How Can a Child With ADHD Improve His or Her Memory?

Written by Joanne in Uncategorized

How Can Parents Help Boost Their Kids’ Memories?

One of the many symptoms of ADHD is  forgetfulness. My grandson continually forgot to take his homework to school last year. He forgot to take out the trash – biweekly. He forgot to bring his permission slips home. He forgot that he isn’t permitted to wallop his younger brother.

It’s easy for a frustrated parent to hang scare quotes around the word forgot: Oh, yeah! He “forgot” to take out the trash. (And so on.) But, when ADHD is involved, there is more to the picture than that. (Okay, maybe the walloping has to be considered separately!)

“Working memory is the most immediate, shortest-term memory. It stores what you are paying attention to in the moment and helps you hold on to information that you are processing and will act on soon, like remembering a phone number while you dial it. It also lets you hold a task in mind while you work on it – thinking about cleaning your room while actually doing it.”[1]

“Having a weak working memory in addition to being easily distracted leads to challenges in retaining information.”[2] This might manifest itself, for instance, in difficulty remembering “isolated facts, names and dates in subjects like history, science, math or foreign language. It could even involve the visual memory which would mean the written symbols of letters and numbers.”[3]

What to do?

Here are some practical steps to help improve memory, which may give the brain heightened abilities to forge neural links that include new material.

Make Connections

There are several paths to traverse.[4]

Get Emotional – Connect the new material to something emotional, such as a story, a character or a situation that your child has experienced. For example, read a short biography about a person that has struggled to succeed. How did he overcome and triumph? How does it show that he can triumph too?

Develop Creativity – Connect the material in a creative way. Children and teens with ADHD crave novelty. Finding new ways for your child to work with the material can stimulate the brain and help in remembering it. Try hands-on activities, graphic organizers, drawing symbols or pictures to represent some of the information and using flash cards.

Capture the Senses – Connect the new facts to sensory experiences. We receive information through our five senses. The more senses that are incorporated into an activity, the fuller the learning experience and the more memorable it is. An under-used sense is the sense of smell. The scent of peppermint can be a stimulant to the brain. Use it in aromatherapy or munch on peppermint candy while working. Help them zero in on the important facts by using colorful post-it notes.

Create Mnemonics – “Mnemonics,” of course, are aids that improve may a person’s ability to memorize. There are many different kinds. Here are just a few.

  • Acronyms-This helps recall by using the first letter of each word. The most used example is HOMES-Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior- the 5 Great Lakes.
  • Acrostics- These are phrases starting with the first letter of each item. The one that comes to mind is from music-EGBDF-Every Good Boy Does Fine.
  • Rhyming – Rhyming phrases can stick in your head, like “i” before “e” except after “c”. It’s alright to rearrange or find synonyms for some of the words.
  • Chaining[5] – “Chaining is a linking mnemonic that consists of developing a story or image that connects pieces of information you need to remember. Each item leads you to recall the next one.” For example, if you had to remember to pick up a box of tissue, tea and eggs, a story might be -the tissue floated across the tea to grab the eggs.

Build in Movement – Movement can increase motivation, retention and energy all the while decreasing stress. It also assists the nervous system’s ability to “share” information with both sides of the brain (called “traversing the midline”), thus making it more likely that a given piece of information will go into your long-term memory.

Use Games and Activities to Improve Memory

Believe it or not, engaging in games and other “fun” activities can actually improve memory skills. This is especially true if the activities are conducted in relaxed environments. You could introduce the game (or whatever) during predictably low-stress times – for example, times (unlike normal school hours) when he or she is unburdened with having to pay strict attention to something.[6]

Games and activities should be tailored somewhat to age and skill levels. But they need not be complicated. Some ideas include the following.

  • Tell them a list of some items, like foods. Then have them repeat the list back to you, but in reverse order. If they seem to have a difficult time, ask them if they are visualizing the foods as they are mentioned. The imagination is a powerful memory aid.
  • Have your child keep track of and red and black cars as you drive. Alternatively, have them count squirrels and bunnies as you walk. Suggest that they keep track of each color or animal by using a letter/number system – B1, B2 (etc.) for black cars, and R1, R2 for red ones (and so on).
  • Estimate the answer to a math problem before solving it. Did they come close?
  • Take notes! Taking notes is hard for anyone with working-memory trouble. To practice, have them take notes when there is less pressure. For instance, during family movie night, have them make a list of the movie suggestions as titles are called out.

Practice Focus to Improve Memory[7]

Sometimes the difficulty is not with the memory per se, but rather a problem of not paying close attention to whatever is supposed to be remembered. Obviously, you need to pay attention to something before you would be able to recall it later. Here are some ideas that work on both problems. Many of these involve combining physical activities with mental tasks.

  • Play catch as you rehearse facts that your child is learning or directions that your child has been told to carry out. Have him or her repeat a fact or direction every time he or she throws the ball.
  • Use the game Freeze! Focus! Briefly, the rules of the game as follows. When he or she is least expecting it, you will call out “freeze; focus!” For the next 10 seconds (or more), your child will have to stand motionless – that is, “freeze.” During this interval, he or she is supposed to pay careful attention to his or her surroundings. When time is up, he or she then has to describe to you what was seen while he or she was frozen. To make the game more academic, you could hang signs around the room with definitions, informational cards, vocabulary words, and so forth. On this version of the game, when you shout “freeze; focus,” he or she has to read as much as he can then repeat whatever is remembered.[8]
  • Utilize music to harness or “tap into” memory. For example, create a simple tune that helps him or her recall letters as he or she spells a word. Or clap out a beat as your kids do a chore. Many people, teens especially, perform better on various tasks when listening to music. If they are listening to music, they seem to be able to focus better. This doesn’t pertain to all kids, so it would be wise to say that you will give your teen a trial run with it to see if they improve.[9] Additionally, and intuitively, not all music will be equally helpful in all circumstances.[10]
  • Do all sorts of puzzles. The ones that you actually touch and put together have a lot of value, but so do word games and logic puzzles. These sort of “brain teasers” and puzzles have kids using their minds to come up with answers or to make deductions.
  • Make your child’s day into a story. He or she becomes the “star” of their own movie script! What did the star do today day?
  • Rehearse! Finally, as the old adage has it: repetitio est mater studiorum (“repetition is the mother of learning”). Repeat information over and over to memorize it. It works.

Keep Their General Good Health in Mind

Make sure your child or teen gets enough rest and exercise. Get up and stretch; move around; jog in place. Even a few minutes of simple activity during the day can help give the ADHD brain a break, and it aids circulation to the rest of the body.

Diet is important also. It’s critical. I know it is harder to monitor what a teenager eats than to keep tabs on a younger child, but it may help to try to keep fresh fruit, veggies and other healthy snacks around. If healthy options are available, they are more likely to be chosen. Take it easy on the cookies, cakes, and junk foods. Sugar is an enemy to concentration.

Your child’s working memory typically improves with age, but only into their late 20s. Then they see a decrease (by about 5%) every decade. This is often not noticeable or obvious, because we have accumulated a bag of “tricks” to compensate (i.e., helps such as grocery lists and planners). Because this decline is inevitable, and because children and teens may not yet have developed these “tricks,” we have to teach them.[11] We have to teach them to use their calendars and planners. We have to model how to plan for long-term projects and we have to illustrate methods of studying for tests. But, most of all, we need to help them develop or find the methods and strategies that are going to work for them.

Notes:

[1]ADDitude Editors, You’ll Never Learn If You Can’t Remember, ADDitude Inside the ADHD Mind https://www.additudemag.com/slideshows/working-memory-tips-to-make-learning-stick/

[2]Melinda Boring, “You Would Forget Your Head…” ADDitude Inside the ADHD Mind https://www.additudemag.com/improve-memory-adhd-child/

[3]John F. Taylor PhD, Helping Your ADHD Child: Hundreds of Practical Solutions for Parents and Teachers of ADHD Children and Teens (With or Without Hyperactivity) Three Rivers Press 2001

[4]Melinda Boring, “You Would Forget Your Head…” ADDitude Inside the ADHD Mind https://www.additudemag.com/improve-memory-adhd-child/

[5]Esther Heerema, Try These 9 Types of Mnemonics to Improve Your Memory VeryWell health June 27, 2018 https://www.verywellhealth.com/memory-tip-1-keyword-mnemonics-98466

[6]Beth Guadagni, 5 Memory Games to Play at Home, ADDitude https://www.additudemag.com/5-memory-games-to-play-at-home/

[7]Amanda Morin, 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Child’s Focus Understood for Learning and Attention issues https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/child-learning-disabilities/add-adhd/tips-improve-focus-kids-with-adhd-attention-deficit#slide-1

[8] A police officer once told me about a version of this game that she plays with her daughter in order to hone her daughter’s powers of observation and her awareness of her surroundings.

[9]Kenny Handelman,MD Attention Difference Disorder- How to Turn Your ADHD Child or Teen’s Differences into Strengths p. 100 Morgan James Publishing March 2011

[10] For example, while “heavy metal” or “rock” music might help a person better perform strenuous physical tasks, it is unlikely to provide any assistance to memory-work. Classical music is perhaps better suited for that sort of thing.

[11]ADDitude Editors, You’ll Never Learn if You Can’t Remember ADDitude

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