In the first-grade class, we often encounter students who reverse numbers while writing, and they also flip letters when attempting to write words. This is something I observed in a considerable number of students in my class. However, what drew my attention to this phenomenon was when one student wrote the name "Ahmed" incorrectly, reversing the direction from left to right instead of right to left, as is typical in the Arabic language.
Initially, I thought this was a normal issue, as this student is the "spoiled" child of one of my colleagues who teaches French. I assumed that his mother, who is fascinated by the French language, must be teaching her son French, which likely caused some confusion. As a result, he began writing Arabic in a manner influenced by the French writing style.
I took a picture with my phone of the boy holding his board where he had written "Ahmed" from left to right, with the Arabic letters in reverse order. I showed it to his mother to clarify the situation, and she confirmed what I had suspected. She admitted that her son had been influenced by the French language, which she passed on to him, and he was focusing more on writing French letters than on writing Arabic words.
To be clear, this student is not the only one in my first-grade class who reverses letters in words. Some students flip the letter 'Ayn' at the end of a word, making it resemble the number three, and so on. This pattern is also seen with numbers, especially the number five. I don't know why the number five is the most commonly reversed.
Returning to the root of the problem, the phenomenon of reversing letters or numbers while writing is psychologically related to what is known in psychology as "Mirror Writing." This technique has been used by geniuses like Napoleon Bonaparte and Leonardo da Vinci, among others. It was also used for encoding certain confidential matters. To this day, it is used on ambulance vehicles to write the word "ambulance" in reverse so that it can be read correctly in mirrors by other drivers.
However, for students, it is considered a cognitive issue due to their incomplete understanding of the letters and numbers they are learning. The student who engages in mirror writing struggles to comprehend what they are writing, essentially drawing the letters instead of writing them, thus separating form from meaning.
The American psychological school classifies the problem of mirror writing in students as part of "dyslexia," as it directly relates to the inability to comprehend what is being written. Therefore, solutions cannot rest solely on the teacher's shoulders; this is a shared responsibility between teachers and parents. Addressing this issue requires intensive training in proper writing, with close monitoring of what the student writes, both in the classroom by the teacher and at home by the parents. Frequent writing, which is considered a "second reading" in educational psychology, is the only cure for mirror writing.
The treatment period lasts between three months to two years, depending on the intensity of the writing and reading program and the teacher's dedication, along with the cooperation of the student's guardian. It is important to note that a guardian who has no contact with the teacher will make it more difficult for the student—his or her child—to overcome the issue. Moreover, if the guardian has had conflicts with the teacher, the problem can persist for more than two years, and in some cases, it can continue for over five years.