When Memory Gets in the Way
When you’re raising a child with ADHD, you spend a lot of time trying to make sense of things that don’t quite add up. Smiler is full of effort, creativity and determination, and yet there are times when his progress suddenly stops.
In this post, I want to share some of the challenges he’s faced with working memory and what we’ve learned along the way.
When Smiler was younger, he was working towards examinations on his musical instrument. Getting him to practise was always a bit of a challenge, but once he got going, he was actually really good. The pieces and scales he needed to learn for the exams seemed to stick, and he worked his way steadily through the first few grades.
Then, around age twelve, his progress suddenly stalled. He could usually remember his pieces pretty well, but where he really struggled was with the scales.
(For anyone reading who doesn’t know - a scale is a sequence of notes played in order, and learning how to play scales is a key part of developing technique and understanding how music works).
The difficulty of the scales would increase with each grade, and while Smiler would practise his scales over and over, they just wouldn’t stick. He’d finally seem to master them one day, only to come back the next and find they had completely disappeared from his memory. At the time, I thought he just wasn’t trying hard enough, and that he was looking for excuses to avoid practising. Looking back now, I realise that frustration was completely misplaced.
We’ve seen similar things happen with Smiler’s maths. His tutor might work with him on a topic until it seems like he’s really nailed it, but then at school, when doing his classwork or an assessment, it’s as though he’s never encountered it before.
It’s difficult to watch him put so much effort in, and not always see the results.
Another pattern we’ve noticed is that Smiler often asks the same questions repeatedly - things we’ve talked about many times before, like weekend plans or upcoming events. He’ll ask about them as if we’ve never discussed them before. Prior to diagnosis, I used to find that quite frustrating and would say things like, “Remember, we’ve already talked about this”, but now I try to approach those moments with patience - it keeps things calmer for both of us.
From Frustration to Understanding
I don’t know exactly why these things happen, but I’ve since learned that ADHD can affect working memory - the ability to hold and process information in your mind. Knowing that earlier might have helped us to connect the dots sooner.
With the repeated questions, I’ve also started to wonder if it’s not always about Smiler forgetting what we’ve already talked about... Sometimes it feels more like Smiler is using those familiar questions as a way to start a conversation, almost like a rehearsed script that helps him to open up when he’s not sure what else to say. Many ADHDers (and neurodivergent people in general) can find it harder to initiate or maintain conversations because of social processing differences, so this might be his way of connecting.
Reflection
Looking back, I can see how much of what we once thought of as “laziness” or “forgetfulness” was actually part of Smiler’s ADHD, particularly his challenges with working memory. Understanding this has helped us shift from frustration to compassion. These days, rather than expecting him to “just remember”, we focus on finding ways to support him - through patience, repetition, and realising that effort doesn’t always look the same for everyone.
If you’d like to explore some lesser-known aspects of ADHD, our previous post Beyond the Textbook looks at this in more detail.