You absolutely can. I remember struggling with some problems on AOPS and then reading in a book "always consider smaller $n$ when dealing with a problem that is difficult because of large $n$" and ever since then that habit has stuck. Whenever I have a problem thats hard and involves numbers and i'm stuck I just remember to ask "what if the numbers were smaller? what do we do then?"
If that isn't memorizing something and making a new habit as a kid then I don't know what memorizing means.
Said another way, the ability to remember to "____" when dealing with a problem of type "___" is what I mean by "memorize".
> Whenever I have a problem thats hard and involves numbers and i'm stuck I just remember to ask "what if the numbers were smaller? what do we do then?"
I think you underestimate the amount of internalized understanding of the "unblock yourself on a difficult problem by solving a simpler version of it" strategy that you possessed or unlocked at learn-time which allowed you to notice its effectiveness. Isn't the sentence more of an easily-retrievable mnemonic for a concept that's much more complicated (than just the information transferred by language) and requires a particular background to recognize how useful it is?
If that isn't memorizing something and making a new habit as a kid then I don't know what memorizing means.
Said another way, the ability to remember to "____" when dealing with a problem of type "___" is what I mean by "memorize".