Photographic Memory?

i have a good friend with a son with a photographic memory. he is SO smart (harvard grad, perfect or near perfect SATs, all that!). well, we were talking about her kids when they were little one day, and i was so surprised at how she described this DS. she said, "he used to sit and stare at the wall for hours... he was, i don't want to say comotose, but..." and i laughed!
now, this guy is... i think 25 now, and his social skills are just fine. he's a wonderful, wonderful guy. absolutely NOT autistic or even close. while his parents thought he was just sitting there, he was really absorbing everything around him, processing, working things out... it was just who he was.

i didn't ask her how it made her feel to have a more standoff-ish child, but i do know they co-slept until he was 4 or 5, and i'm sure that helped her feel close to him and get snuggles in. also, this mom's first DS was the total opposite as a child--never sat still. he was in my grade growing up, and i can testify that he was a handful! so, i'm sure DS #2 was quite a shock.

My son's memory actually sometimes concerns me. I truly believe he has never forgotten anything he has heard. And I wonder how much more his brain can "fit!" Isn't the human brain supposed to get rid of memories and information that are no longer relevant? I read something in the Science Times about how forgetting as we age actually helps to make new memories more accessible. Well, his brain just doesn't do that. He isn't constantly spouting out facts and information, but the minute something becomes relevant, he can draw out from his memory 100 related facts that he has gathered about the topic over the years...he is almost 7 years old, by the way. If we're at the zoo, you can bet he already knows all about most of the animals' habitats, what they eat, how they reproduce, etc. And at the Metropolitan museum of art the other week: Hey wait, mom, I thought Mondrian only uses the primary colors?!? I have no idea how he acquires this knowledge.

Here's one small example from yesterday. We were driving a strange route home from a restaurant after dinner. We drove past a house we rarely pass, not distinct in any way except that I did have a realtor show me the house in Feb. 2006 when we were considering moving. Dd noticed some children playing in the yard of that house and remarked on the kids. Ds replied, "Well, unfortunately, they don't live in a very good house because that house has one bedroom behind the other so that you have to walk through the first bedroom to get to the second one." I had never told that to my son, but I guess he overheard my conversation with dh SIXTEEN MONTHS AGO and remembered the house and the problem I had with it. This kind of stuff happens all day long. Literally. Why does he even remember these things?

The first glimmers of his amazing memory came to me when he, like the OP's daughter, would quote (usually from books) incessantly. It did, at that time, seem like a trait of someone who has autism. And still, I wonder about Aspergers. But at this point in his life, I am becoming more comfortable without a diagnosis and just taking him for who he is since life is going pretty smoothly for him at the moment.

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I guess you're right. That is the case for most people...but not me! So maybe I'm just comparing my son's great memory to my less-than-great memory. What is really is, is that he pays attention to everything and I simply don't. I focus on one thing at a time, and he's constantly open to esperiencing everything around him- all at once. His senses work over-time which often overwhelms him, but he remembers it all.

Dh and I have often wondered about this with dd. But instead of words she remembers pictures, maybe...for example she will be doing a puzzle in the dining room completely unable to see the t.v. while dd2 will be watching a baby einstein DVD in the living room. Dd1 will tell me what's on the screen with out being able to see it..."look mom a puffer fish" just by following the music.
And the clips change every couple of seconds so how she can match up the exact clip to the exact piece of music she hears totally baffles me.

When she was very young, like 18 months, we would listen to the CD for Baby Neptune often, both in the car and the house. We noticed that at a certain time during one of the songs that she would wave...no matter what she was doing or playing with. So the next time we watched the DVD we noticed that sure enough an elderly man scuba diving waves to the camera at that exact moment in the song which she had been waving. And of course the music doesn't play in the same order on the CD as the DVD and some pieces on the DVD are much shorter than their versions on the CD. And remember this is classical music! :

Sorry if that is confusing but it really does freak us out sometimes.

LIke the other posters have said, if her eye contact is okay, this is just her. My daughter has a photographic memory and it's GREAT! I can say that b/c I have the memory of a 92 year old , so if I mis-place something, she can think for 2 seconds and tell me where it is. BTW~we figured this out when she was about 15 months. She had over 100 wooden blocks with different letters and colors on each side of each block. She was looking for one letter in particular and said "Mom! Where is my 'm' block? It's blue on one side, with a yellow 'y' on the other side!" I found it (on top of the shelf where I placed it after stepping on it) and she was right about the color. Out of curiosity, we went through the whole bag of blocks with me asking her "What color is such and such..." and she knew EVERY color of EVERY letter, and what was on each side of the block. That also turned into a fun little game for her, so we played the memory block game constantly for a while. :

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This is exactly like something my son would have done. I always want to ask, "Why do you even know that?" because I am the kind of person who goes through life without noticing the "details."

The block example is just like something my DD would do, as well. She's into maps right now, and not only can she recognize any shape that is at all similar to the shape of a country, she knows what COLOR the countries are on the map. "That shirt is orange, like Rwanda." :