Thank you all for your feedback! I'm so grateful to be able to pop onto the forum, ask unusual questions, and be virtually guaranteed of supportive and insightful answers. I can't tell you how much I appreciate hearing your stories.
Like in Mana's family, my parents, DH, and I all exhibit eidetic tendencies, so it's especially hard to tease out what's normal and what's unusual. I suppose I never gave this aspect of myself a second thought until my son's memory began revealing itself.
Mama-- I completely sympathize with your comment about avoiding grudges. One of my sharpest memories involves feeling slighted on a trip I took with my parents when I was 1.5! My mum thought I was just recalling cues from a video of the trip I saw later in childhood, but I was able to provide lots of details that weren't captured.
Squishy-- your comment about GPS made me remember my half-brother, who I've always thought was a gifted underachiever. Now that I think of it, his memory is phenomenal. His sense of direction is unparalleled. During one visit, we were delayed on the highway getting to a hockey game and he recommended an obscure shortcut that no local knew. He had never lived in the city and had last happened upon the street more than a decade earlier! He also knows every hockey or football statistic going back 30 years, though I do have an advantage on MMA stats...
TX G Mom-- Thanks for including the link. Your comment about memory being linked to interest reflects the shift I've seen in my memory since childhood, too. I can still do some "out-there" things, like hearing a symphony once and being able to disentangle the individual parts afterwards, but I really have to be engrossed in the experience for full retention. It doesn't come as automatically as when I was a child.
Teachermom7-- Those are great stories to hear! Your son has a prodigious memory! As a teacher, you probably have a richer perspective than most of us as to how an eidetic memory compares to most children's memories. I may be asking a larger question than I intend, but how has your son's memory affected the way you approach learning with him? Does he self-pace more/less than most children in your teaching experience?
Maybe I should throw that question out generally--how has an eidetic memory affected your parenting/learning approach with your children?
