Camikaos, whose blog is entitled “Mommified Me,” has a post about her daughter’s mirror writing. Because the post discussed reversals, I skimmed it. I was glad to see what I saw there. Here’s a snippet from Camikaos’ account of an incident that concerned her.
Yesterday after we got back from school K sat down at the table and wrote Mike and I a letter… It was perfect and beautiful and she did the whole thing herself including spelling all the words… and writing them completely and totally backwards. Mirror perfect backwards.
Oh isn’t that sweet…. oh how cute… tee hee hee. Except that I am mildly dyslexic…
If you don’t know anything about dyslexia it wouldn’t hurt for you to know… but among the things you would learn would be that writing backwards like the demon spawn from some creepy horror movie is not a sign of dyslexia… So why am I worried? because any impediment on the road to literacy scares the hell out of me…. because I was so befuddled by letters that it took me a very long time to learn to consistently make letters the right way… because when I am tired reading a page of plain English can be like deciphering hieroglyphics to me… because spell check is my best friend… because I did a lot of backwards writing myself… though only single letters would be flipped, not entire words and sentences… because my mom suffers from the same learning disability that I do… because my daughter is precious and perfect to me and even though a learning disability wouldn’t make her anything less than the remarkable person she is, it will make her road ahead so much tougher…
I was happy see that Camikaos knows that reversals are not an indicator of Learning Disabilities. And I was very happy to see the understanding of how a Learning Disability does not lessen the person. Also, I was glad to see that Camikaos sensibly decided to talk with her daughter’s teacher, but I was fearful that the teacher might have some of the gobbleygook ideas about Learning Disabilities that get stirred into many teachers’ thinking. (There’s a note in a subsequent entry that Camikaos spoke with her daughter’s teacher. The teacher was more impressed that the daughter had written so much and noted that mirror writing is common.) Here’s a link to Camikaos’ post on mirror writing.
But, this post made me realize that, though I’ve repeatedly remarked about how reversals and mirror writing are not indicators of LD or dyslexia, I’ve not provided recommendations about what to do about the problem. So, thanks to Camikaos’ perhaps-unintended prompt, I’m creating a page on correcting reversals in writing. Look for it under the heading “pages” in the right rail; once I’ve published it, I’ll link it here, too or just click here.
I just saw this post and wanted to thank you, I am reading the reversals page you put up and I really appreciate it. My daughter is still writing complete reversals at times but all we have to do is show her the correct side of the page and she’s good to go.
I’ve found your blog very educational.
CamiKaos
Thanks for reading and commenting. I hope your daugther’s handwriting is improving.
Mr. Lloyd,
I am a primary school teacher. While I agree that some reversals are normal, I disagree that MIRROR WRITING is normal for the English language. I have interviewed O.T.’s and teachers and have come across only one person who has ever seen a student utilize mirror writing (other than as something for fun in the upper grades.)
My daughter is 6yr. 10mo. and when writing independently (numbers & sentences) everything is readable with a mirror. She has been doing this for several years and it is impacting both L.A. and Math. She is frustrated by printed materials. Unless she is prompted to touch the first letter of the word, she tries to read the word/ sentence from the right/ middle to left. She is using Jan Olsen’s Handwriting Without Tears, A.J. Kirshner’s noitademeR of Reversals and various V.T. techniques.
She has minor hearing concerns, minimal articulation challenges, has not set hand dominance, several vision processing concerns including difficulty crossing mid-line. All work completed verbally is correct 85 to 97% depending on subject matter. She is receiving O.T. and Speech therapy (& knows Signed English), however, no one knows how to help her…. She is unable to keep up with her peers and retention is being considered.
I am concerned that retention without remediation will be useless. I reviewed your suggestion, however this leaves me w/ only x, i, o, t, v, 1 and 8 that she can write readable (but formed R - L), however if I add formation as part of the criterion, then i and 1 are the only items she will be able to get right 90-95% of the time. Do you have any other suggestions?
Ms. Flohr
Ms. Flohr, thanks for taking the time to review LD Blog materials and to leave a comment. I’m sorry your daughter is having the difficulties you describe, but I’m glad you’re seeking help. Of course, it is both difficult and inappropriate to provide professional advice based on Internet conversations, so I can’t say much.
I can observe, however, that when someone has practiced a behavior repeatedly, changing that behavior will require extraordinary amounts of practice. I don’t have data on this, but I’d guess that it takes somewhere between 20 and 200 corrected repetitions for each mistaken practice repetition; that is, if someone’s practiced a mistaken behavior 15 times, it’ll take something like 300 to 3000 correct practices to change it. And those correct practice trials will need to be spread over weeks with the trials intermixed with other correct responses.
As you note—”Unless she is prompted to touch the first letter of the word”—there are some good techniques that can be used to help with the remediation. Getting the learner to initiate those prompts requires lots of careful work and practice. I’d be interested in studying whether one could develop a pretty-much foolproof prompt (e.g., pieces of paper with an array of fingerprints for the left hand near the top left of each page) and combine it with a heavily rehearsed verbal self-guidance routine (”O.K., I’m going to write. First I put the paper down with the fingerprints at the top, then I put my fingers on the prints to hold the paper, then I pinch my pencil between my thumb and first two fingers….”) to modify writing behavior. In combination with the methods studied by Lahey and colleagues (see reference on page about correcting reversals), it’d be interesting to see whether handwriting improved over time. Of course, one would fade the prompts in some sensible way. (I once created dozens of cursive handwriting pages using a green dot to show the starting place for each letter, blue stippled paths for the letter shape, and red dots for the ending spot.)
Anyway, I hope you can get some help with your daughter’s writing and reading. I agree that without remediation, there will be little progress. And remediation won’t come easily after a couple of years of faulty practice. So, sooner is better.