Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Curious about memory in early memorizers

I'm curious about this. I've got a child who has memorized a lot of things for her age and I have stopped giving her things to memorize (we don't have a map of the world on the wall, I stopped buying flashcards) because it seems like although she is drawn to memorizing things in her environment she will probably forget it all and her time would be better spent playing. I don't think my child is a genius and often want to apologize for even posting here at all, but I do think she has a good memory and good attention span. Still, it seems to me that her ability to self-regulate is probably benefited more by playtime than by memorizing things with no context (like space - she knows details about the planets and recognizes a nebula, constellations, a black hole but she doesn't understand what they are) and without the ability to regulate your attention a good memory isn't very useful.