4 Years Old's Bad Memory

She sounds like a sparkly, vibrant little girl, and like she's doing absolutely fine. As others have said, right now her brain is just concentrating on other important modes of development -- and that's wonderful and appropriate. The amazing thing about young children's development is that their brains know, all by themselves, how to acquire information and mature. You don't have to "program" her to do this.

In terms of letters and numbers, my concrete advice is to put the "educational" materials away and just make them fun parts of every day life. As in "Wow! We have so many stairs in the house! Let's count them and see how many there are!" In terms of letter recognition, draw on the natural egocentricity of preschoolers and have her just focus on the first letter of her own name. That's "her" letter, and every time you find it -- on a street sign, in an alphabet book, etc., it's a cause for excitement and celebration. Once she gets confident about counting, you can do a project of labeling things with numbers. You can have her find all the letters in her name. But build on her natural play-based learning process -- don't make it an artificial process where she sits down and memorizes information outside its normal context. She'll get to a developmental place where she'll be ready for that. She's just not there yet, and that's fine.

I think it's very difficult to teach academics to young kids. A lot of people use things like letters and numbers as a measure of a child's intelligence, but they are not. I know it is frustrating to sit and teach her every day and feel like other kids are doing things she cannot.

Has it occurred to you that her brain is still developing, and may be working in other areas right now? A lot of kids are early talkers, others are early walkers. Some potty train early, some sleep through the night early, others are the opposite. Some know their letters and numbers before kindergarten, others enter kindergarten without much of a clue. The vast majority of teachers don't care about any of this. What they want is a child who can socialize well, sit in a circle and focus, and separate from Mommy and Daddy to get through the day. It sounds like your daughter can do those things. So she's working and learning and growing every day.

She may not want to sit and repeat what you say, she may not be focusing because it's not where her head is at. She may not want to be quizzed all the time. She may be taking it in but not yet be ready to repeat it.

Instead, just expose her to a variety of experiences - visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic. Get out of the home "classroom" and into other environments. Go on a nature walk, pick up leaves of interesting shapes, trace them onto paper. Go to the children's museum and let her get into some of the exhibits with her hands, touching shapes and surfaces. Go to the aquarium and let her watch the fish and explore the colors and the ways in which they move.

You can OCCASIONALLY say, "Let's count the leaves together; one, two, three..." while pointing at them, and you can hang them up and when Daddy or Grandma comes over, you can say, "Look at the 7 leaves that Susie found." Yes, she will learn that numbers are at play in all aspects of life, not just with Mommy's books and crafts. At the museum, you can say, "This sign says there's an octopus. Octopus starts with O. Can you find the O?" But don't swell on it. It's more important that she learn about the octopus and work other parts of her brain.

But life is more than counting or knowing letters. It's about using her hands and creating and building things. You already do crafts which is great. Make sure she is using scissors and glue and paint, not just making things out of sand but also touching the sandy surface. Let her use other skills like building with Legos (creative thinking, motor skills, imaginative play), and make sure she is doing gross motor activities like bike riding or playing hopscotch or climbing trees and monkey bars.

Go apple picking and pumpkin picking. Go to a stream and tip her toes in the water. Go on a picnic. Look at the sky and the clouds, check out the acorns and hickory nuts coming off the trees. If you don't know what something is, go to the library and get a book of trees/leaves/nuts and explore together what you have found. She will learn the value of books and letters and the fun that comes from mastering them without feeling she must learn them in a certain order.

If there is a cause for early intervention services in some way because of a true delay, the school will provide that free of charge. But there's nothing in your post that indicates that's a real problem yet, if at all. It's more important to relax about this - she's just not ready to sit in an almost classroom-like setting and have to parrot back the responses. Rather than drill her in the same things, I think you and she might be better served by expanding some experiences.

Excellent advice below.

I would add to the counting stairs. Stand at the bottom. Ask her to go up one step and back down. Two steps up, then down. And so on. They need time to connect the number with actual "counting".
She maybe the type of learner that needs movement to lock in information.

She may not be an visual learner. If she learned the alphabet song, then try some CDs in the car with educational songs. It's amazing what can be learned in the car!

Google types of learning, audio, visual, ect. It may give you better clues to her learning style.

Some might disagree with me, however, here goes: I'm in the camp that will tell you 'please, don't worry'. So many, many kids go into kindergarten knowing very few letters and numbers walking in and by the end of the school year, the kids are up to speed.

Some kids really do not to well with being asked 'what's this'. They don't have the facility with the information to be able to just pull it up and recite it on request. I have seen this repeatedly, both as a preschool teacher over the years and even with my own son. There is a very large window of time wherein children will begin to learn/recognize the letter/numeral symbols. Some show this at three and a half, some will show this around five or in Kindergarten. If you think about it, they are somewhat abstract-- each symbol *means* something, and kids have to not only decode what the symbol looks like and the corresponding sound you make saying it, but also make the connection of the *amount* of a number=the number symbol. In this way, teachers sometimes suggest just using manipulatives (teddy bear counters, large bead/strings, stones...anything you have multiples of for counting) and counting/playing with those first.

Kids all have areas in which they develop well, and I have to wonder what great things your girl is doing *besides* this. Growing socially? Improving hand/eye coordination? etc. When there is growth in one area, other areas of development have to wait. And while lots of people might discuss being academically prepared for kindergarten, the fact of the matter is that what teachers really need is for our kids to be developing their fine motor/self-help/self-care skills while they are four. Those are the skills K teachers would like children to have mastered (zipping up coats, managing buttons and snaps, wiping one's nose, independent toileting, ability to use scissors, etc.) as well as having the ability to move socially through the day with the teacher and other kids.

So, please know that from my own experience, your girl sounds fine. My own son is going into first and still uses manipulatives for some of his math work as his brain continues to develop the connections between 'amount and symbol'. He IS on track for his grade level and this is just standard development. FWIW, telling your girl that "the amount you you count only shows as the number" is very cognitively advanced for some kids this age. Extremely abstract. Some will come to it easily, but many and most do not which is why the teachers use tangible number activities with counting items instead of strictly paperwork.

All this to say, my best encouragement to you is to keep it FUN. IF you want to help her make the number/amount connections, get some cardstock, cut it in half, write a large number on it and then draw as many dots for the number (if it's a two, draw two big dots) and supply manipulatives to cover the dots with as you talk about the numbers. She needs more concrete experiences of the numbers. Another game you can play (when/if she wants to) is what I dubbed 'Dino Drop' and this is a fun way to just practice counting and to think about numbers... here's the link:

http://skyteahouse.blogspot.com/2012/02/dino-drop-introdu...

She is only 4.

Make sure that any training you do with her is fun and loving. Loving and fun interaction with her parents is the most important activity she can have at this age. She doesn't need to be a child genius.

She will learn her numbers in time. Maybe she's only of average intelligence, but there's nothing wrong with average. That's not an insult -- someone has to be average. She has many other wonderful qualities, and you don't need to be more than average to have a wonderful life.

Unless your pediatrician has given you a reason to think she needs some kind of intervention, I don't think you need to worry.

Just have fun with her. Great advice from Mira, below.

She sounds completely awesome!

Totally on schedule.

Children develop different skills at different times. Once she catches onto a concept, run with it.

Just make sure she is enjoying what you all are working on.

There is not tests at this point, just the joy of playing and working with mom.

Some children can memorize anything and people think they can read, but in reality if you point to the same word in another book they cannot actually "read it". And there is nothing wrong with this.

Just keep on reading and letting her draw what SHE wants.