Boosting your child’s memory
MEMORY POWERS OF BABIES:
Your baby stops crying when you
sing a song for him, which is an indication that he is memorizing your voice,
the song, the style of singing and so many things. So, a small cute baby has
already developed a good deal of memory. Many of us would be knowing about
Brave Abhimanyu of Mahabharata learned to crack the six layers of chakravyuh, one
of the most difficult vyuha (Military formation) in the womb of his mother at
time when his father was telling the secret of chakravyuh to her pregnant
mother.
Most of us might have noted
that with the development of age, children start recognizing looks of family
members, words and colors, the names of his friends. One fine evening you
notice your little baby singing few lines of his favorite rhymes. No doubt,
after a few months, he is expected to memorize tables, vocabulary and then
general knowledge like names of president prime minister and all that. We all
as parent enjoy their memorizing and reproducing abilities and many of us might
be sharing these moments within social circles also. Whether, mental exercises
can further develop your child’s memory is still a matter of debate among
psychologist.
Memory based on duration up to
which it is stored is called short term memory (short duration of seconds) and
long term memory. Long-term memory can further be implicit memory, the type
which is held by mind but not expressible like skill of baby care. Explicit memory
is that which we can show like names, answer to questions, math theorems, etc.
Mostly when we think of memory, we think about explicit or declarative memory. Babies
have implicit memories from a very early age. However, we mostly watch for
their explicit or declarative memory development.
How many of us be remembering
some incident of our life when we were less than two year old, chances of such
memory is very bleak. This fact is known as infantile amnesia. What I think is
such memories may be mostly of implicit type, which cannot be expressed, like
those of love and hugs of mother, care by different people, etc.
A baby, one year old, visited
the immunization center after six months and started crying in advance before
the doctor approached, It was definitely a memory and it is now widely believed
that such memories are well developed in the childhood also.
MEMORY BOOSTERS FOR YOUR TODDLER:
1. Sing Rhymes with actions with breaks in
between: You may sing Johny Johny Yes Papa and then next time Jo…
Jo,…Ye…Pa… with the same action. Toddler imitates the action and then may be at
suitable time even words. That way his memory capacity is getting expanded.
2. Show photos, say names and later show photo
and ask for name, details: Photos of family members, the bay has not
seen for some time and tell her the name. Later ask her to recall the name
showing the photo.
3. Tell simple short stories: Story
telling with pictures is good for sequential memory and looking at reactions of
child you can feel that he is having that story in his mind.
4. Memory of places inside house: List
out favorite items of baby and tell him to keep it at a particular place inside
house like on rack of center table or somewhere he can easily get it. At some
later time call him to take that object, help him to get to that place through
hints.
5. Memory of multiple objects: Ask a
question from baby: Who loves you more, mummy or papa, he tells Papa. Now
reverse the sequence, Papa or mummy, he says mummy now. That way, he is not
memorizing the first term by the time second one is uttered or he is able to
retrieve only one at a time. Take two of his favorite objects, like say I will
give you Teddy and chocolate. Ask him, which things he wants, help through
hints if required. Increase number of things to three, four and so on.
6. Repetition: Repetition
of stories, rhymes and then testing for its reproducing abilities increase the
memory retrieval.
7. Focus on child interest and
mix some things of greater interest wisely.
8. Involve during outings: Ask
him something on the way, on streets like which thing is this. How is this
thing looking, etc.
9. Make things interesting
10. Fix specific place for their things and
toys ask them to keep at proper place.
11. Use chunking for memorizing by breaking any
activity in small chunks. Break rhymes into paragraph and then
integrate.
12. Have patience and adjust strategies
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