More on being twelve

It's interesting to see how I react to the negativity and obnoxiousness of the M1 kids. They occupy a disproportionately large place in my mind because the minority that wants simply to be disruptive and derail anything, no matter what topic or how it's being presented, the handful of kids who just need to be noticed no matter what and have honed being obnoxiously disruptive to a lustre I would never have imagined before coming to Thailand, are much better at being assholes than I am at being a teacher. MUCH better. Which really is the bane of my teacherly existence, and the inaccessibility of these students gets into my head and makes them seem much older than 12. Really, who wants to be bested by a kid who was barely alive to experience Y2K? So I give the M1 kids a lot of credit for cognition above and beyond their years. And then I'll stumble into a lesson that reminds me just how young they really are, not to mention how divorced from critical thinking.

This week's target language was, "above, below, next to, across from, in front of, behind." I showed them an animated powerpoint (more on that later) and then asked them to demonstrate.
So the lesson started with demonstrating: hold your notebook above your head. Hold your notebook below your head. &c. But when I asked them to switch and put their head below the notebook, they flatlined. After a few minutes and many pictures, one of the brighter kids might get it--X above Y=Y below X. And in every class, it was an absolute revelation. If it got through.
Then, as someone explained that "X is above means Y is below" the lightbulbs would flash on, and I would marvel at just how young they are. And somewhere, some part of me wonders when such connections are typically made. Shouldn't this be done in elementary school? If not then, if not yet in 7th grade, when?