Directionally Challenged/Getting Lost

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I get lost all the time--but often it's because I don't see the turn till it's too late, and I have to find my way back around. But I can circle the same spot 20 times looking for something (in a car or walking), and I won't see it. Then, the next time I pass by, when it's too late, the thing or place I was looking for jumps out at me.

But a lot of people, when they realize they just missed a turn or something, will take some crazy sharp turn to get back to where they wanted to be. I won't drive that aggressively, so I usually go a ways till I can find a way back, and I occasionally get lost for it.

Funny story: last month, I was out with my 4 yo daughter and 2 yo son, and we were trying to find food. I saw a place I wanted to go to, but it was on the other side of a 4-lane road. "Oh, darn!" I said. Then I drove a ways, turned around in a parking lot of some building, and started back.

"Are you lost again, Daddy?" asked my 4 yo.
"No," said her little brother. "Wooking for a westwant."

OK..This is where my AS son and I differ. He is SO good at directions and he is four. He knows exactly where I park my car, where to go, how to read maps, street names, etc. I get lost in a parking lot, can't find my way around a building, can't park straight, etc. I have a lot of real life signs of having a NVLD yet I was in the superior range on a nonverbal spatial reasoning task. I also suck at math! Goes to show you that sometimes test results and actual real life performance aren't always commensurate and I give cognitive tests for a living.

I get disoriented so easily.

I can't stand it when people give me directions that have to do with landmarks...drives me nuts.
I hate maps even more. I really hate it when people draw me a map. It irritates me to no end.
Don't tell me N,S, E, W. Just list out the directions: take a left at 3rd st, right at 4th ave...

Yes, I can get lost finding anything. Even if someone tells me directions to go to the bathroom at a restarant. I may get there but I sometimes get lost on my way back.

My GPS is my life saver.

I never get lost, so my wife and I make a good team - I don't drive because of my AS concentration issues, and she can't find her way past the end of our street without losing her bearings. She drives the car, I direct

I am focussing on sense of direction in this reply.

I taught in small school for a decade - 500 students. I could not direct visitors to the office but had to go where I could see it and point.

In the grade 5 class I had to teach mapping and plans. I could not draw a mudmap of the school. I had to rely on some students to teach other students!! !

I have a booksize list of adventures that I could relate. Most people think it is funny but I find it exhausting.

I have been told that it is a form of dyslexia.

I have GPS now. My driving has improved markedly. The good thing is that I can take it when walking too though the battery only lasts 30 minutes (I think)

PS I am NT

I'm always getting lost. Directions don't come easy to me at all.

I remember being 10-11, in the last year of junior school, and I STILL, after 4 years, didn't know where most teacher's class rooms were. Everyone else did, and I have no idea how they all knew all these places. It wasn't a big school. Quite small, in fact, but I only knew 4 class rooms, and they were all my old class rooms from previous years.

Oddly, I was MUCH better at navigating high school, which was at least twice as big, and two stories high.

Most people seem to have an in built ability to just pick up directions from no where. I don't.

*Quirks an eyebrow at the people who get lost easily*



For the most part... I navigate like RainMan counts cards.

I don't get lost unless I'm drunk or otherwise heavily distracted in completely unfamiliar territory....



For example.... I found my way to the National Autistic Society head office in Angel Islington ... early on a Saturday morning (at dawn, when the light levels screw with your vision).... despite never having been there and being unfamiliar with the area...... And I did it by checking the address and looking at a street-map of central London for less than five minutes before I started (just past WhiteChapel, a few miles away).

I also had an incident in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada) where I'd only been there once and yet had to lead around two girls who had been living in the area their whole life and been through the city a great many times. Somehow I knew the layout of the central city better than they did after just one brief trip through in a car.




... So it still kinda puzzles me how anyone here can get lost so easily.
NOT getting lost is about my only useful skill in the world.

.

When I was a little kid, I used to come home and cry because I couldn't find my way around in my school. Things really haven't improved from there. To even get to the mailroom in my departmental building, I have to follow verbal directions like "Go through the front doors. Walk straight towards the Psychology Clinic sign. When you get to the sign, turn left down the hallway, and the mailroom is the first room on the right." I can't even drive to the dentist I've gone to for the last eighteen years without my GPS.

I also have NLD, by the way, and have disorganized visual processing, as well as a moderately impaired visual memory, so I guess that doesn't help.

Nope, I've always been very good indeed at navigating.

No half-way houses, eh?

We're all either geniuses at it or absolutely terrible. ^_^;;

I see what you mean SotiCoto, it seems we either can't find our way out of the house or are really good at it and can go anywhere lol. It's funny though because I'm pretty sure my father is aspie, and he is very good with directions. I don't know how the heck I ended up being completely the opposite *sigh*. No built in compass here. And I was also one of those kids that went to a small highschool and was completely lost. I did eventually find my way around thank god, but at first I was terrified because I didn't want to look stupid. Really interesting replies everyone, thanks.

I'm glad I'm good at it.
I'd have totally failed at my life without that ability by now. VERY practical.


That said, we all have our different strengths and weaknesses. I have barely any memory for events. All I can remember are dissociated numbers, symbols and choices. Digital... basically. If I have to try and remember something Analog, my memory just fails me automatically. I have no idea where I was last week.

My memory is horrible... when people ask me what I had for dinner I can't remember....

On the other hand, I seem to have a savant ability when it comes to time. I can not look at a clock for several hours, and then someone asks what time is it and I can almost always guess it within 5-10 minutes.

yeah, i do that, too. but i used to work in a computer room, where i ran dual, multiple-partition CPUs (back in the day of the the whirling tape drives, blinking lights, and printers the size of volkswagons). for a decade i had to keep track of and run time for from 8 to 12 programs running batch jobs at any given instant so that i wouldn't have one sitting waiting for an input tape while another used the tape drive (or other device). there was a time when i could guess the passage of time down to within a minute over a 12 hour shift.

been a couple of decades since then, but as long as i can see the light outside i can guess what time of the day it is by somehow comparing the internal "clock" to the value of the light i'm seeing. doesn't work at night - can't tell you what time it is, but can still tell you how long it's been between two events, stuff like that.

always wondered if it was a learned thing, or if it was an innate ability?

Yes, thinking about it, I can also tell what time it is to within a few minutes if I wake up in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning. I never need to set an alarm as I always wake up when I'm supposed to. Never thought about whether that is unusual or not, really.

I'm really good about knowing the time. I used to wake up without an alarm clock but since my work schedule changes all the time I seem to have lost this ability, but I never really truly sleep in either. I do look at the clock alot, but even without one I'm good.