School starts again after a long holiday. Parents are hoping their children to be able to cope with school works and studies, especially children who soon begin their formal school life. Memory plays an important role in helping a child to improve his learning ability. Some children can remember what the teacher taught in the class just through listening. Some are able to memorize the information in the book with one glance. Some just having hard time memorizing facts and information. How can we nuture our child’s memory?
Memory is a complex process that helps us recall information that we learned earlier. It works like a hard disc in our computer that requires the ability to store information for few seconds to an extended period of time. Whenever we need to recall an information, we just need to retrieve it from our memory in split second. For instance, a child needs to be able to remember the letters in word. He then needs to arrange these letters in sequence in order to able to form the correct word. Memories enable a child to retrieve answers automatically that he stores in the brain such as spelling, mathematical problems, drawing a donkey, etc..
For children who have problems memorizing all the information that they learned in school may develop low self-esteem. They begin to doubt their own ability, “I am stupid. I am not as smart as other.”. They slowly believe that they are not as smart as others and giving up on themselves. We need to take immediate action to reassure the child that he can improve his memory by learning the skills of memorizing and boost his brainpower.
Exercise the Brain Muscles
Provide more opportunities to allow our child exercise his brain muscles that boost his brainpower and improve his memory.
- Play memory games. For younger children, you may use simple picture puzzles, maybe just 3 to 5 pieces. Show them the whole picture. Then put the picture away and asked your child to put all the pieces together to form the picture he just saw. For older children, you may use a set of picture cards with words on the bottom and a set of word cards. Lay out the picture cards and ask your child to match the word card to the picture card. He needs to spell out the word on the picture card and look for the correct word on the word cards.
- Rhymes and songs. Engaged our child in singing and rhyming together. You will realize that children are able to memorize lyrics of songs and rhymes through repetition.
- Recalling an event. If you have taken your child to an outing earlier, you may ask questions evolving the event during the day, e.g. “How many lions you see in the cage?”, “What are the lions doing?” etc.. Your questions will help him recall what he has seen by retrieving information from his memory storage in his brain. Questions also helps him reinforce his memory of the event.
- Suggest strategies to help our child remember. For instance, one of my children have difficulty remembering how to write numeral “8″. Therefore, I told him that writing “8″ is just like riding on a roller coaster. First it rolls down and then rolls up again to the original point. Amazingly, he is able to write “8″ on his own without help by mumbling riding roller coaster! Strategies should be points that able to get his interest in order to get his attention.
3 Steps to Improve our child’s memory
- Repetition of activities.
- Practice and lots of practice. For instance, practicing writing and counting enable the child to memorize words and calculation even better and faster.
- Reinforcement of memory via Step 1 and 2. Repetition and practice enable the information set into our subconscious mind that we are able to automatically retrieve the information and incorporate with our action. For instance, when we first learn to drive, we need to memorize the steps in the beginning from how to start the engine till how to drive the car. As we repeating and practicing the same action every day, we can now automatically start the engine and drive as we have program our subconscious mind on the driving skills.
Nurture our child’s memory is an every day activity. Be patient and we will notice our child’s memory improve tremendously! Happy New Year!
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