M OTHER Last year a teacher suggested that Kayla might have selective mutism. But now she’s speaking up more at school. The fact that she was able to face her problem and work on solutions gives her confidence.

KAYLA Everyone’s into post-it notes these days… I use them to write down things I think I’ll forget and then I make up tricks to remember them.

BUBBY Do you know what ICE KREAM stands for? Izzy Chani Esti Kayla Rina Efraim Aharon and Miriam! The sweetest grandchildren in the world and I’ll never forget their names ever again!

Since practice is the most important element in strengthening memory and word retrieval Kayla and I play categorization games at every session.

The value of practice cannot be overstated. With practice these skills become second nature and memory and retrieval speed improves.

We’re deep in the middle of Scattergories when Kayla confides in me the reason for her shyness. “Part of the reason I’m so quiet in school is because I’m so anxious” Kayla says. “The teachers rattle off all these names and dates and details and I just know I’m going to forget them.”

As Kayla acquires tools to overcome her word retrieval difficulty her confidence increases. At our first session she hardly said a word but today she voluntarily opens the conversation.

It’s time to teach Kayla some tricks. “What did you learn about today?”

Kayla thinks. “We’re learning about the civil rights movement… There was a woman of color on a bus.” She frowns. “See I can’t remember her name. She refused to give up her seat to a white person…”

“Rosa Parks?”

“Yeah that was it.” Kayla looks depressed at her inability to recover the name.

Rhyming is a great memory aid. “Kayla can you think of anything that rhymes with ‘Rosa Parks’?”

“Ummm… mark hark dark?”

“Hey dark. So Rosa Parks had dark skin.”

Comprehension dawns.

The more connections (associations) you make to the information the easier it is to retrieve.

“She made a fuss on the bus” Bubby calls out. We laugh.

“Or you can use visualization. When your teacher talks about Rosa Parks on a bus what can you picture in your mind?”

“Ummm maybe a bus parked in a park of roses?” Kayla giggles.

“Great. Do you know what mnemonics are?”

Kayla shakes her head. I take out a paper and write “Roy G. Biv.”

“Who’s that?”

Near each letter I fill in the word that starts with that letter: Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet. “This is a famous mnemonic to help people remember the colors of the rainbow. You can create your own mnemonics to help you remember information.”

Another great technique is chunking. “Let’s say you want to remember your friend Aliza’s phone number — 905-2969 ” I explain “and your friend Miri’s number also starts with 905. You can think of Aliza’s number as ‘Miri+2969.’” “You’re using information you already know to remember new information.”

The purpose of these memory tricks is to give as much memory space to the information as possible.

From her spot on the couch Bubby gasps in delight. “Finally!” she crows. “A way to remember the grandchildren’s birthdays!”

Bring It Home

If you or your child suffers from word retrieval difficulty these activities can strengthen the areas of memory and information storage:

PRACTICE CATEGORIZATION Use games like Scattergories or activities like building association webs to practice categorization. Challenge yourself to list many items in a given category becoming progressively more specific (i.e. “food ” then “green foods ” etc). Categorization activities help “file” information correctly in your brain so you can retrieve it easily when you need it.

PRACTICE VISUALIZATION Visual images are easier to recall than auditory information so connect information to visual images whenever possible. If no visual aids are presented create mental images in your mind. The more detail you mentally create the stronger the visual image will be and the easier it will be to recall the information. Games like Pictionary help train you to describe images in detail and create images based on given information.

USE MEMORY TRICKS Every teacher knows that information is more easily remembered in a song. Use similar memory tricks for information you’re likely to forget. Create your own hints rhymes associations and mnemonics for bits of information you know you’ll need.

Originally featured in Family First Issue 547. D. Himy M.S. CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist in private practice for over 15 years. She is the creator of the Link-It reading comprehension and writing curriculum for elementary school students and directs continuing education programs for speech-language pathologists and educators.