Working Memory
My hope that we would have a positive trajectory with R. in terms of her emotional stability turned out to be unfounded. Today was bad. Almost as bad as when we took her into the ER those couple of times. We have her a little calmer and a little more rational, but I have not so much hope about how the night is going to go.
So for a change of pace, I would rather think about something a little more positive tonight and write about working memory. When H. first came home and a couple of years after that, working memory was a huge struggle, and by huge struggle I mean that H.'s working memory seemed nearly non-existent. It was a huge issue. It is probably the reason that I started reading so much about neuroscience in an attempt to figure out if there was anything that could be done to help her develop it. Consequently, as I search through past posts, I realize I have written a lot about memory and learning and trauma and play and how those all tie into together significantly effecting how a child functions.
In all that writing, though, is seems I have never written a post describing the different things we did to help support H. and help her develop her working memory. I feel as though I must have, but I cannot find it. (I suppose 3400 posts will do that, make it difficult to find things, that is.) Out of all the things we did, I cannot point to one single thing and say, "This is what made the difference!" There are so many different parts... the activities we did, the development of felt safety, a backing up and catching things that were missed, a willingness to work at her pace, learning to play... It's just all a part of a puzzle which requires each piece to be in place before you see the picture. So I will list some of the activities we did to overtly help develop H.'s memory and then I will link to several other posts with touch on the place of memory and learning in the broader picture of trauma and adoption.
When I first realized exactly how poor H.'s working memory really was, the very first thing we did was to start each day by asking her to remember what she had done the day before. This seemed like such a simple task, one my toddlers could do without trying, that I was floored when H. could not do it. Those first weeks were tough and I needed to allow at least a half an hour as I helped her think back and try to remember a couple of things that she had done. It was hard work for both of us. Eventually, she could start to remember a few things on her own. After she became pretty adept at this skill, I upped the difficulty and we started to try to piece the events of the day before together in order. Once again, at first this was tough, though with practice she improved.
Once she could remember what she had done and the idea that we could pay attention to and think about and remember what was going on around us, we added in other activities. These were mostly memory-type games. The variations are endless, but we could only do a small amount of any of them at a time because it would be extremely taxing for her. Some examples were:
- I say a word (or do an action or draw something, etc) and she would repeat what I said. Believe it or not, just remembering the repeating the word I said was difficult and we had to work up to two words.
- Playing games that required you to remember an order. We had a battery operated color matching game that was a favorite of hers and she eventually could do quite a long string of colors. (I can't remember the name of it, but Simon would serve the same purpose.)
- Looking at a group of objects, then closing her eyes while I removed one (or more) and she had to tell me what was missing. I did this with all sorts of things including objects on a flannel board. (She needed a lot of repetition to learn things, so doing the same type of activity in as many different ways as I could come up with worked well for her.)
- Making large hopscotch-style games and having her remember certain patterns.
- Learning to play a wide variety of board games (there is a lot of working memory that happens in most of them.)
- The game Memory (or its variations) we played but with a significantly smaller set of cards. (This particular game she still struggles mightily with and it is not her favorite.)
- Learning easy poems.
- Asking her to tell back a simple story that I read.
- Learning and singing songs.
[This next part I neglected to add when I first wrote the post and has been added later.] Another key piece to what we did was to work on H.'s balance and proprioception (awareness of where your body is in space). When she first came home balance and proprioception were extremely challenging. She couldn't stand on one foot, walk heel to toe, skip, hop, or move between uneven surfaces. There is pretty clear evidence that balance and proprioception are related to memory and brain function. (This is also true for aging adults as well!) As H.'s balance improved, so did her cognitive functioning. Other studies show that general exercise and being outdoors also improves cognition. Helping a child move their body as much as they can is good for their brain and by extension their memory.
Finally, the oddest thing we did was to have her copy non-Western alphabets. I had come across a little paragraph in my reading (or someone who shared my reading tastes came across it and told me... it was a while ago and my memory is a little fuzzy [ha!])that the act of copying these alphabets had a correlation with improved working memory. So I went online and found dozens of different alphabets, printed them out, and laminated them on to separate cards. Each morning as part of her school work, she would choose a card and copy the alphabet. How did this help overall? I have no idea, but it was easy and cheap and if it didn't help was certainly not doing any harm.
Asking H. to remember things became a way of life. We tried to get her to practice in as many different ways and in as many different contexts as we could. I'm happy to report that this is not really an issue at all any more. Because of her neural differences, she still takes a long to time to really learn something and hold it in her long-term memory, but she does learn and does retain with enough time and exposure. I actually don't think about it much any more which is saying something because for a while it was all I thought about.
Now on to some links to posts which talk a lot more about memory.
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