Do you want your child to be good at putting things together? How good do you want your child to be at following directions and giving instructions to others?

Recent research has shown that the way you talk to your child has a marked impact on how good they are at spatial tasks.

Spatial ability is being able to perform tasks that involve relationships between objects or parts. Children need to learn to understand the concepts of directions, size, and direction. It seems that the sooner they learn the words for these concepts, the better children do the tasks that need these skills later on.

When we learn to be able to do these things in our heads, this is often called visuospatial understanding. We often need to be able to visualize, or manipulate in our head, how things can change and how they will look when they are in a different place, size, shape, or direction. We need to understand how things work and how they fit into the space around us.

Daily life requires these skills for children to move without bumping into things, make complex constructions with blocks, do puzzles, follow directions in a particular order, find out how far something is, give directions, ride a bike, or cross a path. .

Adults must be able to read maps, know where we are going, and assemble furniture. Some occupations require very high-level visuospatial skills, such as architecture and design.

If children have difficulties with movement, balance, or reading and writing, they may have their visuospatial skills tested. This could include seeing if they can recognize an object from it, imagining an object turned to a different orientation, or copying patterns.

It seems that children are better at all of these skills if they learn words early that explain these shapes, directions, and the relationships between objects. The research found that when parents play with their children with construction toys and use these types of words, their children improve on spatial tasks.

Words for size, shape, direction, and location, as well as words for amount and time, can easily be used in play sessions or in daily life. It varies depending on the age of your child. They will likely only use these words if they hear you do it first.

Through the tunnel.

Just around the corner.

In the deepest hole.

Put the circle on the high tower.

Next to the red book.

Other activities to do together can include puzzles, drawing, play dough, and sand and water play. In everyday life, bath time, cooking, and gardening are ideal opportunities for spatial words. When you’re walking through the zoo or driving to Grandma’s house, you can provide a running comment to get directions and encourage your child to join in.

In addition to giving your child good spatial skills, you’ll help him with sentence construction by teaching him prepositions (like in, on, under) and adjectives and adverbs (describing words like bigger, faster, gigantic).

For more information, see adelejane.com on language development.