The effects of memory difficulties in your child’s learning

Is your child unable to recall and relate his day at school? Do you notice your child struggling with maths? If so, your child must be experiencing the limitations of working memory.

Working memory problems are one of the most common learning issues that we come across in our clinics. In fact, in a screening of over 3000 school-aged students in mainstream schools, 1 in 10 was identified as having working memory difficulties.

Working memory involves the ability to keep information active in our mind for a short time (2-3 seconds) to be able to use it for further processing. Working memory is a temporary storage system and is vital for many day-to-day tasks (e.g. following instructions, responding to conversations, listening and reading comprehension, organization).

In the classroom, Working Memory has to work even harder as there are multiple pieces of information children have to work with. The areas of learning that are greatly affected by poor working memory are –

• Paying attention and concentrating
• Following lengthy instructions
• Decoding words and learning to read
• Complex thinking and problem solving
• Personal organization.

In the classroom, children with working memory difficulties frequently:

• Appear inattentive or not to be listening
• Daydream
• Forget what they have been taught (because it wasn’t actually learned)
• Lack confidence in themselves as learners
• Have difficulty solving problems
• Can’t fully remember what they are supposed to be doing
• Have low academic achievement in numeracy and literacy
• Have difficulty following instructions with two or more parts
• Have difficulty copying sentences from the board
• Do not contribute to class discussions or volunteer to answer questions
• Heel highly frustrated, which may lead to acting-out behaviors
• Demonstrate erratic performance - appearing to remember some things one day, but not the next
• Do not start or complete their work or homework independently.

Simply put, working memory difficulties result in missed learning opportunities. Over time these frequently missed learning opportunities may result in slow educational progress and poor academic achievement as well as challenges with everyday tasks like dressing, packing school bags and develop independence in regular routines like bedtime readiness.

If you are also concerned about your child’s poor memory function you might like to consider meeting one of our experienced doctors, who are trained psychologists as well as renowned homeopaths. This will give you a detailed understanding of your child’s individual learning profile (their strengths and weaknesses) and you’ll receive specific recommendations to improve your child’s learning at school and home.

At Dr Batra's ™, we have achieved positive treatment outcome of 96.8% in treating child health troubles including poor memory issues. We give our patients gentle form of medicine, homeopathic medicines, which are in use for over 200 years now. Homeopathy treats and improves symptoms of memory loss, poor concentration and learning difficulties in children effectively. It is completely safe and suitable due to no drug dependency and has no side-effects. Moreover, children love the sweet taste of homeopathic pills over other bitter tasting medicines.