My 6-year-old can’t recall his school day or homework on demand—am I the only one?
I pick him up from car line every single afternoon, same as every other parent. The first question out of my mouth, always, is “What was the best thing that happened at school today?” Nine times out of ten, I get a shrug and “I dunno.” Fine, I’ll narrow it down. “What did you eat for snack?” Shrug again. “Did you play with anyone at recess?” “Maybe.”
Last night was the thing that made me decide to post this, honestly. His teacher posted a little reel on the class parent page that morning, of all the kids doing gummy bear counting for math. There’s my kid, grinning, holding up a handful of red gummies, stain already blooming on the cuff of his sweatshirt. Then when I asked him to pull out his math homework to do before bed, he just blinked at me. “What homework? We didn’t do math today.”
I didn’t yell, but I did press. I said “Buddy, the whole class did math with gummies today. Your teacher posted the picture. You have the stain right there.” He looked at the stain, shrugged, and said “Oh. I don’t remember.”
That’s the thing, right? I know his brain works. He can quote every line of that 25-minute Minecraft Wither animation he watched on YouTube three weeks ago. He can list every subspecies of tyrannosaurus rex, in order of when they were discovered, what they ate, how big they got. If I promise we’ll go get ice cream after the grocery store next Wednesday, he’ll remind me at 7 a.m. that day, like he set an alarm in his head. But ask him to remember what happened two hours ago at school, when an adult is looking at him waiting for an answer, and it’s like someone pressed delete on that part of his brain.
Parent-teacher conferences were two weeks ago, and his teacher brought it up first. She said he struggles with immediate recall during lessons, too. They’ll go over three new sight words that morning, call on him to read one five minutes later, and he just freezes. Stands there, twists his shoe, can’t get it out. But then, ten minutes later when they’re walking to recess, he’ll tug her sleeve and read all three out loud perfectly, like he just needed to not be put on the spot to pull it out.
I nodded and smiled at the teacher, but my stomach was twisted the whole rest of the conference. Afterward I ran into another mom in the parking lot, and she was ranting about how her daughter comes home and rehashes every single playground drama, every single comment the teacher made, even what every other kid wore that day. I just nodded along, didn’t say anything about my kid who can’t even tell me if he peed at school that day, half the time.
I’ve tried the tips, of course. I saw all the stuff online when I stayed up late googling it at 1 a.m. “Make it a game! Do two truths and a lie! Give them prompts!” I tried two truths and a lie last weekend. Sat him down at the kitchen table, all excited, explained how it works. He just stared at me for a minute and said “I don’t remember any two things that happened.” Then he asked for a popsicle and ran off. I felt so stupid, like I was forcing him to perform for me.
The worst was last week, when I got that email from the school counselor asking if we wanted to do a screening, just to rule out any learning differences. I didn’t reply right away, I just sat on the couch after he went to bed and overthought it. Is this a thing I should worry about? Am I overreacting? Am I underreacting? I tried those little memory worksheets I found on Pinterest, sat down with him to do them, and after five minutes he started crying and said he was dumb because he couldn’t remember the picture I showed him 30 seconds ago. I felt like the worst mom in the whole world. I threw the worksheets away, ordered mint chocolate chip, and we sat on the couch watching Paw Patrol eating ice cream, and that’s when he offhandedly told me about the time the class hamster escaped that day, and everyone had to kneel down and look for it under the bookshelves, and it was in Ms. Lee’s desk drawer eating her granola bar. That was the longest, most detailed story he’s ever told me about school, and we weren’t even trying to get it out of him.
I’ve noticed that, actually. He doesn’t do well when I’m looking right at him, asking him a direct question, waiting for an answer. If we’re driving home, and I’m just talking about my day, mentioning that I had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, he’ll just randomly say “I had peanut butter too, and Joey dropped his on the floor.” But if I hit the brakes and turn around and go “Wait, Joey dropped his sandwich? What else happened?” he clams up. Shuts right down. It’s like the pressure of being asked makes the memory go away.
I don’t know. I know kids develop at different rates. I know little boys get painted as slower to this stuff, but I don’t even know if that’s just a lazy stereotype. I don’t want to make excuses for him, but I also don’t want to drag him to a million appointments just because his brain works differently than the other kids in his class. He’s only six, for God’s sake. Half the time I can’t remember what I came into the kitchen to get, why am I expecting him to remember every single thing that happened in six hours of school?
But still. I sit here after he’s asleep, drinking my third cold coffee of the night, and I wonder if I’m the only one. Everyone else posts these cute little stories their kids say from school on Instagram, all these funny anecdotes, and I’ve got nothing. Half the time I don’t even know what happened until the teacher posts a picture. Is this just a thing no one talks about? Does anyone else have a six-year-old like this? I don’t need any fancy 10-step tips, I just… want to know I’m not the only one fumbling through this. (Word count: ~1120)
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » My 6-year-old can’t recall his school day or homework on demand—am I the only one