The people in my family with the best sense of direction (excellent level, like directing a relative how to get to our house from many miles away and a bunch of turns) have ASD/ADHD and one also has dyslexia.

No, it depends on the profile.

My son has the inattentive ADHD/ASD profile and has no sense of direction.

But his cousin has high-functioning ASD and from a young age (late elementary) loved to leave his house by himself, and ride the metro and buses to rove around on his own. He has traveled the world as a young adult, and has never had any orientation problems.

Thanks, everyone. This is OP. My ASD teen also has ADHD, so certainly there's an attention component.

On the one hand, my child is highly gifted in areas such as math. But s/he recently took a bus going in the wrong direction.

At age 12 we once had to call the police to go looking for my child, because s/he got lost while on vacation walking back to our beach house -- which was a few doors away on the ONLY road, because s/he took a footpath away from the houses, instead of the road.

When we moved, it took a long time for him to figure out which door led to the bedroom, where the bathroom was, etc. There's just no sense of space or direction. And yet there's brilliance in other ways.

I'll ask the neuropsychologist at the next evaluation what part of the brain this correlates with, but thank goodness we live in an era of GPS and smart phones!!

It’s hard to say because even among neurotypical kids, a significant number of kids who aren’t old enough to drive yet have never paid attention to how they got places because they didn’t need to. Some of my kids’ extremely bright, neurotypical friends can’t give me directions to their house until we’ve almost reached their development.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My autistic child has the best sense of direction of anyone in the family. My other child, who is not autistic but does have ADHD and DCD/dyspraxia doesn't know how to get home from just a few blocks away.

+1

Same.

Our kid too

Yes, it's common. ASD and ADHD both have attention components, so can be both very good or very poor depending on their level of attention to the route in general and on that specific day.

I have ASD to have amazing sense of direction because they are so visual in their learning. Their brain can almost photographically memorize routes while traveling and at a very early age had an uncanny ability to navigate.

Anonymous wrote:My autistic child has the best sense of direction of anyone in the family. My other child, who is not autistic but does have ADHD and DCD/dyspraxia doesn't know how to get home from just a few blocks away.

+1

Same.

I have a 17-year-old DD with inattentive ADD with zero sense of direction, and a 13-year-old DS with autism and hyperactive ADD who has an amazing sense of direction. The last time he eloped it was because he was mad he missed the school bus and he took off running to his school five miles away the same way he goes on the bus. Always asks when he knows where we’re going but I’m going a different way due to traffic or an errand on the way.

I thought this was also a sign of dyslexia?

My autistic child has the best sense of direction of anyone in the family. My other child, who is not autistic but does have ADHD and DCD/dyspraxia doesn't know how to get home from just a few blocks away.

Not sure if this would describe your child since they sound very bright/no trouble learning, but difficulty with directions is a trait of non verbal learning disability (NVLD)

I don’t know but my daughter with ASD is like this too, and I suspect I have ASD and can’t find my way around my own town without GPS. I can drive to my kids’ schools and a couple of friends’ houses and THAT’S IT. I need GPS for everything else. I just can’t picture in my head how to get there.

My ASD kid is the same. He also has ADHD, so I think some of it is not paying attention, but he just doesn’t recognize where he is, even if he’s a couple blocks from our house.

My ASD teen is mainstreamed in school and exceedingly bright — epitomizes the term 2E.

But s/he has no basic sense of direction and is constantly getting lost, even in familiar settings. For example, when leaving a familiar restaurant last night, s/he turned right instead of left to walk the two blocks home.

When out and about, s/he relies a lot on Google to navigate walks that should be well known.

Is this a common ASD trait? Is there a term for it?