Problems with recalling info and writing it down.

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My daughter can be painfully slow at writing at times and what I have noticed is that a lot of the times it's when she has to recall information and then write it down. I asked her was it hard to remember her thoughts and she said yes. She said the words get mixed up in her head at times. She can verbally tell you the answer, though at times it can be difficult to understand the answer (or it takes a while to get to it) because she tends to be so verbose. If she writes from her imagination it seems easier for her, like it flows better because she can make it up as she goes. So, does this sound like a processing problem (getting info from her head to on paper) and if so, does anyone have suggestions as to what helps with this? Is this something that can be improved with some kind of memory work?

*edited to add that the school had someone assess her and they found it to not be a physical problem*

So...by 'recalling information', do you mean like transcribing the Pledge of Allegiance, or remembering facts for a test?

Or are you talking about essay question stuff? I always have a hard time getting started with those, even if all the information is in my head, I have to find a proper way to begin, so that it will all come out on paper in a logical sequence, and may start and stop and start again several times, until it feels 'right' and starts to flow onto the page.

I think this is due mostly to the tendency toward 'visual thinking' - it has to be put into some kind of rational picture image before it can be accurately translated into words.

When writing straight from the writer's mind, the pictures are already there, because they are native thoughts, that appear as visual images from their conception.

How old is she?

In general, I'll repeat something I heard from the school early on: writing is a multi-task activity. Basically, many types of very different processing have to go on at the same time. It could be that she isn't developmentally ready, or it could be that there is more to it.

Perhaps it would be helpful for her to be able to jot down pieces of information as they come to her so that she can then put the thoughts into some kind of logical order before writing up a piece of work. It may be that the difficulty with factual work, rather than imaginative work in which she determines the flow of ideas, is that she knows that she needs to get all this information into a certain order and that isn't always easy to do in one go.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/misunderstoodminds/writing.html

I had that same problem as a kid. Writing was physicaly painful for me and if forced to write for an extended period of time, I would get cramps all the way up to my elbows. My writing as sloppy and I had to spend countless recesses rewritten assignments until I was in tears and the teacher figured I was a lost cause. I was too distracted with trying to make my writing readable and not sloppy to be able to pay attention to what I was supposed to write down in the first place. I also could always remember things said to me five hours or even five years previous than five secounds.

She's 8. She is very intelligent and in an advanced program in school. They had therapy come assess her and they can't see a physical problem as to why. I know for a while she was slowed down because she was obsessing over getting the hooks on the ends of certain letters just right and n's, m's, a's and r's slowed her up because she would repeat the first stroke multiple times. I was able to break her of it by sitting with her while she did homework and reminding her to not do it and over time it got better. She had a good humor about it and understood that it was a habit we needed to break because it was slowing her down so much.

I notice that as she is writing she forgets where she is in her sentence and gets confused and has to stop, re-read what she wrote and then try to recall the sentence she had just came up with. For example, with spelling homework where she has to make up a sentence using a certain word she will think of one and then start writing, then forget the sentence she came up with mid way through and she will ask me "What did I say?" A lot of the time she tells me what the sentence is and then she writes a few words of it and has me tell her what word in the sentence she made up comes next.

I told her to use scrap paper to jot down a couple words that will remind her of her thoughts/ideas, I didn't know what else to suggest. If it gets worse as she goes through school I suppose I could get her a portable recorder and headphones so she can record things and then listen to them as needed. ??

I already have it set up with the school to NOT hold her out of recess to complete work. I get them to send home what she doesn't complete in class so she can do it at home. Kids need a break during school. Sorry your school wasn't as understanding, PunkyKat.

I hadn't thought about the 'visual thinking' idea. Interesting.

I remember in her school eval that they said her 'working memory' was not very good. Just looked it up and the definition of working memory is "...the executive and attentional aspect of cognition which operates on the data held in short-term memory (which may be thought of as the RAM for working memory's CPU processes) and which is involved in the interim integration, processing, disposal, and retrieval of information..." Not sure if that's typical of Asperger's or comes more from her other dx of ADHD?

pennywisezzz

Do they still or have they yet diagrammed sentences (I can't remember what grade we were in when we did this)? Maybe thinking of the sentence in terms of phrases, subject, verb, object, might help her. By breaking it in to smaller pieces she might be able to visualize it better.

She might also try repeating the sentence multiple times out loud (or very quitely to herself) before she tries to write it - just like reapeating someone's name after you meet them the first time helps it stick in your head. Maybe you've already tried this.

I don't know about the diagrammed sentences. She's tried repeating things before she writes them down but her problem is she forgets the sentence as she is writing it. Like it's hard to concentrate on the act of writing while trying to remember what you are writing. Guess it's a problem with mental multi-tasking?

That is where I have trouble.

Depending upon the type of project at hand, have her try first using a memo recorder to get an overview out, and to then use that for a bit of transcription while adding detail and style.