Children with epilepsy have known deficits on objective measures of learning and memory. Parents and children report that memory deficits have a negative impact on everyday functioning. In adults with epilepsy, self-report of memory is more strongly associated with depression than performance on memory tests. We investigated the cognitive and psychological predictors of everyday memory in 37 children with medically intractable epilepsy, using children's self-report and parent ratings of everyday memory performance and standard tests of attention, intelligence, visual and verbal memory, working memory, and mood/emotional state. Standard multiple regressions demonstrated that only a parent report measure of attention uniquely and significantly (P⩽0.05) predicted estimates of everyday memory performance, accounting for 33% of variance in children's own ratings and 27% of variance in parents' ratings. Findings suggest that everyday memory in children with intractable epilepsy differs from that of adults; attentional problems may underlie everyday memory problems in these children.