Visual-Spatial Toddler?

[JumpyTheFrog]

For those of you with visual-spatial children, when did you first notice the signs? My oldest was very verbal at a young age and had excellent pronunciation. My 2 year old is less verbal, and often seems to tune us out. If we go to him and get his attention, he' usually does a good job obeying. Often, it truly seems as if he didn't hear us.

 

We know he understands what we tell him, when he's paying attention. His hearing is fine. He seems super visual and is more mechanical than his big brother was at this age. He learned his colors without me really teaching them and he learned the names of the letters with barely any practice. In fact, a lot of what he does is just suddenly have a new skill, whereas my oldest took a normal amount of practice to learn to roll over, crawl, walk, talk, etc.

 

I'm wondering these are signs of being a visual-spatial learner. Any thoughts?

[KungFuPanda]

To me, it sounds like your youngest is a more typical boy. You know, less verbally driven and more intuitive with the mechanical stuff. There are always exceptions on either side, but it's possible that your oldest was more verbal than most boys so your youngest looks like the different one to you.

[In The Great White North]

My 2 year old is less verbal, and often seems to tune us out. If we go to him and get his attention, he' usually does a good job obeying. Often, it truly seems as if he didn't hear us.

 

My dd(14) did this from the day she was born. So much so that we had her hearing tested at 6 months. It was fine. The dr said the siblings probably made too much noise for her and so she compensated by tuning it out.

 

She is so not visual-spatial. She is the only one in the family that can do the Suzuki thing (hear the music, play the music.)

[catz]

She is so not visual-spatial. She is the only one in the family that can do the Suzuki thing (hear the music, play the music.)

 

I'm not sure visual spatial = does not excel at Suzuki? I've seen many written things about visual spatial learning style that seem to indicate visual spatial kids might excel at music and visual arts.

 

Anyway, I have 2 kids that lean visual spatial. Both have been very successful with music and both do Suzuki. Now my oldest does quite a bit outside Suzuki too (reading, exams, theory) and that has been great. I think a few things stuck out before they were 3, but you'll have to wait and see. My kids are actually fairly well rounded (verbal too, but later blooming on that) but their VS is probably a little more prominent.

 

I remember my son at 3 was obsessed with plumbing, heating, and gutter systems. He wanted to follow them to their source. On the other hand, he'd be happy to talk about them at length too. He used to take guests into our bathroom and have them take off the top of the toilet tank to talk plumbing. :D

[Wheres Toto]

With my son it was when he could do a peg puzzle a couple of time and then turn the board over and put the pieces in the correct positions on the back. Including an entire alphabet puzzle. He learned his letters by doing this puzzle by the time he was 18 months old. He could stack blocks 15 or more high around a year old. He loves video games and can learn anything if he can see it on a poster or worksheet.

 

He is an absolutely lousy listener. You can't expect to tell him anything and have it stick. We finally are able to do read-alouds by having him color while I read.

 

He was very delayed in speech and didn't talk much at all until he went to early intervention from 3 to 4 years old.

[Snickerdoodle]

My super visual spatial child learned to read very young because he hated read aloud time.

 

He also didn't talk until very late.