How do I help my forgetful Child? If you send my younger son to get you something from the room, he would most likely come back without the item. He gets distracted and completely forgets the errand.  I initially got pissed and started sending his brother errands instead but I realised I needed to deal with this.  At this point, even if he reads anything and you ask him, he barely remembers a thing. 

While it is quite normal that we all forget things sometimes, some kids tend to forget things all the time and this could be caused by various reasons. It could be that they are stressed or not having enough rest, it could also be that they are having trouble concentrating and staying focused due to a lot of distractions such as the television, the internet, games, and lots of toys at their disposal which could make it hard for their minds to stay focused. 

Here are five tips that helped me and if your child is anything like mine, hopefully they work for you as well.

Use acronyms or phrases

Making use of acronyms and funny phrases is a very smart way to help kids remember things. For example “ROY G BIV” was the acronym that was used to teach us the colours of the rainbow and all we needed to do was to pronounce the phrase to remember the colours. One interesting acronym that lingers is MR NIGER D used in remembering the characteristics of living things (movement, respiration, nutrition, irritability, growth, excretion, reproduction, death, adaptation, competition). You too can adopt this method in helping your child recall things easily

Practice with the child

Practice makes perfect, they say. If you want your child to remember anything, the secret is to practice often, using a series of activities. The activities make it save as flashbulb memory and it becomes almost impossible to forget.

Provide a quiet study place

Provide a work and study place that is free from interruptions and distractions such as television, toys, and so on. Ensure that materials available are mainly study materials and nothing else. This helps to minimise distraction and keep kids focused.

Make use of a highlighter

Teach your child to make use of a highlighter, this helps him or her to highlight words, phrases, numbers, and many more that are important points. Making use of a highlighter also helps to point out the most important things when he or she is revising or re-reading and this is an awesome way to ensure that your child doesn’t forget. .

Try the fun approach

Children learn and always remember fun experiences or things associated with fun. For example, associating verbs with their actions and other words, phrases or numbers with something funny. Also engaging them with do it yourself videos is a fun approach that will help them recall things easily.

Finally, it is important to know and understand which memory tricks work best for your child so as to help him/her develop them and also enable you as a parent to be able to help out appropriately.