Ages 5 and Up

In grades K to 2, kids learn to read and to do basic arithmetic, huge tasks that draw heavily on memory. At the same time, they're responsible for more at home. "I can tell my 6 1/2-year-old, Dorrie, 'Go upstairs, get a pair of white socks from your dresser, get your black shoes, go to the bathroom, don't forget to bring down a barrette for your hair, and I'll meet you in the kitchen,'" says Beth Paradies, of Atlanta, GA. It makes sense that memory abilities naturally improve to meet these challenges. Changes in the brain make it easier for an older child to remember.

But children don't remember all things equally. "Kids  -- and adults too  -- remember what they find interesting, what they know a lot about, and what they understand," says Ceci. An elementary-school-age kid can have breathtaking memory abilities in one specific area, whether it's Beanie Babies or North American bird life. Take Drew Friedberg, of Wyckoff, NJ. At age 6, he could tell you the statistics of all his favorite baseball and basketball players  -- height, weight, rebounds, RBI's, home runs, you name it.

It's odd, then, that a child's ability to memorize in one area may not necessarily translate to any others. In one well-known experiment, child chess experts could remember positions on the board far better than adult novices. But when asked to recall a string of numbers, the adults performed much better than the kids. Their memories were precocious only in the context of chess. Likewise, Drew doesn't necessarily have an all-around great memory, just a great memory for sports stats.

So how do school-age kids remember stuff they may find less than scintillating? When they find themselves forgetting things that they're expected to remember, they're forced into realizing that memory requires work. "After age 5, children make a crucial memory transition by realizing that they have to do something active to help them remember," says Melissa Welch-Ross, Ph.D., an assistant research professor of psychology at Georgia State University, in Atlanta.

MEMORY BOOSTERS

Although a 6- or 7-year-old may learn to use a strategy with great facility in one specific area, she won't be able to transfer this strategy to other areas. "I can get a first-grader to sort like a third-grader, breaking a group of items into smaller groups and arranging them by category. Whoever uses the sorting instructions remembers more. But, when I follow it up with a similar task, the third-grader will use the strategy again, while the first-grader will not," says Ornstein.

According to Welch-Ross, children who understand the strategy they used  -- they're able to explain how they remembered something  -- can apply the same method to other related tasks. So if you can help a younger child figure out what strategy she used in one situation, and why it worked, she may be able to use it again in a different context.

David Bjorklund, Ph.D., author of Children's Thinking, recommends these strategies to improve kids' memory:

Prepare ahead of time. Get your child into the habit of setting out the things she needs for school the night before, someplace where she can't miss them.

Create a place for everything. If she puts her Pokemon away in the same place every time she's done with it, the darn thing won't get lost so much. (The same thing works for car keys.)

Visualize. A child making out her birthday wish list might want to visualize the toy store in her mind, going down each aisle one by one, so she won't leave anything out.

Set up memorable cues. Put her sneakers in the dog bowl, and your child won't forget to feed the dog before she runs to catch the bus.

TRICKS THAT WORK

• Externalize. Have your child make lists and keep a calendar of events that are important to him.

• Provide context. Interest and knowledge create a rich base for a child's memories. So if you want your child to develop a great memory for, say, music, help create the context: play a lot of music, provide lessons on an instrument, take him to concerts, and read books about composers.

• Chunk and sort. You can teach your child to memorize a poem by breaking it down into small pieces (chunks), then tackling the hardest parts first. Show him that this strategy will work magic when memorizing fractions or the causes of the Civil War, and can also be applied when packing for a weekend at Grandma's house.

By age 12, a child is capable of using the same strategies and tricks that adults use, and after that, memory capacity continues to increase with knowledge and experience. Of course, that means that before then, parents will have to do an awful lot of remembering for their children. However, though the window of memory development opens slowly, it stays open for a long, long time.

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