Struggling to keep up

Hey Clare, don't get discouraged. I still have to relearn lots of parts of JavaScript, as do most developers (if they're honest ;) ). Here are a few ideas that have been helpful to me in making this stuff stick:

1. Deep, real-life, lasting learning rarely happens the first time. It tends to go something like this: practice, practice, forget, practice, remember some parts ... practice, forget it all, remember, celebrate ... forget, practice, remember, practice ... remember, remember... You've got to keep at it to make it stick, and when it finally starts to sink in, you'll get super excited and want to learn more!
2. Don't just code along with the videos. I find that I can sometimes just end up typing out what the teacher is doing on the video. Just because I feel my fingers moving doesn't mean it's sinking in! For the particularly difficult spots, you could watch what they're doing without typing, then rewatch the same portion while typing it out. Then, you could even try to get the same result on your own! And never feel ashamed to reach out for help.
3. Learn to love the Docs. There are some GREAT resources out there that make it easy to find what you're looking for. A good developers is a good detective. He or she asks good questions, and can track down an answer when needed. Out of all there is to know, the best developers in the world probably only know 10% of it off-hand. The rest, they know how to find when they need it! Mozilla's Developer Network and CSS-Tricks are two of my favorite. I'm probably on them 100 times a week.
4. Use additional learning tutorials. Using other tools like codecademy and freeCodeCamp can help you come at things from a slightly different angle and really help you learn more holistically.
5. Read other people's code. Github is a great place to start. You can check out some pretty amazing stuff on there, line for line. You can look at the source code for Bootstrap, Media Element JS, and so much more on the Github Explore page. Even the Apollo 11 Lunar Module source code is on there!
6. Build your own stuff! Then, share it :)
7. Did I mention, practice? Hah! Seriously though...

It's hard, and I understand that. The first thing I would suggest is to know your own style of learning. For me taking notes and handwriting code helps a lot, along with the videos, but this method is rather tedious. I would suggest that you make up a code challenge for yourself after the code challenges here on Treehouse. Writing code will always be #1 in learning, and like all of us we need the reps of writing code over and over again.