Happy Wednesday, friends!

I’m just going to say it: it finally feels like fall here, and I am SO excited. 🍂

Life

After all the waiting, false promises of fall, and weather that is WAY too hot, the air has finally changed. I got to wear my favorite sweatshirt ALL DAY and I’m SO here for it! I’ve been looking forward to this season for weeks!

This week has also been a little chaotic on the logistics side. Since my husband doesn’t have a car, drop-off and pickup has been a finely tuned event, and I’ve been learning a new rhythm for getting everyone where they need to be. It’s not smooth yet, but I can already feel it getting a little easier each time.

Funny enough, that’s exactly what I want to talk about today.

Homeschool + Math

Here’s a sentence I hear from homeschool moms all the time:

“We covered this last month, but she’s forgotten it completely! Was I wrong? Did she ever actually learn it!?”

I want to challenge that thought, because memory researchers have a very different take on it.

Psychologists Robert and Elizabeth Bjork describe two different things about any memory. One is how well something is learned, and the other is how easy it is to reach at this moment. Those two don’t always match! A memory can be firmly stored but impossible to recall because it hasn’t been used in a while.

So your student blanking on something doesn’t automatically mean it was never learned. It may mean it’s been sitting unused and is just harder to reach right now.

And here’s the part I find most encouraging: In the 1880s, a researcher named Hermann Ebbinghaus tested this on himself. He measured how much faster he could relearn a list after forgetting it than he learned it the first time. Relearning took noticeably less time than original learning. He was using nonsense syllables, which are much harder to hold onto than real material, so for math that actually makes sense, we’d generally expect forgetting to be slower. But the big idea holds: even after you can’t recall it, coming back to it is faster than starting from scratch.

The Bjorks go one step further. In their theory, forgetting can actually help learning, which is why they call it a “friend of learning.” The extra effort of pulling something back up is part of what makes it stick. 🩷

Now, none of this means forgetting doesn’t matter. It just means that a forgotten concept is a reason to revisit it, not a reason to panic or to decide your child isn’t capable.

So here’s something to try this week. The next time your student draws a blank on something they’ve done before, skip “We already learned this!” and try: “Let’s wake that one back up.” Spend five or ten minutes walking through one example together. Then pay attention to how it feels the second time. It usually comes quicker than the first time did, and that’s your proof it was never gone. 😊

Grace

I keep thinking about how often I forget things. Names, errands, and what I walked into the kitchen to get. 😅 And I’m so thankful that God’s memory of us doesn’t work like mine!

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.”

Isaiah 49:15-16 (ESV)

“For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”

Psalm 103:14 (ESV)

God knows that we’re forgetful, and He knows we’re limited. And you know what? He doesn’t hold it against us! He remembers us even on the days we can’t seem to remember what He’s already taught us.

So give your kids the same grace, and give it to yourself, too. Forgetting isn’t failing. It’s often just the start of coming back to something with new eyes. ❤️

See you soon!

- Mrs. Holman

P.S. What’s something your child knew cold last year that you’ve had to “wake back up” this fall? Hit reply and tell me. I’d love to hear how quickly it came back the second time!

Works Cited

Bjork, Robert A. “Forgetting as a Friend of Learning.” Remembering: Attributions, Processes, and Control in Human Memory; Papers in Honour of Larry L. Jacoby, edited by D. Stephen Lindsay et al., Psychology Press, 2015, pp. 15-28.

Bjork, Robert A., and Elizabeth L. Bjork. “Desirable Difficulties in Theory and Practice.” Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, vol. 9, no. 4, 2020, pp. 475-79.

Murre, Jaap M. J., and Joeri Dros. “Replication and Analysis of Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve.” PLOS ONE, vol. 10, no. 7, 2015, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4492928/.