and understand our kids. I also think that having only 21 children in the class gives him and our children a leg up. Even though the class is over two thirds male (there are only six girls I think.)

Rhayn is so lucky, her school journey is already so amazing. She has opportunities that I wish every child had. Opportunities that I wish I had had. What a great school we have found. How lucky we are.