How to develop a super memory in your child

Anyone can be taught the skill of having a super, trained memory, even a child.  When I hear someone say, “I can never remember faces.” Or “I can’t remember names, but I never forget a face.” I think how casually we treat our memory and how often we take it for granted.  If a child or young student crams for an exam yet delivers a poor paper, adults have a convenient explanation, “a bad memory.” The young person, grateful for a way out of something that is perceived to be beyond his control, seizes  the “bad memory” excuse, and often ends up using it for future failures. 

It seems strange that we are comfortable in  telling others of our mental shortcomings. We are constantly assuring one another of how poor we are at remembering, how we have no head for figures, and how we can’t even remember what we had for lunch.  It is seen as a very natural state of affairs.  Yet we need a good memory, and your child especially needs a good memory, or to improve his memory to pass exams.  While our education system is not perfect and  it can be sad that our children have to rely so much on their memory rather than truly understanding the subject.  We may conclude that the entire system needs to be totally revamped, but if we still choose to place our children in a school, we must help them develop the necessary skills to handle it, and a good trained memory is the primary skill. Your child may be able to work out a math problem with brilliant accuracy, but if he can’t remember who was  the first man to walk on  the moon, when World War II ended or what the capital of Australia is, his report card will suffer.

A good memory is important because it helps to apply thinking and intelligence to a continuous stream of information.  Most of us have yet to realize that we are all born with equal powers in our brain.  If I were to tell you that there is no such thing as a bad memory, you may want to hold yourself up as an example to disprove me.  But eminent psychologists who have researched the memory phenomenon can attest to my claim.

One marvel of the brain is a museum of microfilms, one of its most striking features being the back-up system.  In those minute gray folds, tons of information get stored, which is why a tiny jolt of electricity can make you relive a scene from your childhood, a smell or fragrance can trigger a recall of another vivid memory.  A super memory is already within you and your child.  All you have to do is train it so that you can tap it whenever you need it.  After all, every thing needs assistance to develop to its full potential.

To start with, don’t put the idea into your child’s head that he has a bad memory.  He does not.  If he seems to have forgotten something, don’t use phrases like “Why can’t you remember?” or “Why have you forgotten already?’  This will give him the false assumption that he has a poor memory.  Instead, use more assuring phrases like “Of course you remember, think back carefully” or “It will come to you, just give it time.” Secondly, he aware that we don’t all learn or remember in the same way.  Some of us remember best what we see and some remember better what we hear.

Our memory is like a bed-sheet on a clothesline, held up by pegs.  If you use only one peg for a wide sheet,  the wind will soon toss it about, and it won’t hang or dry properly.  But if you use the right number of pegs, it will stay in place and dry thoroughly.  To apply this analogy to the trained memory, in this case, the “hearing” or auditory memory, if you tell your child to say Eisenhower, he may get stuck and be unable to say it because the “pegs” in his brain have been unable to catch it.  But if you break the word down to its phonetic units, I-sen-how-wer and say it slowly and clearly, his brain will seize each syllable and commit it to memory.

The same principle applies to “sight” or visual memory too.  You can train your child’s brain first to focus on tiny details to “peg” or anchor each one into the brain, then to give every important detail equal attention until the full picture is stored in his brain.  Good memory is about good observation.  With good observation skills, a child’s memory can be improved, and much can be recalled later.