My 6-year-old can’t tell me what he did at school today, and it’s starting to stress me out
We pull out of the school parking lot every afternoon, goldfish crumbs sticking to the knees of his jeans, his backpack leaking crushed crayon onto the floor mat, and I ask the same question I ask every day: “What was the best part of your day today?”
Nine times out of ten, he just chews whatever snack I stuffed in his hand that morning, stares at the construction trucks driving past on the highway, and says, “I dunno.”
I press, I’ve tried all the tricks people post about—don’t ask yes or no questions, ask specific things. “Did you play on the slide at recess?” “Did anyone get a time-out?” “What did you have for snack?” The answers are still usually “yeah,” “no,” “I dunno.” Last week I stood in line for coffee after pickup next to another mom from his class who was ranting about how her kid won’t stop talking, how he tells her every single detail about who brought what birthday treat, who called who what on the playground, which teacher’s coffee was too hot that morning. I just nodded and stirred my latte and didn’t say that I found out their class got a pet hamster from another mom at a parent coffee, three days after the hamster escaped its cage. My son mentioned it out of the blue three hours later, while we were waiting for our pizza to bake: “The hamster pooped on Mr. Todd’s rug when he caught him.” I stood there holding the pizza cutter like, wow. Cool. Thanks for telling me now.
It’s not just telling me about his day, that’s just the annoying everyday part that makes me feel like I’m out of the loop. The thing that’s actually got me thinking is the schoolwork trouble, the immediate recall thing his teacher mentioned a couple weeks ago. She pulled me aside after school, said she wasn’t worried yet, just wanted me to know what she’s seeing: they’ll do a whole group lesson on counting by fives, they’ll go around the circle and everyone answers, he gets every single one right. Ten minutes later, when she calls on him again to check in, he just blinks. Can’t remember what they were just talking about. Can’t repeat the first answer he gave.
Homework time is the same. Last night we sat down to do the phonics worksheet he brought home, the one he started with his class that morning. He stared at the first question for ten full minutes, picking at a hole in his sock, and when I asked what his teacher told them to do, his eyes welled up and he shrugged. “I forgot,” he mumbled, and I had to stop myself from sighing too loud, because I could see he was trying. His little forehead was all wrinkled like he was digging for the memory way down in there, it just wouldn’t come out.
The weird thing, the thing that confuses me the most, is that he can remember everything else. He can recite every line of the first 20 minutes of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse from last Christmas, word for word. He can tell you which friend gave him which Pokemon card for his birthday six months ago, what the back of it looks like, what we had for cake that day. It’s not that his memory is bad. It’s like… when someone asks him for something right away, especially when it’s school-related, when he feels like he’s supposed to have an answer, the whole door just slams shut. Then the memory wanders out on its own three hours later when he’s building Lego and not thinking about it at all.
I’ve tried not to panic. I know every kid develops differently, right? My sister says all kids are different, hers can’t stop talking enough to let anyone else get a word in edgewise, so I guess that’s just the other end of the spectrum. But I still lie awake some nights scrolling too much on my phone, seeing all these things about working memory and whatnot, and I don’t know what to think. I don’t want to run to a doctor or get him labeled for something that’s just… him being six? Maybe? But I also don’t want him to struggle in class and feel stupid, like he’s not keeping up, when he just needs a minute for his brain to catch up.
The other day I got short with him, I’ll admit it. We’d been sitting at the homework table for 20 minutes and he still couldn’t remember what sound the letter “g” makes when it’s at the start of a word, even though he’d done a whole activity on it that day. I said a little too sharp, “C’mon, you just learned this, how can you forget it already?” And he just looked down at his paper and his lip started trembling, and I felt like the worst mom in the whole world. Because I could tell he wasn’t forgetting on purpose. He was trying so hard it hurt, and I just made it worse.
I’ve started doing a new thing lately, I don’t even know if it helps, but it takes the pressure off. I don’t grill him in the car anymore. We just listen to his favorite Encanto soundtrack on the way home, and I let him zone out. If he mentions something, great, if not, we move on. For homework, I just give him five minutes to stare at the paper and think, and if nothing comes, I prompt him gently, we figure it out together, no rushing. It’s better than it was, but I still wonder if I’m doing the right thing.
I don’t have any big answers here. I don’t have a trick that’s working, I don’t have a neat conclusion that everything is fine. I just… I keep wondering if any other parents out there have a kid like this. Do you also leave pickup every day feeling like you know less about your kid’s day than you did when you dropped him off? Do you also sit through homework waiting ten minutes for him to pull a memory out that feels like it should be right there? Am I just overreacting, or is this something that other people deal with too? I’d love to know I’m not the only one standing around awkwardly at class events nodding along when everyone talks about their kid’s endless stories, wondering when mine will feel ready to pull his out too. (Word count: 1182)
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