Retaining

Retaining

Repetition 

Remembering 

Retrieving 

 Shortly after Katie came home at 25 months old, we discovered that sometimes it just takes longer for her to catch onto things.  She needed to do it over and over and over before she got it.  Once she got it, she was good to go.  It times this would frustrate both her and the person that was trying to show or teacher her something.  We were told she has a retention disorder.  Meaning her brain struggles to remember what she just learned.  You can show her how to do something for example in math, one hour later, you will have to teacher her again and again.  She just doesn't remember how to do things without many repetitions.

 As she is getting older she struggles more with it.  She didn't notice it as much until the last couple of weeks.  We have always soften it when she struggled with something and was getting hard on herself because it taking her 10 times of someone repeating over and over for her to get it by focusing on the good stuff.  Her gifts of beautiful penmanship, her ability to find things that are missing.  Her loving hugs and beautiful smile that she so easily can do, her creativity that she saw she had last year with all the writing projects, readily doing homework and trying to get it all done even when it isn't due for awhile (definitely not a procrastinator)

She had to read an thicker chapter book then she normally reads.  This was for school.  She had homework that went with each chapter or two.  She shed a lot of tears of frustration that she couldn't remember the beginning of the chapter, that she would reread over and over.  She finally would break the homework up to little sessions and re-read until she found the answer to that session, then move onto the next session and do the same thing.  This meant reading the same things over and over and not fully remembering everything.  She found a little "baby" book last night and said this is what I can read, I can remember this because it has pictures on it and it is simple.  I can't read the big books.

Her dad and I talked with her and her sisters even put their two cents in on things they can't remember all the time.  Katie listen and agreed with our "faults", but she knew that her was worse then theirs or my.

She is worried that she going to not do well in school anymore because they are expecting bigger and harder things to read and do.  She is very aware of this struggle and doesn't know how to "fix" it. 

Anyone have any ideas or experiences with retention disorders and how to help her.  She really likes school and I want to keep it that way.