So here is what I did to help him not feel so helpless when we take him places. I went out and obtained a large appliance box from a local appliance store. Then I took the top and bottom off of the box, then cut the box along one side so that it would open out into one large flat surface. Then using 1 inch masking tape and little small cardboard boxes, I made a giant sized, 3 dimensional street map of our town. Our town is not very big, so the model town was easy to fit on the cardboard box.
I made our house, Christopher's school, the grocery store, the gas station, post office, and even Wal*Mart, from small cardboard boxes. I glued them into place so that they would not fall over or shift position when we moved the map. The whole thing was just the right size for his little toy cars,and it fit neatly under his bed for easy storage.
To finish it off, our community has a World War I monument right in the middle of court square (affectionately known and admired as "The Dough Boy"). I recreated this landmark by gluing a Little Green Army Man to an empty thread spool and I put that on our miniature "town square." Christopher was absolutely thrilled! He instantly recognized that landmark. He even pointed to it and called it by name! I used a magic marker to write the street names on the masking tape.
We took his toy cars and played with this map together for a long time. He "drove" the little white sedan that resembles our family car. We also had a toy school bus, police car, and other community vehicles. We drove the cars first the usual ways, then we took "shortcuts" and drove different combinations up and down the streets.
This cardboard map became his favorite toy and he played with it until there wasn't anything left of it. This was his very first experience at reading maps, and we have not had many problems about deviating from known routes since then. Now whenever we change directions on a car trip, he just takes a deep breath and calls it a "short cut."
There are all sorts of books at your local library that can help you do this project if you have the same problems that we did, and you want to try our solution.
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