Teaching a Sense of Direction

I'm still not sure if this is a nature vs. nurture skill.  Josiah could navigate through the city near our house at a very young age.  Greg has excellent sense of direction.  He was a cop and needed to get anywhere in the city quickly.  He has a better sense of direction than most.  Devon is completely lost less than a mile from our house.  He can't name any roads near our house, including the one we live on.  I told him the name of the road in front of our house was in our address.  Then it clicked.  All I can say is, "Yowsers"  We are missing a major skill.

To start, Devon is not allowed to read or play video games in the vehicle.  Mostly he reads, but never pays attention to where we are.  We have asked him randomly many times where we were and pointed out landmarks as we drive, but he has never bothered to pay attention to them.  He can get his license in    a year, so we need to work on it now.  So we started with having him watch where we are going.  This was a battle of course.  He wanted to read and he's a teenager.

Next, we ask questions.  Where are we?  Which way should we turn to go to town?  Take us home from here.  Where are we Devon?  Name a city between our house and the cities.  The answers he had to these questions were scary...NO CLUE.  We were less than a mile from our country home and he had no idea where we were...He has lived here for 4 years, driven that road at least 800 times and had no idea.  Now we realize, we might need to up the ante.

Today's activity:  Make a map of our house and label the 5 ways to get to the main highway from our house.  We have traveled them all in the last 2 days.  He needed to ride his bike to some of the locations to see how the roads intersected.  That way, maybe he would see more landmarks to help guide him and get some exercise.

Next Steps:  He is excited because I told him if he perfected his map, he could draw one on his wall.  Start with pencil and then add marker to it once he perfected it.  We can always paint over it later.  He gets a say in his room decorations and would spend some time perfecting a great project.  (thanks to my friend Susie Q for this idea)

Google Earth:  Start in the city and find our house, without typing in our address, by following familiar roads.

Labeling his map with familiar landmarks and friend's houses.  Maybe tonight we'll all bike to his Phillip's house with his map and pay attention to where the road goes.

Benefits:  The other kids all sat and made maps of our neighborhood to see if they knew what their older brother did not. We learned what a county is.  The names of roads near our house.  The name of many neighbors. Fun learning going on at the Van Moer house...

LOST

Saturday, we discovered something about our eldest child....He has no sense of direction.  I mean none, natta, zippo, zilch, zero.

The prior week, he decided to bike to his friends house.  Sometimes giving rides are a pain, so he decided he would ride his bike there.  So on his way home from their house last week, we reviewed the route in the van.  I showed him how we simply stayed on the same road all the way home.  The road has 2 'S curves' and goes from pavement to gravel.  

3 days later, he decided to bike to his house to crash for the night.  He packed his backpack for the night.  We reminded him to fill a water bottle with water.  We reviewed the route with him verbally.  Phillip would be waiting outside his house, so Devon wouldn't miss the house and ride by.  It is an 8 mile ride.   Devon is about a month away from being 15.  

So at 5:15 Devon took off.  Greg and I were meeting 2 other couples at a local winery which is about 3 miles from our house.  We haven't gone yet, but were excited to finally eat there and do a wine tasting.  The night was to culminate in a bonfire at our house.

At 6:00, Phillip's parents arrived at our house looking for Devon.  That's strange, he had ridden his bike over.  After 30 minutes, they decided to meet him on the road and pick him up.  Phillip was anxious to hang out.  But they made the trek to our house and didn't see Devon.  Well, they decided to drive back a different route and watch more carefully.  Maybe they just missed seeing him.

Greg and I continued our plans to the local winery.  In the meantime, Darrin called and said that he still couldn't find Devon.  We decided that he took a wrong turn, I would go look for him and join Greg in 15 minutes after I located him.  I drove down several roads and didn't find him.  Darrin drove down several roads and didn't find him.  It is now 6:45 and Devon is missing still.  So I called 911.  The county dispatched a squad to come help look.  We live on a county line, so the other county had a squad looking too.  I picked up Greg, we got another vehicle and we all started looking.  2 more squads joined the search.  We now have 4 squads and 3 parents driving the many twisting gravel roads between our house and his friend's house.  

I was positive that with his ADHD he took a wrong turn and was just riding along.  Devon hit his growth spurt last year, and has been running a couple miles a day, so if he keeps pedaling in the wrong direction, he can cover some serious ground.  I didn't think he would cross a major highway, but I also didn't think he would get lost staying on the same road.  3 hours had now gone by and I was starting to worry.  It would be dark.  He hadn't called us yet.  Maybe something worse had happened.

Finally, Phillip's mom called and her friend who lives on the route called.  Her kids had found Devon and told him to stay put.  She told me where to find him.  I called Greg and frantically drove to where he was supposed to be.  Greg called the police to end the search.  I picked him up and brought him home.  Scary and eventful.

He had turned off the pavement, back onto gravel and went straight, rather than following the 'S curve'.  He rode like mad for 8 miles, then backtracked, got back on the correct rode, but rode off it onto gravel again on the next part of the 'S curve'.  He continued to ride random roads, until finally giving up and that's when the kids found him.  Riding randomly on a gravel road, exhausted and lost with no plan.

After hugging him, I asked why he didn't call us.  It hadn't occurred to him to go to a house and call us. I worry about how he handles a crisis.  He was hopelessly lost and scared and really didn't think to call.  Oh boy.  Plus he had no idea where he was when he was only 2 miles from our house.  As a friend pointed out yesterday,  this is one of many lessons where he will learn what to do in a crisis.  **I hope**

Our friends joined us for a bonfire after the ordeal, bringing my favorite wine from the winery.  Maybe next time we'll get to actually go try some new wines.