The paragaph my son wrote yesterday about the myth of the contellation Cancer, was what I would consider 2nd grade level (except with good spelling). If I ask him to tell me the story he can go on in great detail, as I'm sure you can imagine. So, it doesn't seem to involve short term memory, he just doesn't write. Does this ring true with you?
That sounds similar to my son. At Cub Scouts when he was still in Webelos earlier this year, he had to fill out worksheets and I watched all the other boys quickly filling out the sheets with no problem but I couldn't see what they said or anything else, just that they were writing a lot more than my son. My son looked like he was trying to hide his writing and when I looked at it he used very short phrases to answer the questions with as few words as possible. He printed instead of using cursive because that was what all the other kids were doing and his handwriting looked like that of a much younger child, so they let me act as a scribe for him and let him finish at home when most of the other kids were able to finish in the hour they had. There were no lines on the paper and his handwriting and his handwriting is worse without lined paper. This would definitely be a problem for him if he were in school. He can type but there is no way he can carry a computer around with him everywhere. Even when he is allowed to type he doesn't want to write and I haven't tried to force him to write more than just a paragraph or two in emails to his sister or to friends. I am not sure what to do about it. I have him practice handwriting a little even during the summer months and that hasn't helped with speed or the amount of writing he can do. I know this causes some anxiety for my son and I wish I knew what to do about it. I am hoping to find some answers when my son is tested next month.
My son's memory, with the exception of motor memory, has always been very good. Definitely better than mine. He watches educational videos and takes online tests and he always does very well on these. If he takes a multiple choice test over what he reads, he always does very well. I remember watching him play some typing and spelling game where a word or phrase were flashed on the screen and he had to type the word using correct spelling from memory. I don't think he had seen some of the words before but he could spell them correctly or get close without having had time to really think about it. So his memory for words is excellent and he is better than I am on the brain age games involving quick number memorization. He and his dad are both really good at this.
