Mental Map

My daughter has the ability to map out her surroundings.   She has to do this by necessity to protect her body from injury.   She has enough vision to see some things—what things she can see we really don’t know as she can’t adequately explain it.   She saw a huge blow up last night and knew it was Mickey Mouse.   She also knew some of the houses in our neighborhood had lights on the roof line while others didn’t.

But there are things she takes guesses at and is way off.   You’re driving and say you see something out the window and she’ll look in the wrong direction and say she sees it too.   But the mental map is a lot more important than what she doesn’t see.   Being safe is a good thing, especially when the person you’re protecting yourself from is you.

My son is pretty good at spacial relations but I didn’t realize just how good until last night.   After our neighborhood holiday party we got in the car and drove around our phase of the neighborhood to see the luminaries lit up along the fronts of people’s houses.

We did a lot of talking about the houses and decorations and my daughter saw some of it but lots of it was just big colorful blurs to her.    When we got home my children, now very late for bed, got their pajamas on and my son said he needed to draw something before going up to bed.   It was a map, he said.   He didn’t tell me what it was as we went upstairs, leaving it on the table now that he’d gotten his thoughts down on paper.   This is what he drew:

He drew a map of all the streets in our neighborhood with dots representing the lit luminaries.   At the bottom right is the clubhouse.   There is one larger red dot on the lower left area—that’s our house.   When I asked what the other large red dot was this morning he told me that was his new friend from last night.

I had no idea he had such a complete map of the neighborhood, especially since he’s not old enough to travel much beyond our small cul-de-sac street to see friends.   I suppose I’d better find out who this new friends is.

The Bit Boy Update:  My son likes listening to the Movie Music channel.   A Star Wars song came on and my son said, “why are there always trumpets in Star Wars music?”  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had fun at the neighborhood party last night, but she was a little bored.   She has trouble connecting with children and playing with them.   She loses them when they run off and a lot of times they don’t know how to interact with a blind child.   We’re working on some ways to help her in the future.