Why can't we remember anything from when we were kids? The first thing I remember is from four, maybe something at three, and of course - my own traumatizing birth.

J/k about the last one. But why don't we recall? What is it they don't want us to know?

maybe consciousness awakes...in babies. Almost all go on reflexes from birth until age 2-3 and than consciousness fully awakes... At least that is my experience from my memories.

I expect it's because our long-term mental storehouse is still being built or something.

why would we need to rememebr being born?

I remember my first birthday party. I wore a white dress and it was in our new home, we had just moved in. That is my earliest memory. I remember a lot of stuff from my childhood.

I remember my first birthday party. I wore a white dress and it was in our new home, we had just moved in. That is my earliest memory.

first birthday party...like when you were 1 year old?

I was 3, walked to the grade school next door, showed everyone my new underwear. They were red and had a mouse on them. A teacher grabbed me and walked me right back home.

Some people never change, eh.

I was 3, walked to the grade school next door, showed everyone my new underwear. They were red and had a mouse on them. A teacher grabbed me and walked me right back home.

I remember when I was very small, mum had got us these little white undies with lots and lots of frills, but only at the back; the frills were bordered with a contrast color, my favorites were red, yellow and light blue (don't remember what the others were, one might gave been pink). I remember trying to walk and falling on my butt, nicely cushioned with the frills (and diapers of course):D

LOL, They were red satin bloomers with a pocket and that mouse was peeking out of the pocket. As soon as I got taken home, my Mom took them away from me, I went back into cotton undies and I never saw them again.
Hmm, that may explain why I have always loved red.

I remember my first birthday party. I wore a white dress and it was in our new home, we had just moved in. That is my earliest memory. I remember a lot of stuff from my childhood.
Wow! That is an early memory. My earliest is sitting in my highchair and crying because I was hungry or bored or something then I looked at my hands and got distracted by the veins in my wrist which fascinated me. Don't know how old I was though. Likely around two.

i remember lyin on a table with my infant cousin next to me, naked. and peeing straight up in the air, everyone laughs. i remember crawilg across a room and i remember three relative calling me....'here john, here' snapping fing big faces, grinning like...real scary. I also remember my father picking me up from my crib, i had footie pajamams and a small toy in one hand.

i remember when i was one, playing for hours with a measuring tape,, i'll show you sometime...

It would appear that there is not much difference between adult and infant memory storage; so it may merely be a matter of retrieval.


evidence reveals that the roots of adult memory systems can be traced to earliest infancy, and that these systems develop in parallel--not hierarchically--thereafter. Let me caution, however, that uncritically accepting the notion of dichotomous memory systems is an easy trap to fall into. Although simple dichotomies--like 2-way interactions--are easier to undfirstand than numerous systems or sub-systems involving 16-way interactions or more, a this-or-that model is unlikely to capture the variety and richness of what each of us remembers on different occasions. Although perceptual identification and recognition appear to be different processes, for example, per-ceptual identification may be a precursor of recognition rather than part of a memory system entirely distinct from it.

http://www.psichi.org/pubs/articles/article_104.asp

Over the first year and a half of life, the duration of memory becomes progressively longer, the specificity of the cues required for recognition progressively decreases after short test delays, and the latency of priming progressively decreases to the adult level. The memory dissociations of very young infants on recognition and priming tasks, which presumably tap different memory systems, are also identical to those of adults. These parallels suggest that both memory systems are present very early in development instead of emerging hierarchically over the 1st year, as previously thought. Finally, even young infants can remember an event over the entire "infantile amnesia" period if they are periodically exposed to appropriate nonverbal reminders. In short, the same fundamental mechanisms appear to underlie memory processing in infants and adults.
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8721.00019?cookieSet=1&journalCode=cdir



Research on infantile amnesia in humans relies on more anecdotal evidence. Some people can recall a few memories formed when they were as young as 2 or 3 years of age, but most of us can recall much more from when we were 5 or 6 years old. Studies suggest that we're not simply forgetting what happened during our earliest years; far fewer autobiographical memories exist from early childhood than simple forgetting predicts. So the fate of early memories remains puzzling; solving the mystery of infantile amnesia may go a long way towards a more general theory about how we remember and why we forget.

What Happens To Early Memories?

Theories about infantile amnesia can be divided into two broad categories: those which hold that the memory loss is due to a storage difficulty (i.e., early experiences are not properly transformed into long-term memories) and those that claim the memory loss is a retrieval problem (i.e., the memories exist, but we can't recollect them).

The idea that infantile amnesia may be caused by inadequate memory formation stems from studies which show that the neural circuitry of the brain is not fully functional in infants. For example, we know that much of the visual system is still developing after birth, and that myelination in many cortical areas isn't completed for quite a while. In many animal species, the hippocampus, a brain structure that is critical for many types of memory formation, is not entirely developed at birth. Numerous studies have illustrated that rats improve markedly on memory tasks 18 to 23 days after birth, during the time that the hippocampus becomes mature. In humans, however, the hippocampus seems nearly mature at birth, so hippocampal development is probably not at the heart of infantile amnesia. Instead, research has shown that maturation of the infereotemporal cortex and the prefrontal cortex corresponds with the improvement on a number of memory tasks. The activity of these regions may be the key to the whereabouts of our earliest memories.

The Language Link

Perhaps the largest developmental change in humans is the acquisition of language, which generally coincides with when we start to remember things (age 3-4 years). This close association has led some researchers to suggest that language development allows internal and external rehearsal of experiences, and hence better storage in long-term memory. Though there is little doubt that memory for autobiographical experiences and language ability must be linked to some degree, the fact that pre-verbal babies can demonstrate functional memories suggests that language not is necessary for long term memory storage or retrieval.
http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/infantile-amnesia2

I have the worst memory in the memory of man. I find it hard to remember what I was doing an hour ago.

Vague recollection of my auntie lashing out at my sister with her foot from a sitting position and falling off the chair hard. Twelve or thereabouts?

Me falling off a workman's hut that I shouldn't have been on in the first place. Their fire obviously hadn't been out long, as the ashes were warm on my cheek. Elevenish?

Playing tug-of-war with friends and an invisible rope in the face of fast-approaching traffic. The police car came from nowhere and we all ran and hid in a communal bin-shed. I was terrified. Seven?

Hanging about on the corner into the early hours; ripping derelict pubs and houses apart for Bonfire Night (the most special night in our local calendar); daring raids on the woodpiles collected by local rivals; rumours of raids on ours that never seemed to materialise. Six?

Earlier memories than that probably but the mental strain of recalling them is making me tired now.

So is it memories related to an emotional experience that persist? Do you recall these incidents for any particular reason?

Yes. They were fun.

(You're probably right - it's the emotional impact they had. Recalling anything mundane is a lot harder.)

Yes. They were fun.

(You're probably right - it's the emotional impact they had. Recalling anything mundane is a lot harder.)

I recall very strange things; many of them to do with taste or smell. e.g. my grandma used to make mango puree and dip her finger in it and put it in our mouth; I can still remember the taste. My mum and grandma used to put us on their outstretched legs and massage us with warm oil (presumably for strenghtening muscles), they used coconut oil, I remember the smell. I remember the tune that the radio station played first thing in the morning (6 a.m.) and the smell of Pond's dreamflower talc (used by grandma) and Johnson baby powder (used on us). Fun stuff.:o


Also weird stuff. Putting a layer of cream on my cup of tea so thick that I should not see any brown (maybe 5-6?) going out to get a slab of butter every day for breakfast (around same age), being afraid of being chased by wild boars in the swamp near grandmothers house), finding new born puppies behind grandmas house (maybe 7?)

I remember lying in my pram and people coming to 'see the baby', gootchy gooing me, while my dog barked like mad from underneath the pram.

i remember bieng 4 and sneaking down stairs and drinking my moms wine. that's the earliest i can remember

Earliest memory from childhood is when I was 18 months and running outside to greet the postman (I was madly in love with the postman) with my dummy in my mouth and he saying "[my name], only babies use dummies" and taking my dummy from me. I remember bursting into tears from utter mortification and his trying to give it back to me, telling me he was only joking... I remember my parents trying to give it back to me so I would sleep after that and I kept saying "no no.. the postman said only babies use dummies".. my parents also remember my not sleeping for about 2 weeks after that.

Then I remember when I was 3 years of age and my fathers uncle had passed away and at the viewing at his house.. I was playing outside with my cousins that evening and my aunt (sadistic cow), forced us to come inside to pay our respects. And I remember the utter fear I felt when seeing him lying there dead with a rosary clutched in his hands. I was so scared I peed my pants and I remember my aunt yelling at me about not being respectful and I remember my father rushing into the room and dragging me outside while telling his sister she was insane... then trying to comfort me. My parents did not know she had forced me inside to view the body and had not wanted me to see it.

Again at 3 years of age I remember my father in hospital after an ulcer operation and my aunt (same aunt.. damn cow) dragging me in from the waiting room where I had been sitting with my cousin's to come and see my father. My mother had left me outside so I would not have to see my father with a huge tube coming out of his mouth where they were pumping things from his stomach.. and I remember screaming when I was dragged into the room and my mother jumping up from my father's bedside, my father waking up and looking scared and groggily trying to wave me out of the room and my Grandfather scooping me up and rushing me outside. That would have to be the most vivid memory actually. I was terrified that my father was dead.:bawl:

I also remember my cousin's and I stealing our grandmother's tamarind jam and using her good sheets to build a cubbyhouse behind her wardrobe.

wow you are so lucky Bells...that your remember so early from your childhood...it will help you later in life...or maybe that later is close by...

wow you are so lucky Bells...that your remember so early from your childhood...it will help you later in life...or maybe that later is close by...

Indeed. It helped me in that I took my son's dummy away from him when he was 6 months old.. so that he would not remember.:)

Indeed. It helped me in that I took my son's dummy away from him when he was 6 months old.. so that he would not remember.:)

...well thats not exactly what I meant.

Earliest memory from childhood is when I was 18 months and running outside to greet the postman (I was madly in love with the postman) with my dummy in my mouth and he saying "[my name], only babies use dummies" and taking my dummy from me. I remember bursting into tears from utter mortification and his trying to give it back to me, telling me he was only joking... I remember my parents trying to give it back to me so I would sleep after that and I kept saying "no no.. the postman said only babies use dummies".. my parents also remember my not sleeping for about 2 weeks after that.

Then I remember when I was 3 years of age and my fathers uncle had passed away and at the viewing at his house.. I was playing outside with my cousins that evening and my aunt (sadistic cow), forced us to come inside to pay our respects. And I remember the utter fear I felt when seeing him lying there dead with a rosary clutched in his hands. I was so scared I peed my pants and I remember my aunt yelling at me about not being respectful and I remember my father rushing into the room and dragging me outside while telling his sister she was insane... then trying to comfort me. My parents did not know she had forced me inside to view the body and had not wanted me to see it.

Again at 3 years of age I remember my father in hospital after an ulcer operation and my aunt (same aunt.. damn cow) dragging me in from the waiting room where I had been sitting with my cousin's to come and see my father. My mother had left me outside so I would not have to see my father with a huge tube coming out of his mouth where they were pumping things from his stomach.. and I remember screaming when I was dragged into the room and my mother jumping up from my father's bedside, my father waking up and looking scared and groggily trying to wave me out of the room and my Grandfather scooping me up and rushing me outside. That would have to be the most vivid memory actually. I was terrified that my father was dead.:bawl:

I also remember my cousin's and I stealing our grandmother's tamarind jam and using her good sheets to build a cubbyhouse behind her wardrobe.

Yeesh. Those first two are shitty, Bells.

Family are arses. Not to be OT (never me) but on the issue of idiot relatives and kids, I remember my father-in-law insisting and insisting that my eldest (Matthew) learn to skate so he could play hockey like grandpa. The wife pushed it too so I was all "ok, fine" but Matthew wasn't really into it and didn't want to skate and so the old prick flipped his wig a bit and told Matthew he wouldn't be getting any priviledges and so on and being right pissed. My steam came up - I never liked that little asshole - and my wife juuuuust about became an orphan that day. Man. Idiot distant family who think they have a right to stick theirs in. I'm still seeing red thinking about it.

Anyway - topic. I remember running down the hall on the day I turned four and yelling "I'm four! I'm four!" after asking my dad. Before that, a large scarily strong guy - my grandfather - picking me up. Scared hell out of me. Maybe he could sense immorality.

Mostly after that it's just the usual crap everyone experiences after four. You know: dragged to family quilting bees, under the quilt playing with cars and surrounded by baggy old women's legs. Fighting with cousins and dogs in some kind of idiot's battle royale for the backyard swing-tree. Typical stuff. Holding flaming fireworks to shower a field in a construction site at 2 AM as cares drove slowly by, wondering what was going on. Losing my virginity to a one-legged Belgian prostitute. (No relation to TDI...probably.) In the summer, we made meat hats. The usual sort of adolescent hijinks. Nothing too special.

Heh I was just telling you of my "infant memories".. :p

Childhood memories are plentiful. Like jumping in a boat, anchored near the family beachside holiday house, and finding it full of dried up fish bones and the fisherman coming to tell us off.. Stealing cigarettes at 6 years of age and smoking till our throats were raw in my cousin's garage and opening up the garage door afterwards and trying to distract their mother while the smoke billowed out. Being chased by my cousin's demented pet monkey across the yard. Being chased by a rabid deer that same cousin had as a pet.. damn fool had so many weird pets it is a surprise he made it into adulthood.. Falling off my cousin's motorbike at 5 years of age when he decided it would be "fun" to do a wheelie (my father nearly flayed him alive for taking me on his bike and then riding it like a hoon). Stepping on a sea urchin and having the spines break in my foot at 5 years of age... damn I still get chills remembering that pain..

Falling out of my grandparents avocado tree and trying to hide the evidence of the broken branch I had fallen from by wrapping it in sticky tape (we'd been banned from climbing said tree). Falling off the roof and thankfully into soft shrubs at the beach house my grandparents went to every summer.. that was when I was 6 and had been dared to do somersaults across the roof by idiotic cousins... sadistic little turds daring me knowing I would never turn down a dare:mad:..

So many memories.. It is a miracle I'm still alive and with all limbs intact.

As for your father-inlaw, yes I know what you mean. Meddling relatives are the worst. I have just taken up the habit of saying "no" in a particular voice that if they push it, I will ask them to leave. If I know my child is not interested, I will simply say no to the relative and they know now to not push it.. even my husband knows when not to push..

Childhood memories are plentiful. Like jumping in a boat, anchored near the family beachside holiday house, and finding it full of dried up fish bones and the fisherman coming to tell us off.. Stealing cigarettes at 6 years of age and smoking till our throats were raw in my cousin's garage and opening up the garage door afterwards and trying to distract their mother while the smoke billowed out. Being chased by my cousin's demented pet monkey across the yard. Being chased by a rabid deer that same cousin had as a pet.. damn fool had so many weird pets it is a surprise he made it into adulthood.. Falling off my cousin's motorbike at 5 years of age when he decided it would be "fun" to do a wheelie (my father nearly flayed him alive for taking me on his bike and then riding it like a hoon). Stepping on a sea urchin and having the spines break in my foot at 5 years of age... damn I still get chills remembering that pain..

Ho-hum. A fairly standard Aussie upbringing, innit? :shrug: Fighting off crocodiles?

I remember being shot in the stomach by the neighbour's pellet gun when I was six. I was visiting with Canadian cousins and we'd been standing beside the cans their next-door neighbour was shooting at. I was just about to say "shouldn't we be standing somewhere else" when ping the pellet richocheted off and hit me. Nothing serious, obviously, but I realized I'd been hit and I didn't know how powerful they were and the last thing I recall was thinking "well, I've been shot...I guess I'm meant to be dead then" and then I fell over. Kind of odd. They begged me not to tell anyone; I was fine with it, just glad to not have to be dead.

Curiously enough, the next year I was back I got bit by their dog. Still have a wierd scar on my knee. Hadn't really been doing anything. Ah well.

Ho-hum. A fairly standard Aussie upbringing, innit? :shrug: Fighting off crocodiles?


Heh! I migrated to Australia when I was 8 years of age.:p

Well of course.

You can't get into dwarf tossing until you're at least eight.

;)

Well of course.

You can't get into dwarf tossing until you're at least eight.

;)

Sadly, that has been outlawed before I was of legal age to toss.:bawl:

Dwarf tossing that is..

Ermmm...

Nevermind..

I don't remember much at all up until about 6 years of age. I have no recollection whatsoever of kindergarten.

Probably my earliest memory was when I was about 3 or 4. It was a hot day, and I was awfully thirsty. So I managed to reach up to one of the counter and get a hold of that children's liquid Panadol, the raspberry flavoured stuff.

My memory of what happens afterwards is hazy, up until the bit that I'm in ER, being made to throw up. That might explain why I'm a bit of an emetophobe today.

I don't remember much at all up until about 6 years of age. I have no recollection whatsoever of kindergarten....

I only have 1 memory of kindergarten. Raymond Gunhammer was my one true love. Then one day he wasn't there anymore. His brother had gotten drunk and was arrested for something he's done. He hung himself in jail. Raymond's family moved back to the reservation that very night. I remember sitting in my teachers lap crying and crying that raymond was gone.

My earliest memory is when i was around 2 or 3 and i ate a load of chewitts and then threw them up in the kitchen.

Another one (and load people don't believe me and i have my doubts too) when i was 3, i thought my pillow was John Major (the white haired man on TV) and like an imaginary friend i guess.

Is it possible that the infant memories were things you were told but now consider a memory?

All right. So what have we learned?

Women's infant memories are driven by love: Bells loves postmen (no comment), Sam loves food and Orleander loves strangely named Norsemen.

Lots of people remember barfing and fighting; Red can recall primitive terrorialism.

I conclude, therefore, that all behaviour is ingrained: women mostly like nice stuff, because women are made out of flowers and candy, except witches, which are made out of wood. Men, by contrast, are mostly interested in fighting and ramping BMX bikes onto roofs. And vomiting, during or before.

Thankyou.

It would appear that there is not much difference between adult and infant memory storage; so it may merely be a matter of retrieval.


And resistance to the impact. The ego or conscious mind protecting itself from what might seem like a threat to identity. I've had memories (new ones) from different periods in my life, some really early some not. Often the person I was or the way I experienced things (myself, the world, other people) was so different it was jarring. Very early memorys can have a lot of emotion and feeling in the broad sense. We were very different than or seemed to be. I feeling this is resisted by the conscious mind.

I remember my circumcision. Not that all early memories need to be that charged, of course. It took a lot of work for me to relax and stay with this memory. Part of me just wanted to close it off. I think sometimes memories can come primarily as images, almost like a movie without a soundtrack, but if the feelings are attached and the feelings were not good or overwhelming in other ways the conscious mind does not want to deal with them.

I recently spent time with a very young infant, a friend's child. The absolute direct way he would express happiness is something most adults have trained themselves not to do. So even emotions that are positive may be too much for the conscious mind, it cuts against our training.

A baby's perceptions would also be rather other, completely immersed in the now, often without understanding wider contexts. This is a state many people avoid also. 'To remember' is to some degree 'to be' what seems like another person/ another mode of being.

....Orleander loves strangely named Norsemen.....

LOL
did you miss the 'moved to the reservation' part? ;)

All right. So what have we learned?

Women's infant memories are driven by love: Bells loves postmen (no comment), Sam loves food and Orleander loves strangely named Norsemen.

Lots of people remember barfing and fighting; Red can recall primitive terrorialism.

I conclude, therefore, that all behaviour is ingrained: women mostly like nice stuff, because women are made out of flowers and candy, except witches, which are made out of wood. Men, by contrast, are mostly interested in fighting and ramping BMX bikes onto roofs. And vomiting, during or before.

Thankyou.

I think we have learned that there is a hitch between memory storage and retrieval in some individuals. :D

LOL
did you miss the 'moved to the reservation' part? ;)

Clearly it was a Norse reservation of some kind. I understand that several Norsemen visited Labrador in the 10th century; ergo, I deduce you must have been living on Labrador when this occurred.

I think we have learned that there is a hitch between memory storage and retrieval in some individuals. :D

Hmmm - I can think of one such. Have you others? ;)