Try, try again... and again, and again, and again, and again

[ciroccoj]

Days like today I really can't deal with Justin's memory. So many things are so easy for him to learn... and so impossible to keep. And the things that are difficult to learn are agonizing, because it takes him forever... and he still forgets them almost instantly.

He spent so, so long learning the first line of his Christmas carol last week. Over and over and over and over and over and over till I just wanted to scream.

Spent even longer learning the second line this week. Finally got it, went to practice both lines together... and found that he'd forgotten the first one completely.

It's not so bad in math, though I could've done without the fifth time I taught him how to multiply. And the (so far) at least seven times he's learned long division have not exactly been a picnic either. But at least he gets those, and does so quickly. Music and languages are like a special form of torture for both of us. He wants, so much, to learn them, but it's so painful to see all that effort expended to no avail whatsoever that I've dropped French altogether and massively scaled back Spanish and music.

Why can't he retain anything? How can he be so incredibly bright, and so slow at the same time?

Comments

[dubiousprospects.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Sounds like he isn't forming long-term memories out of short-term memories, which in turn implies brain chemistry a bit out of whack.

I'd consider having a neurologist look at him, really, just to be sure. And otherwise make sure he gets enough complex grease in his diet; that's basically what brains are, and it's tough to get enough for a growth spurt on many diets. (fish oil, flax seed oil, non-lean beef, stuff like that.)

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Well, he's been checked over by a lot of people, including having had CT scans and MRIs and gone over by a psychologists... but new ideas are always welcome :)

[dubiousprospects.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Well, it really is amazing how much complex grease you can go through while growing a brain. Modern "lean" diets aren't the best for this. (lots of effort to cut the fat content of beef and pork has gone on, for instance.) So you might want to try giving him flax seed oil or something like that. Or getting him seen by a neurologist; lots of stuff that's purely chemical, not structural, and wouldn't show in a CT scan or an MRI. (I've been checked for most of this due to what turned out to be a diet problem that was poisoning me and producing a great many really strange symptoms.) The other think that comes to mind is that there are basically three learning styles; visual, auditory, and tactile. For some tactile learners, tactile takes large muscle movement; fine manual dexterity won't trigger it very well. So they retain things like paddling a canoe or a martial arts form really easily, but have trouble with writing or musical instruments or verbal instructions because there's no pattern of motion to which the individual elements of learning can be connected. The other thing about tactile learners is that they remember things by shape, mass, and sensation; they don't remember verbal instructions. So retention is related to sequences of stuff they can remember, and if that isn't a continuous chain (like anything else anybody remembers; if it's more than 2 hops away from something known, you're not going to retain it) it won't stick, and repetition won't make it stick This is one of the explanations given for the standard start-of-form/end-of-form gestures in martial arts; those are a hook for the tactile learners. All the retention problems you're describing Justin as having sound like classic tactile learning retention issues.

[ladystarstruck.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's not a memory issue so much as it is performance anxiety? Can he quote movies and sing songs just fine if they aren't school related, that you aren't quizzing him on?

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Oh God, I wish. No, it's an all-over thing. He does sometimes remember things very well - be it Ozzie songs or the meanings of all the different taekwon-do patterns - but a whole lot of the things he learns disappear as if they'd never existed, whether he's being tested or not.