Ways to Help Your Child With Memory & Recall – From a Speech Pathologist Perspective
Does it sometimes feel like pulling teeth when asking your child what they did at school or what they did during a play date with a friend? Does your child have a hard time remembering a lot of things? As a parent, you have surely received the infamous “I don’t know” answer. But, maybe there’s something bigger going on that you might not realize when it comes to your kiddo being able to recall and memorize past events.
Here are 5 engaging and fun activities that you and your child can do to help them build their memory skills!
- Describing a Picture: Use a picture in a book, a magazine or even your phone to work on this activity! Have your child look at the picture for 2-3 minutes. They can name things they see out loud. After the 3 minutes are up, take the picture away and have them name 5 things they REMEMBER from the picture. Give them a sticker or high five for each item they remembered!
- Simon Says: Who doesn’t love a little game of Simon Says? Put a little spin on it and add 2-3 sequential directions. (i.e. “Simon Says: Clap your hands, pat your belly and stomp your feet”). Before you have your child follow through with the directions, have them TELL you the directions back first! This helps them memorize short directives and places them in temporal order before putting them into action.
- Story Time: Tell your child a story (even better – a made up SILLY story!) Keep them engaged. Once you’re done telling them the story, have them try to tell you 3 things they remember from the story and use details (e.g. “The purple hairy monster ate 3 bananas and fell asleep in the backyard! The next day, the dog was barking and woke the hairy monster up! He started running and fell on the banana peels!) See if your child can use any details from the story (hairy, purple, three, bananas, dog, outside, run, fall, banana peels). Also, see if they can tell it to you back in the appropriate order.
- Telephone Game: It’s a spin to the old-school Telephone game. Use a pretend phone (or real phone, if you’re daring) and give a list of 4-8 numbers for your child to memorize. Ask them to state the numbers back to you before they type in the numbers. Make sure they are in correct the order!
- Special Detective: Play a detective game to find the Missing Word. Try to say a list of words for your child. To make it easier, say a list of 5 words within the same category (e.g. Fruits: apples, kiwi, oranges, grapes, strawberries). Say the list again but LEAVE one of the words out. Play silly and say “I forgot to say one of the fruits!” and have them be a special detective and figure out what word was left out!
If your child is struggling to remember and recall past events , reach out to a pediatric physical therapist at the Chicago Pediatric Therapy & Wellness Center. Scheduling an evaluation today can help determine which area to focus on for your child to make those gains faster. Call us today at 773-687-9241 and see what CPTWC can do for you!
