7 Weeks: Child Gone Batty

Milestone tonight. And a possible discovery.

Milestone:
I read in our week-by-week infant development book that August should soon begin looking at, and using, his hands. Of course, since reading this I've been dangling toys over him, picking up his arms and making them touch the toys, putting his own hands in front of his face... everything I can think of to accelerate the process.

Finally, tonight, I was dangling his favorite wooden caterpillar toy over him so he could stare at it, and I thought maybe he was trying to grab at it. Then, pretty soon he was batting at it, grabbing on to it, really going nuts.

Discovery:
So now he bats at stuff in front of his face (and so would I, really). And based on his behavior both tonight and previously, and on some research I've done, I think August might be left handed.

I've actually suspected this for some time, based on the fact that he seems more active with his left hand, more purposeful. But tonight, he would only bat at the caterpillar toy with his left hand. And I read an abstract from a widely cited 1981 scholarly paper, Right-handedness: a consequence of infant supine head-orientation preference?, by GF Michel. The basic gist is that most babies prefer to lie with their heads turned toward the right. A small percentage prefer to lie with their heads turned to left, and that group is much more prone to develop left-handedness later. For a long time I've noticed August prefers to turn his head to the left. I mentioned this to Mary earlier today, before I realized it was an indicator of anything, or even studied in any way. I thought it was just something he did... maybe even and indication that something wasn't right (get it?? wasn't right??).

I'm surprised handedness is "developed", rather than innate. Apparently there's no genetic marker. In most of the academic research I saw, left-handedness is treated as some sort of defect (correlated to poor academic performance, to crisis/stress as a newborn, to schizophrenia), but I've always found lefties to be more creative, individualistic, artistic. I guess we've got a long way to go before we learn whether he is or isn't left handed, but if you gave me 6:1 odds on a condition that should be a 1 in 9 shot... today I'd take that bet!