Reply To: Teaching a cross eye dominant person to shoot.

[David]

Nice TJ – nothing like the thrill of helping a young shooter safely and properly develop, especially when it’s your own son. I would suggest staying with dry practice at this point. Given that so many rifles/shotguns are built for right handers, I would initially try staying with a right handed hold on the rifle. I’d also suggest that you have your son work from a seated position (depending on how tall he is, he may be able to stand at a table with rifle resting on sandbag or pillow (dining room with target taped to wall on opposite side of room is an option if this is something you have difficulty setting up outside). Given that you’ve already covered the pictorial aspects of sight alignment relative to target and confirmed your son’s understanding, try using opaque (light through but no clear image) scotch tape over your son’s protective eyewear – left side. Encourage him to leave both eyes open (no squinting or facial distortions) and just let him work on the rifle mounting drills (i.e. getting “on” the rifle). Don’t let him overwork on any single session – take lots of breaks and use lots of repetitions to see if his right eye will begin to “learn” to become more dominant. See how this approach seems to shape up for you and check back in. Keep rewarding his dry work with positive feedback and explaining that his homework will help him have an easier time hitting targets in the long run, as he’ll understandably want to skip steps and leapfrog back to live fire. Your use of a laser bore sight can be helpful in giving him some visual reward as he progresses in training, but I’d hold off on that at least until a bit further down the road. Keep up the great work Dad – you’re awesome!