The child has a bad memory. If a child has a bad memory...

- Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
- How can I help my child prepare his homework?

Before entering school and during the first period of education, children often develop difficulties that parents did not pay much attention to before. After all, to successfully master the school curriculum, it is not enough to be a “good, obedient boy” or a “sweet, cheerful girl.” In addition to these wonderful qualities, one must also have special educational skills.

In the practice of child psychologists, a lot of requests are related precisely to the fact that a child, who previously completely satisfied his parents, turns out to be insufficiently prepared for school. This article provides some advice that is given to moms and dads in such cases. They will be useful to many parents who do not have the opportunity to receive individual consultation with a psychologist.

What to do if a child has difficulty learning poetry, if the kindergarten teacher or teacher complains that he does not remember the material she gives in class? Is it possible to develop children's memory?

In this case, you can achieve a lot by using special techniques for memorization. The most important of them is figurative representation what you need to remember, attracting a wide variety of associations. One of the techniques that helps to learn this is based on teaching the child to create drawings that reflect the material being learned. It is carried out like this.

The child is asked to “play an interesting game”:

I will tell you short stories, and you will remember them. In order not to forget anything, you will draw a simple picture for each such story.

Then several simple, unrelated phrases are given to memorize, for example: “The wolf ran out of the forest. The girl was given a doll. Kolya and Masha were playing in the yard. Yesterday it rained, and today the sun is shining.” After each phrase (“story”) there is a long pause so that the child has time to draw a picture to remember it. It is necessary to explain to him that the drawings should be as simple as possible, that there is no need to try to make them beautiful and detailed: this is not a drawing exercise, but a memory game. The main thing is to make the drawing quickly. If the child gets too carried away by the drawing process itself (and at first this is almost inevitable), then you should stop him by saying: “In my opinion, what you drew is already enough to remember. Now listen to the next story."

When creating your first drawings, you will need the help of an adult. Most likely, he will have to suggest their content and encourage the child to limit himself to an extremely schematic image.

How will we remember that it rained yesterday? Let's draw it and cross it out: after all, today it is no longer coming. But we won’t cross out the sun: it’s shining today.

The result will be something like this:

You should not give more than three or four phrases in one lesson. You can remember them on the same day after a few hours or the next day. The child is given his drawings, and he “reads” the “stories” told to him from them. This may also require the help of an adult. For example, if he says: “The rain has stopped and the sun has come out,” then you need to ask him a leading question: “What did we say - when did it rain? That’s right, “it rained yesterday”... What next?” Regardless of how much help the child needed to correctly reproduce the phrases, you need to praise him: “See how well you remembered everything! This means that you have recorded all the stories well with drawings.”

It is advisable to conduct such classes daily or every other day, but no more than one lesson per day. After some time, drawings will no longer be necessary; it will be enough to discuss “what could be drawn to remember the story.” Thanks to such a discussion, the child learns to visualize the memorized material, which will greatly help him in the future at school.

If memory is poor, parents should be especially careful in selecting the material offered to the child for memorization. We must try to minimize its volume, achieving not verbatim memorization, but a general understanding. In cases where verbatim memorization is still required, it must be done in small portions, ensuring that each portion is completely memorized before moving on to the next. For example, when memorizing a poem, it is convenient to learn it one quatrain at a time (without trying to repeat the entire poem). However, before you start learning, you need to go through the development of the plot in detail with your child, so that later the quatrains do not change places.

How to help a disorganized, disorganized child? What to do if he doesn’t finish anything, starts and quits, doesn’t know how to concentrate, is inattentive?

With the complaints described, it is necessary to teach the child to plan his actions. It should become a mandatory but short stage preceding each action. “Tell me how you will do it” - with such sentences an adult can encourage the child to plan. It can relate to building from cubes (what to build, what building material will be needed for this), to putting away toys (what to put where, in what order), to drawing, making crafts from paper and scrap materials - in general, to any children's activities.

By highlighting a separate stage of planning as preparation for action, an adult must ensure that plans are implemented so that action is not replaced by its planning. The work must be completed. To increase the value of the results obtained, it is useful to attract the attention of others to them. Show other family members a structure built from cubes, hang an applique made by the child or his drawing on the wall, and attract the attention of friends who come to visit.

All organizational aspects of children's activities should be brought to automaticity. Such individual automatisms make it possible to identify islands of order in the general chaos of the behavior of a disorganized child. Where to start, which area of ​​children's disorganization to streamline and automate first - preparing lessons, the morning ritual of getting ready for school or kindergarten, evening cleaning of toys - parents will decide for themselves. Just don’t grab everything at once and expect immediate results. Each individual automatism must be carefully practiced. A child who does not have self-organization skills needs first maximum, and then gradually decreasing help from adults. If it is always difficult for him to fulfill organizational requirements, then, consequently, they are too high: parents are in a hurry and show inappropriate impatience.

To develop organization and attention, you can offer special tasks aimed at learning sample analysis , correlating it with the result obtained, finding and correcting errors . Here, for example, is the task “Where Pinocchio went wrong”:

Malvina wanted to teach Pinocchio to draw beautiful patterns. She drew a pattern and told him: “Draw exactly the same.” But Pinocchio was distracted all the time, and he got it right and then wrong. Well, find where Pinocchio’s mistakes are and help him correct them.

Patterns might look something like this:

Similar tasks can be given on other materials. For example, another time Malvina may instruct Pinocchio to make a building out of cubes, or assemble a model from a “constructor”, or arrange pictures in a certain order (for this you need to have two identical sets of pictures), or make an applique. The habit of checking and correcting other people's mistakes will subsequently lead to the ability to check yourself, and this is the basis for paying attention to your actions.

Memory is the most popular topic of conversation between pediatricians and psychologists. Discussions about its origin have been going on for a long time. No less popular is the question of the effect on children's memory. Is it really possible to change the situation if a child’s poor memory is obvious?

Photo: Bad memory - is it possible to change the situation

How is a child's memory formed?

You can talk seriously about children's memory only by the age of nine months. Until this moment, parents can note the following: removing a bright toy from the crumbs’ field of view can cause him to lose all interest. The baby will not look for her, and after a few minutes he will completely forget about her existence. And only after reaching nine months the situation changes radically: the child will begin to look around in an attempt to discover what is missing. This suggests that he has a memory, and a trace of his favorite toy remains in it. The nine-month-old toddler clearly understands that since there was a toy, it must be somewhere close.

Starting from the age of nine months, the child’s memory is formed, and subsequently the ability to remember information develops.

Photo: Memory is formed from the age of nine months

Features of memory in childhood

Memory in children is syncretic, and this is its main feature. In other words, the child perceives the world in its entirety: actions, objects, emotions and images are inextricably linked with each other. At the same time, the impressions received by the child look much brighter than those of adults, which allows the memory to be long-term. The child’s ability to remember is also noticeably higher. Again, this is dictated by an inextricable union with emotions.

Children's memory is a true gift. Each of us receives it at the very beginning of our journey along the road of life. The main thing is not to miss the opportunity to take full advantage of the gift. Children, receiving an incredible amount of information, form their own worldview and worldview, which remains with them for life.

Photo: Children receive a huge amount of information

When problems arise...

For the first time, the child’s parents can talk about problems with memory when the child reaches senior preschool age. At this time, many children begin to attend school preparation classes, where they are faced with the need to memorize the material proposed by the teacher. Parents' concerns in such a situation are not in vain. In fact, problems with memorization in the future can greatly harm the child, causing delays in learning and development, or even causing ridicule from peers, which, in turn, leads to.

Still, don’t panic too much without understanding the situation. To begin with, parents should identify the following points:

• Is it really true that a child cannot answer directly posed questions?
• Does he refuse to perform the simplest tasks?
• Does the child seem distracted and inattentive?
• Is it difficult for him to follow instructions?

If at least one of the questions is answered positively, it won’t hurt to take the development of children’s memory seriously. But first, it is extremely important to understand the cause of the problem.

Why does a child have a bad memory?

Children's memory may suffer for the following reasons:

Wrong daily routine

No matter how sad it may sound, modern children are no less tired than their parents. Fatigue tends to accumulate. A completely incorrect daily routine also adds fuel to the fire. Plus, children are increasingly less likely to receive a balanced diet, live in environmentally unfavorable areas and do not have the opportunity to fully recuperate at night. Activities, homework and friendship with gadgets take up almost all of my time. Because of this, the child has absolutely no time to rest, so adults should definitely think about spending enough time in the fresh air.

An incorrectly planned daily routine for a child of any age becomes the cause of his absent-mindedness, irritability, and lack of concentration. As a result, memory suffers.

Photo: Child's daily routine

Solving the problem is not that difficult. It is enough to normalize your daily routine, and memory improvement will not be long in coming.

Lack of nutrients

Child nutrition plays an important role in pediatrics. There is a simple explanation for this: a lack of vitamins, minerals and other beneficial substances has the most detrimental effect on the functioning of the brain. The amount of fluid the child receives is equally important.

The menu should contain healthy foods: fatty fish, carrots, walnuts, legumes and greens. Otherwise, the child will experience constant fatigue, become lethargic and apathetic. In the future, the situation will worsen, which will lead to a deterioration in the functioning and development of the growing organism.

In addition to healthy foods and sufficient fluids, children should receive vitamins concentrated in special pharmacy complexes. Drugs should be selected based on age.

Photo: Children need to get vitamins

Poor or no memory training

If parents closely monitor the child’s daily routine and pay enough attention to his diet, but memory problems are present, another reason is quite possible - insufficient memory training. The situation seems quite solvable provided that regular classes begin. At the same time, parents should rely not only on specialists working with children in special development centers, but also show their own interest in the result.

Parents should be especially concerned when problems with memory and speech are detected. In this case, contacting a neurologist is inevitable.

Photo: Contact a neurologist

Other causes of memory impairment in a child include psychological trauma and stress. And indeed, very often trying to find help from a pediatrician and other doctors, the child’s parents should do something completely different - turn to a psychologist!

Often, memory impairment in a child is caused by previous diseases of various etiologies.

How to train your memory?

It is useful to start training children's memory from the cradle. Rhymes and songs, fairy tales and short stories help in this matter. Experts in child psychology strongly recommend taking a closer look at folk tales, which involve many repetitions of words and phrases. Constantly hearing the same thing, the child involuntarily records what he heard in his memory.

When the baby can not only memorize, but also independently reproduce rhymes, adults should encourage this and often praise the baby for the work done. A situation of success will have an amazing effect on the child. He will strive to memorize the verse again and again in order to receive praise again. In this case, memory will develop just fine.

Photo: It is necessary to praise the baby more often for the work done

Communication is no less effective in the process of training a child’s memory.. Parents should talk to their child as often as possible, discussing any topics and taking an interest in the day. Let the child not only answer, but also listen. Adults are recommended to demonstrate something new to the child, while emotionally describing the object and focusing on minor details. A few days after the conversation, you need to ask the child about what he managed to remember.

The game is another important moment for memory training. , and games should be interesting.

Photo: It is necessary to play with your child every day

One of the simple but very effective games for memory training involves the child memorizing objects that are well known to him. Parents should place 4-5 objects of similar size in front of the little one and ask them to look at them for a few minutes. Then the baby must turn away so that mom or dad can pick up one of the items. Afterwards the child must remember what exactly is missing. Gradually, the game should become more complicated: the child is asked to determine not only the missing object, but also its location among the others (for example, first or third?).

Many memory development games can be purchased today in specialized stores. One of their number, which managed to prove itself in the best possible way, is called “Memory”. The essence of the game is to remember the location of two identical cards depicting cartoon characters, that is, well-known to the child.

Photo: Memory Game

Memory training is a labor-intensive and time-consuming process, so you shouldn’t expect too quick results. If after some time the improvements are not visible at all, you should seek help from a pediatric neurologist. In exceptional cases, poor memory may be a consequence of pathologies of a nervous nature. The doctor will be able to eliminate such troubles during a conversation with the child and his parents, as well as with the help of a special examination.

A timely resolution of a problem with poor memory in a child will help eliminate unpleasant moments at an older age!

Memory disorders: why memory becomes bad, normal and connection with diseases, treatment

Memory is an important function of our central nervous system to perceive received information and store it in some invisible “cells” of the brain in reserve, in order to retrieve and use it in the future. Memory is one of the most important abilities of a person’s mental activity, therefore the slightest memory impairment burdens him, he is knocked out of the usual rhythm of life, suffering himself and irritating those around him.

Memory impairment is most often perceived as one of the many clinical manifestations of some neuropsychic or neurological pathology, although in other cases forgetfulness, absent-mindedness and poor memory are the only signs of a disease, the development of which no one pays attention to, believing that a person is this way by nature .

The big mystery is human memory

Memory is a complex process that occurs in the central nervous system and involves the perception, accumulation, retention and reproduction of information received at different periods of time. We think most about the properties of our memory when we need to learn something new. The result of all efforts made during the learning process depends on how someone manages to catch, hold, and perceive what they see, hear or read, which is important when choosing a profession. From a biological point of view, memory can be short-term and long-term.

Information received in passing or, as they say, “it went into one ear and out of the other” is short-term memory, in which what is seen and heard is postponed for several minutes, but, as a rule, without meaning or content. So, the episode flashed and disappeared. Short-term memory does not promise anything in advance, which is probably good, because otherwise a person would have to store all the information that he does not need at all.

However, with certain efforts by a person, information that has fallen into the zone of short-term memory, if you hold your gaze on it or listen and delve into it, will go into long-term storage. This also happens against a person’s will if certain episodes are often repeated, have special emotional significance, or for various reasons occupy a separate place among other phenomena.

When assessing their memory, some people claim that their memory is short-term, because everything is remembered, assimilated, retold in a couple of days, and then just as quickly forgotten. This often happens when preparing for exams, when information is put aside only for the purpose of reproducing it to decorate the grade book. It should be noted that in such cases, turning again to this topic when it becomes interesting, a person can easily restore seemingly lost knowledge. It’s one thing to know and forget, and another thing to not receive information. But here everything is simple - the acquired knowledge, without much human effort, was transformed into sections of long-term memory.

Long-term memory analyzes everything, structures it, creates volume and purposefully stores it for future use indefinitely. Everything is stored in long-term memory. Memorization mechanisms are very complex, but we are so accustomed to them that we perceive them as natural and simple things. However, we note that for the successful implementation of the learning process, in addition to memory, it is important to have attention, that is, to be able to concentrate on the necessary objects.

It is common for a person to forget past events after some time if he does not periodically retrieve his knowledge in order to use it, so the inability to remember something should not always be attributed to a memory impairment. Each of us has experienced the feeling when “it’s spinning in your head, but doesn’t come to mind,” but this does not mean that serious disturbances have occurred in memory.

Why do memory lapses happen?

The causes of memory and attention impairment in adults and children may be different. If a child with congenital mental retardation immediately has problems with learning, then he will come to adulthood with these disorders. Children and adults can react differently to the environment: the child’s psyche is more delicate, so it endures stress more difficult. In addition, adults have long learned what a child is still trying to master.

As sad as it may be, the trend towards the use of alcoholic beverages and drugs by teenagers, and even young children left without parental supervision, has become frightening: cases of poisoning are not so rarely recorded in reports from law enforcement agencies and medical institutions. But for a child’s brain, alcohol is a powerful poison that has an extremely negative effect on memory.

True, some pathological conditions that are often the cause of absent-mindedness and poor memory in adults are usually excluded in children (Alzheimer's disease, atherosclerosis, osteochondrosis).

Causes of memory impairment in children

Thus, the causes of memory and attention impairment in children can be considered:

• Lack of vitamins;
• Asthenia;
• Frequent viral infections;
• Traumatic brain injuries;
• Stressful situations (dysfunctional family, despotism of parents, problems in the team that the child attends);
• Poor eyesight;
• Mental disorder;
• Poisoning, alcohol and drug use;
• Congenital pathology in which mental retardation is programmed (Down syndrome, etc.) or other (any) conditions (lack of vitamins or microelements, use of certain medications, changes in metabolic processes for the worse), contributing to the formation of attention deficit disorder, which, As you know, it does not improve memory.

Causes of problems in adults

In adults, the reason for poor memory, absent-mindedness and inability to concentrate for a long time are various diseases acquired during life:

1. Stress, psycho-emotional stress, chronic fatigue of both soul and body;
2. Acute and chronic;
3. Discirculatory;
4. cervical spine;
5. Traumatic brain injuries;
6. Metabolic disorders;
7. Hormonal imbalance;
8. GM tumors;
9. Mental disorders (depression, schizophrenia and many others).

Of course, anemia of various origins, lack of microelements, diabetes mellitus and other numerous somatic pathologies lead to impaired memory and attention, and contribute to the appearance of forgetfulness and absent-mindedness.

What types of memory disorders are there? Among them are dysmnesia(hypermnesia, hypomnesia, amnesia) – changes in memory itself, and paramnesia– distortion of memories, to which are added the patient’s personal fantasies. By the way, those around them, on the contrary, consider some of them to be a phenomenal memory rather than a violation of it. True, experts may have a slightly different opinion on this matter.

Dysmnesia

Phenomenal memory or mental disorder?

Hypermnesia– with such a violation, people remember and perceive quickly, information put aside many years ago pops up in memory for no reason, “rolls up”, returns to the past, which does not always evoke positive emotions. A person himself does not know why he needs to store everything in his head, but he can reproduce some long-past events down to the smallest detail. For example, an elderly person can easily describe in detail (down to the teacher’s clothes) individual lessons at school, retell the literary montage of a pioneer gathering, and it is not difficult for him to remember other details regarding his studies at the institute, professional activities, or family events.

Hypermnesia, present in a healthy person in the absence of other clinical manifestations, is not considered a disease; rather, on the contrary, this is precisely the case when they talk about phenomenal memory, although from the point of view of psychology, phenomenal memory is a slightly different phenomenon. People who have a similar phenomenon are able to remember and reproduce huge amounts of information that is not associated with any special meaning. These can be large numbers, sets of individual words, lists of objects, notes. Great writers, musicians, mathematicians and people in other professions that require genius abilities often have such a memory. Meanwhile, hypermnesia in a healthy person who does not belong to the cohort of geniuses, but has a high intelligence quotient (IQ), is not such a rare occurrence.

As one of the symptoms of pathological conditions, memory impairment in the form of hypermnesia occurs:

• For paroxysmal mental disorders (epilepsy);
• In case of intoxication with psychoactive substances (psychotropic drugs, narcotic drugs);
• In the case of hypomania - a condition similar to mania, but not reaching it in severity. Patients may experience increased energy, increased vitality, and increased ability to work. With hypomania, memory and attention disorders are often combined (disinhibition, instability, inability to concentrate).

Obviously, only a specialist can understand such subtleties and differentiate between normal and pathological conditions. The majority of us are average representatives of the human population, to whom “nothing human is alien,” but at the same time they do not change the world. Geniuses appear periodically (not every year and not in every locality), but they are not always immediately noticeable, because such individuals are often considered simply eccentrics. And finally (maybe not often?) among various pathological conditions there are mental illnesses that require correction and complex treatment.

Bad memory

Hypomnesia– this type is usually expressed in two words: “poor memory.”

Forgetfulness, absent-mindedness and poor memory are observed in asthenic syndrome, which, in addition to memory problems, is characterized by other symptoms:

1. Increased fatigue.
2. Nervousness, irritability with or without cause, bad mood.
3. Meteor dependence.
4. during the day and insomnia at night.
5. Changes in blood pressure.
6. Tides and others.
7. , weakness.

Asthenic syndrome, as a rule, is formed by another pathology, for example:

• Arterial hypertension.
• Previous traumatic brain injury (TBI).
• Atherosclerotic process.
• The initial stage of schizophrenia.

The cause of memory and attention impairments of the hypomnesia type can be various depressive states (there are too many to count), menopausal syndrome occurring with adaptation disorder, organic brain damage (severe head injury, epilepsy, tumors). In such situations, as a rule, in addition to hypomnesia, the symptoms listed above are also present.

“I remember here, I don’t remember here”

At amnesia It is not the entire memory that is lost, but individual fragments of it. As an example of this type of amnesia, I would like to recall the film by Alexander Sery “Gentlemen of Fortune” - “I remember here, I don’t remember here.”

However, not all amnesia looks like in the famous movie; there are more serious cases when memory is lost significantly and for a long time or forever, therefore among such memory disorders (amnesia) there are several types:

A special type of memory loss that cannot be controlled is progressive amnesia, representing a sequential loss of memory from the present to the past. The cause of memory destruction in such cases is organic atrophy of the brain, which occurs when Alzheimer's disease And . Such patients poorly reproduce traces of memory (speech disorders), for example, they forget the names of household objects that they use every day (a plate, a chair, a clock), but at the same time they know what they are intended for (amnestic aphasia). In other cases, the patient simply does not recognize the thing (sensory aphasia) or does not know what it is for (semantic aphasia). However, one should not confuse the habits of “zealous” owners to find a use for everything that is in the house, even if it is intended for completely different purposes (from an old kitchen clock in the form of a plate, you can make a beautiful dish or stand).

You have to invent something like this!

Paramnesia (memory distortion) are also classified as memory disorders, and among them the following types are distinguished:

• Confabulation, in which fragments of one’s own memory disappear, and their place is taken by stories invented by the patient and presented to him “in all seriousness,” since he himself believes in what he is talking about. Patients talk about their exploits, unprecedented achievements in life and work, and even sometimes about crimes.
• Pseudo-reminiscence- replacement of one memory with another event that actually took place in the patient’s life, only at a completely different time and under different circumstances (Korsakov’s syndrome).
• Cryptomnesia when patients, having received information from various sources (books, movies, stories of other people), pass it off as events they themselves experienced. In a word, patients, due to pathological changes, engage in involuntary plagiarism, which is characteristic of delusional ideas encountered in organic disorders.
• Echomnesia- a person feels (quite sincerely) that this event has already happened to him (or saw it in a dream?). Of course, similar thoughts sometimes visit a healthy person, but the difference is that patients attach special significance to such phenomena (“get hung up”), while healthy people simply quickly forget about it.
• Polympsest– this symptom exists in two versions: short-term memory loss associated with pathological alcohol intoxication (episodes from the past day are confused with long-past events), and the combination of two different events of the same period of time, in the end, the patient himself does not know what happened In fact.

As a rule, these symptoms in pathological conditions are accompanied by other clinical manifestations, therefore, if you notice signs of “déjà vu”, there is no need to rush to make a diagnosis - this also happens in healthy people.

Decreased concentration affects memory

Impaired memory and attention, loss of the ability to focus on specific objects include the following pathological conditions:

1. Attention instability– a person is constantly distracted, jumps from one object to another (disinhibition syndrome in children, hypomania, hebephrenia - a mental disorder that develops as a form of schizophrenia in adolescence);
2. Rigidity (slow switching) from one topic to another - this symptom is very characteristic of epilepsy (those who have communicated with such people know that the patient is constantly “stuck”, which makes it difficult to conduct a dialogue);
3. Lack of concentration- they say about such people: “That absent-minded person from Basseynaya Street!” That is, absent-mindedness and poor memory in such cases are often perceived as features of temperament and behavior, which, in principle, often corresponds to reality.

Undoubtedly a decrease in concentration, in particular, will negatively affect the entire process of memorizing and storing information, that is, on the state of memory as a whole.

Children forget faster

As for children, all these gross, permanent memory impairments, characteristic of adults and especially the elderly, are very rarely observed in childhood. Memory problems that arise due to congenital characteristics require correction and, with a skillful approach (as far as possible), may recede a little. There are many cases where the efforts of parents and teachers literally worked wonders for Down syndrome and other types of congenital mental retardation, but here the approach is individual and dependent on various circumstances.

It’s another matter if the baby was born healthy, and the problems appeared as a result of the troubles suffered. So here it is You can expect a child to have a slightly different reaction to different situations:

• Amnesia in children in most cases, it manifests itself as memory lapses in relation to individual memories of episodes that took place during the period of clouding of consciousness associated with unpleasant events (poisoning, coma, trauma) - it is not for nothing that they say that children quickly forget;
• Alcoholization in adolescence also does not proceed in the same way as in adults - lack of memories ( polympsests) to events occurring during intoxication, appears already in the first stages of drunkenness, without waiting for a diagnosis (alcoholism);
• Retrograde amnesia in children, as a rule, it affects a short period of time before injury or illness, and its severity is not as distinct as in adults, that is, memory loss in a child cannot always be noticed.

Most often, children and adolescents experience memory impairment of the dysmnesia type, which is manifested by a weakening of the ability to remember, store (retention) and reproduce (reproduction) received information. Disorders of this type are more noticeable in school-age children, as they affect school performance, adaptation in a team, and behavior in everyday life.

For children attending preschool institutions, symptoms of dysmnesia include problems with memorizing rhymes and songs; children cannot participate in children's matinees and holidays. Despite the fact that the child constantly attends kindergarten, every time he comes there, he cannot independently find his locker to change clothes; among other items (toys, clothes, a towel), he has difficulty finding his own. Dysmnestic disorders are also noticeable in the home environment: the child cannot tell what happened in the garden, forgets the names of other children, each time he perceives fairy tales read many times as if he was hearing them for the first time, does not remember the names of the main characters.

Transient impairments of memory and attention, along with fatigue, drowsiness and all sorts of autonomic disorders, are often observed in schoolchildren with various etiologies.

Before treatment

Before you begin to treat the symptoms of memory impairment, you need to make a correct diagnosis and find out what is causing the patient's problems. To do this, you need to get more information about his health:

1. What diseases does he suffer from? It may be possible to trace the connection between the existing pathology (or suffered in the past) with the deterioration of intellectual abilities;
2. Does he have a pathology that directly leads to memory impairment: dementia, cerebral vascular insufficiency, TBI (history), chronic alcoholism, drug disorders?
3. What medications is the patient taking and is memory impairment associated with the use of medications? Certain groups of pharmaceuticals, for example, benzodiazepines, have side effects of this kind, which, however, are reversible.

In addition, during the diagnostic search, it can be very useful to identify metabolic disorders, hormonal imbalances, and deficiencies of microelements and vitamins.

In most cases, when searching for the causes of memory loss, they resort to methods neuroimaging(CT, MRI, EEG, PET, etc.), which help to detect a brain tumor or hydrocephalus and, at the same time, differentiate vascular brain damage from degenerative one.

There is a need for neuroimaging methods also because memory impairment at first may be the only symptom of a serious pathology. Unfortunately, the greatest difficulties in diagnosis are presented by depressive conditions, which in other cases force one to prescribe a trial antidepressant treatment (to find out whether there is depression or not).

Treatment and correction

The normal aging process itself involves some decline in intellectual abilities: forgetfulness appears, memorization is not so easy, concentration of attention decreases, especially if the neck is “pinched” or the blood pressure rises, but such symptoms do not significantly affect the quality of life and behavior at home. Older people who adequately assess their age learn to remind themselves (and quickly remember) about current affairs.

In addition, many people do not neglect treatment with pharmaceuticals to improve memory.

There are now a number of drugs that can improve brain function and even help with tasks that require significant intellectual effort. First of all, this is (piracetam, fezam, vinpocetine, cerebrolysin, cinnarizine, etc.).

Nootropics are indicated for older people who have certain age-related problems that are not yet noticeable to others. Drugs in this group are suitable for improving memory in cases of cerebral circulation disorders caused by other pathological conditions of the brain and vascular system. By the way, many of these drugs are successfully used in pediatric practice.

However, nootropics are a symptomatic treatment, and to get the desired effect you need to strive for etiotropic treatment.

As for Alzheimer's disease, tumors, and mental disorders, the approach to treatment should be very specific - depending on the pathological changes and the reasons that led to them. There is no single recipe for all cases, so there is nothing to advise patients. You just need to contact a doctor, who, perhaps, before prescribing drugs to improve memory, will send you for additional examination.

Correction of mental disorders is also difficult in adults. Patients with poor memory, under the supervision of an instructor, memorize poetry, solve crosswords, practice solving logical problems, but the training, while bringing some success (the severity of mnestic disorders seems to have decreased), still does not produce particularly significant results.

Correction of memory and attention in children, in addition to treatment with various groups of pharmaceutical drugs, includes classes with a psychologist, exercises for memory development (poems, drawings, tasks). Of course, the child’s psyche is more mobile and better amenable to correction, unlike the adult psyche. Children have the prospect of progressive development, while older people only experience the opposite effect.

Video: bad memory - expert opinion

You shouldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that your child is lazy or completely incapable. Try to calmly figure out what the problem is and take the really necessary measures.

First of all, carefully analyze how busy your child is. Take everything into account - schoolwork, homework, all kinds of clubs, reading, watching television programs (they are also very tiring). Now think about how much time the child rests, spends time in the fresh air, how he eats, whether he has a strict daily routine, and whether he gets enough sleep.

Our children get tired just like adults. And fatigue has the ability to accumulate, and the lack of proper nutrition, a healthy lifestyle, work and rest schedule, plus excessive workload, does not allow the child to recover during night sleep. The result is absent-mindedness, inability to concentrate, difficulties at school, irritability, moodiness, etc.

The solution to this problem lies on the surface - normalize your child’s daily routine, control it, and soon you will see noticeable changes. And in difficult cases, be sure to consult a doctor so as not to deepen the stressful situation.

But it happens that the problem of school failure lies elsewhere - in untrained memory. And this can be solved if parents seriously engage in the development of their child’s memory, and not by reproaching or forcing him, but by helping and developing him.

Have you noticed that your child has difficulty expressing his thoughts when he tries to tell you something - he does not have enough words, he jumps from event to event and does not complete the thought? If a child has poorly developed speech, then he will inevitably have poor memory.

To develop speech in children, you need to talk to them and do this as often as possible. Ask your child about school affairs, ask clarifying questions, do not interrupt his attempts to explain something to you - listen to the end. Answers to your questions about the details of what happened cause the areas of the brain responsible for memory to become active and make them work. The more details you ask, the more the child strains and thereby trains his memory.

Try to memorize poems and do it with your child every day. Start with simple quatrains and gradually increase the size of the learned verses. It is very useful to learn foreign words and phrases. Every day a child should learn 2-3 new phrases or several new words. But at the same time, do not forget what you have already learned - repeat it too, as it is very important.

Develop your child's associative memory. To do this, in conversations with him, pay his attention to particulars: color, smell, individual objects, their description, size. This way you develop images, and they are remembered more easily. Anything can come into play here - a big snowman in the yard, the smell of fresh bread from a bakery, the beginning of a snowfall, etc. By comparing different events, features of objects, smells, the child also trains his memory and learns to connect various facts into a single whole. (For example, it started snowing when you walked past a bakery where there was a smell of delicious fresh bread, and nearby children were making a large snow woman with a carrot for a nose.)

Figurative thinking will also help the child remember poetry better. The lines will fit into memory much faster if the child understands and imagines what is being said. And you must explain to him what this or that word or action means, what exactly the poem is about. Imagining a horse barely wandering through the freshly fallen snow, the lines “... His horse, sensing the snow, trudges along at a trot somehow...” will be imprinted in the child’s memory much faster than with mindless, stupid repetition.

It is important not to forget about visual memory. Its development can be helped by mentally drawn pictures that the child imagines when memorizing texts. In addition, it is important to teach the child to pay attention to the type of text itself - how and where on the page the poem is located in the textbook, what pictures are nearby, what color the letters are, etc. Having remembered the location of the rules in the textbook, the child will automatically remember the text.

Of course, memory training in children is a long and labor-intensive process, requiring time, effort, and, most importantly, systematicity. But don’t leave everything to chance if you don’t take care of your child now, when schoolwork is still simple and small in scope. Otherwise, you will be faced with much bigger problems, in which the child’s own fault will be small.

Hello! Ekaterina is with you! In the last article, I told you about the dangerous consequences it can lead to. Now I will answer a sore point that many parents face. Today I will try to answer the question: what to do if a child has a bad memory?

Learn and remember while playing! A huge collection of case studies - lessons for different ages - find out more

Children are very active, they explore the world around them and absorb all information like sponges. But there are so many new and interesting things around that they simply do not have time to filter and save what they see and hear. With age, this problem worsens and if the first signs appeared, for example, at 4 years old, then at 7 years old, lack of attention can seriously spoil mental development. After all, when a child goes to school, the flow of information increases, and a lot needs to be memorized. Therefore, it is so important to know what to do if a child has no memory.

To determine if there is a problem, answer the following questions:

• He has good relationships with his peers.
• Doesn't answer the direct question.
• Looks inattentive.
• It is difficult to do something according to instructions.
• Can't do difficult tasks.
• A job where you need to store and process information is not easy.

If you answered yes to most of them, then your child has a problem.

Causes of poor memory and methods of dealing with them

Neurosis

The disease can occur either at one year or at 14 years of age. Neurosis affects the brain and nervous system. It is difficult for a child to understand what is happening around him, and he has difficulty memorizing. Your doctor may prescribe special exercises and treatments. But if at 5 years old you can still get by with exercises alone, then at 12, drug therapy is also required.

Heredity

Intellectual abilities are passed on to children from their parents. If you remember that as a child you also had trouble remembering everything, then your child may have the same problems. Therefore, from childhood, try to play logic games with your child, take him to early development groups, where a specialist will train his memory in a playful way.

Lack of sleep

This reason is more common from 6-8 years old, when the child goes to school and does not have enough time to sleep. It is important to establish a rest and activity regime, sleeping at least 8 hours. If he has trouble falling asleep, give him baths with calming herbs. Also make sure that at night the child does not watch a lot of cartoons, does not play computer games and reduces physical activity. Build a bedtime routine so that your baby’s brain responds to habitual signals and initiates rest mode. The main ritual of falling asleep should be reading a book. At the age of 9, a child can already retell what he read in the morning and analyze the text from the point of view of whether it is correct or not, how it is in life, what will happen next, etc. This will be an excellent memory workout.

Hyperactivity

This problem is relevant from 3 to approximately 10 years. This is a common condition of the central nervous system. Due to the fact that it is simply difficult for a child to sit in one place, he is constantly distracted by something, and problems arise with memorization. Usually, neurologists advise focusing more on visual memory - you can simply ask the child to remember the way to school or kindergarten and give directions the next time he goes there. Or at home ask him questions about what he saw on the way home. In addition, pay more attention to your child and send him to sports clubs. Also, a pediatrician or neurologist can prescribe special medications for the child, but this is a last resort.

Lack of training

If a child has a very bad memory, then you don’t train it at all. The brain, like the body, also needs to be constantly developed. At an early age, logic games and early development clubs will help solve this problem, and at school, you can include mathematical problems and learn poetry by heart.

Nutrition

Make sure your diet is complete and balanced. Start taking vitamins (especially in winter and spring). This way the brain will receive maximum energy to remember incoming information.

Lack of interest

Don't know why a child might have a bad memory? Maybe he's just not interested. In an adult, important information ends up in long-term memory, and everything else ends up in short-term memory and quickly disappears from there. Therefore, it is important to interest the baby in learning new things and learning something. Here, a game form and incentives will always come to the rescue.

Searching for information

Maybe you're just putting too much stress on your child? In the modern world, it is so fashionable to send your child to many clubs that he simply does not have time for games. Leave only the most important activities and unload the schedule so that the child’s brain has time to process the information received during the day.

Overwork