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What is your earliest memory?
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I have memories going back to 13 to 18 months of age and I remember quite a bit of detail from my childhood. I've met people who say they have no clear memories of their childhood, and I just don't understand how that's possible. But I know not everyone is the same.

    So, I'm curious: What's your earliest childhood memory?
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    my earliest memory is from when i was about 14 months old. i cut my head open. i remember how it happened and that at the hospital they wouldn't let my mom or dad come in the room while they stitched me up. i also remember thrashing around so bad that a couple nurses had to hold me down while they stitched me. that was in 1979, i'm 33, still got the scar. my mom has verified this memory too because i told her i remembered it and at first she didn't believe me.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    Mine would be watching my mom put her retainers in at night. I had to be younger than two at the time.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I wish I could remember my childhood. I remember very vaguely an incident from when I was between ages 7-9. A few scattered memories here and there but nothing in detail from my childhood. I sometimes wonder if theres a reason I've blocked out my memories. Even things that have happened 5 years ago I have a hard time remembering sequence of events and details. It's heartbreaking. I take so many pictures of my daughter because I'm afraid I won't remember things about her growing up.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I have a really terrible memory anyway. Mine was when I was 4 years old. My Mom was babysitting the kids across the street - three of them all within two years of my age. She put all four of us in the bathtub together, and I asked to get out because the water was so dirty from them. Yeah, their Mom was a really fat, slobby lady who took shitty care of her kids. My Mom changed the bath water three times until they were somewhat clean. I also recall contracting lice from them a few years later.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I remember a lot from my child hood. My mom denies most of it, but I remember things from at least 2 or 3. I member sitting on a hill of dirt with a diaper on and a spoon playing in the dirt. I was potty trained at 2.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    i remember just days after my 2nd birthday my baby sister was born and my mom's dh beat the shit outta her and i was hiding under the kitchen table watching.. she was covered in blood
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I have this memory of my great-grandma and I laughing together as I stood in front of her on one of those really old-fashioned vibrating things they used to use to lose weight. It had this belt thing that wrapped around your back and vibrated you. I remember the feeling of shaking against her belly and laughing. My family tells me there is no way I could remember this as I was only about 2 when she passed away but I remember it, and feeling happy. Weird.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    My first birthday. I remember trying to reach the lil plastic baloons off the cake because I had an urge to "pop them" (i thought they were real). My mom denies I remember it but my nana, who was holding me, says I fought really hard for the "bloons"
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    My earliest memory is sitting on my dads lap at breakfast. i even have a picture of it. Makes me happy since he is gone now.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I must have been between 2 - 3 years old and I remember my mother taking me out of the bath, wrapped in a towel, laying me on her bed, sprinkling baby powder on my privates, diapering me and putting my pj's on for bed.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I remember my mom getting me dressed to go somewhere. We were in a hurry and she put jeans on me with no undies. I remember being afraid to tell her, but also being afraid of leaving the house without underwear on. I must have been between ages 2 and 3.

    I pray my children don't remember the times I'm stressed and in a bad mood as their first memory, I try to always act accordingly, but sometimes I slip up :(
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I had an incident where I burned my hand (3rd degree) on a heater at my grandmother's. I don't remember pain, but I remember the hospital and the bandages. My mother said that it was when I was first learning to walk.
    I also remember my mother shooting at the gd gopher rats. I KNOW we moved out of that house when my brother was less than a month old and we are fourteen months apart.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I remember swinging on our swingset and singing 'Twinkle Little Star' and I remember climbing to stand on this rock that I thought was SO huge. Our mom drove us past that house when we were teens, and I saw the rock. It was in the corner of the fenced in yard. Surprisingly it was still there, but seemed so tiny! Like step ladder tall. I know that it was at least a year or two before I started Kindergarten because we moved from that house before I started school.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I don't remember anything before age 4. I remember that my parents and sister and I went to go get our new color tv. Before that my parents just had black and white, it was 1979. I remember that and 2 other things from that year..one, when i almost drowned in a hotel pool because my sister had jumped on my back and would not let me up and a man pulled her off of me because my mom was not watching..that obviously is a vivid memory. 2nd, I remember trying to get on my dad's lap when he was watching the news and him telling me to go away because I bothered him. : ( I guess sometimes we remember the really horrible stuff easier than the happy stuff. Although the tv memory was happy.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I was two and sitting on a swing, watching dad dig a hole and he told me if he dug far enough he could come out at china
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I can't believe so many of you have such early memories. I can't remember anything before about age 4, but I often wonder if I really do have some of my "memories" or if I just think I do from seeing pictures or hearing stories. Most of my early "memories" also have photos associated with them in the photo album. :-/
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I'm 7:28. I have several memories of kindergarten, I would've been 5. I know there aren't pictures of these memories, so those are my earliest memories that I'm sure of.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I vaguely remembering being changed; I recall some people not being good about taking care of my diaper rash and others being better about it. Another memory is wanting to show my mom, aunt and uncle a new "super power" that I had and they didn't care, and then I realized that the world didn't revolve around me. I think I must have been between 2 - 3.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    It'd be really hard to polaroid most of these LOL Some of were little before taking a picture was as simple as it is now.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    As a scientist, I have to point out that long-term memories are unable to be formed until around the age of three. Study after study backs this up, and people who think/believe/claim to remember things before that age have usually incorporated stories they were told as a child into "memories" which can certainly seem true and real. The human brain is a wonderful thing, but we are VERY susceptible to self-deception and memory muddling. I know that those of you who have memories of infancy will think you are right and I am wrong, that you are an exception, etc. But the plural of anecdote isn't evidence, and the evidence is irrefutable: the brain does not have the capacity to form long-term memories in infancy. Sorry, ladies. But the stories and memories are wonderful no matter how they came about.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    Well, I don't know how old I was but I do know that I was still in my crib when this happened. My dad yelled out "Honey!" to my mom and we were in her room. I yelled back "Yeah!" and he walked in, looked down in the crib and said with a laugh "Are you honey?" I'm not usually one to always argue with "scientific studies" but I know this was real. My parents didn't even remember this story but I did and I know I didn't make it up. I also remember being in a high chair and eating a bowl of cereal while my mom was *ahem* entertaining another man....at his house! We got into a cab, since my mom didn't drive, and went over there. It was raining that day. I remember seeing my mom in her bra and a slip and the man was in the bathroom shaving and I asked what his name was. Years later when I asked my mom about it I KNEW it was a true memory just by the look of shock on her face! She denied it at first but later told me the truth. The most interesting part is that this guy is STILL in her life and actually has ME in his will! (I'm not his child so let's get that cleared up right away...I look sooo much like my dad there's no question) All that to say is I believe it is possible to remember things from a very early age...
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    11:08 my father died when I was three. I have lots of memories of him before he died that aren't made up. Also my brother was born one month before I turned 3 and I have lots of pre brother memories. (I hated that screeching attention sucking creature and powerfully wished him to back to where ever he came from.)

    So in what must have been my second year I clearly remember my father working on the car, hopping around in a cast, eating eggs at breakfast with him. I remember him once yelling at me and thinking my world ended. I remember running around outside with no shirt. I remember going to the lake with my mom and my older step brother.

    And without a doubt I remember when everything changed between my brothers birth and my fathers death.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    To the scientist: ask any verbal kid under age 3 about something that happened a year ago, and they'll reel it all out for you. Sorry, but you're just plain wrong.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    Yeah, that's just like the childhood development "experts" that say 2yr old's are incapable of lying or making up stories. They've never met my daughter!
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    ""Long-lasting conscious memory of specific events begin to develop when your baby is between 14 and 18 months old.""
    Child psychologist Judith Hudson

    The scientific community has long debated this issue.
    There are no fewer 'experts' for than there are against.
    Cherish your memories, whether they are real or implanted.
  • Anonymous
    Posts: 29,614
    I was 2 years and 11 months when my brother was born, and I remember thinking how HUGE my mom was while she was pregnant. I remember waking up in this weird mesh sided swing thing, it being dark and my dad and uncle were playing sonic 1 on the sega genesis, way before my brother was born. Idk how old I was... Also when I was 3 I was bit by my uncle's dog, and had to have stitches. I remember them putting on the topical anesthetic, lol. But of course I didn't know what in the world they were doing.
  • GlitterQueen GlitterQueen
    Posts: 2,507Member
    My first memory I was about 2. My grandpa had this school bus he had converted into a sort of motorhome, with a fold down kitchen and beds. Someone broke into it and we didn't have a key. My mom removed all the glass from the bottom door window and had be crawl through to open the door so she could get inside.

    The other memory I have I was probably about 4 I was listening to my mom's record player. Listening to purple people eater  and jumping on the bed when the record stopped. Mom was outside. She had taken the glass out of the window and it was leaning against the wall. I leaned against it to yell out the window for her that I needed the record changed. She yelled something back and I didn't hear it. But I fell through the window and it slit my wrist. I remember my older sisters bf carrying me to the bathroom and lots of blood. I vaguely remember stitches at the hospital not being able to go swimming at daycare with the other kids.
  • GingersnapGingersnap
    Posts: 7,314Member
    I remember both of my mother's grandmothers. Grandma Baxter had long white hair, that was kinda yellowish, too. She had a pink satin bathrobe. She loved Siamese cats and had two of them when she was convalescing at her daughter's. She collected Siamese cat figurines. I loved the ones with blue crystals for eyes. A nurse came to give her pills. Her daughter would brush her hair and make her tea. 

    Grandma Fogarty had short, curly dark grey hair. She was tiny. She had glasses and wore wonderful clunky-heeled shoes. She loved to hold me in her lap in the red chair in the kitchen next to the wood stove. She always smelled faintly of mothballs. I remembered that she lived in a big place, and grandpa and I went to pick her up for a visit. She had her own locker.

    I would sit on the floor in the kitchen and play with the toys from the "toy drawer" while we visited. I was a sponge.

    My mother was really surprised that I remembered either one of them. They both died before I was three. Grandma Fogarty was living in a nursing home for the last years of her life and Grandma Baxter had tremors they were trying to treat with medications. 

    I also remember going with my mother and her mother to work on cleaning out Grandma Fogarty's house after she had died. I didn't go to either one of their funerals. I would had liked to have gone to Grandma Baxter's. It really would have cleared up some confusion for me. They told me she "went up to heaven". When I was more mobile, I discovered her bedspread in the closet at the top of the stairs. It was a walk in closet, and I was convinced I'd found "heaven" and she was in there somewhere. It smelled like her. 
    image
  • AKimiBAKimiB
    Posts: 1,820Member
    I remember being carted around in my carseat a lot to my mothers many doctor offices.
    I remember when I lived with my dad (whew buddy! THAT was definitely long ago). I remember just having learnt to sit up and using my great-uncle's shih-tzu to balance, I also remember same said dog literally scaring the shit out of me. Lol.
    SMSM_s_5 photo SMSM_s_5_zps5d122d86.jpg
  • GirdyOleeGirdyOlee
    Posts: 436Member
    Anonymous said:

    I wish I could remember my childhood. I remember very vaguely an incident from when I was between ages 7-9. A few scattered memories here and there but nothing in detail from my childhood. I sometimes wonder if theres a reason I've blocked out my memories. Even things that have happened 5 years ago I have a hard time remembering sequence of events and details. It's heartbreaking. I take so many pictures of my daughter because I'm afraid I won't remember things about her growing up.



    Oh my gosh!!! That's me EXACTLY. I'm terrified I'll forget all my kids' important things. My DD13 remembers stuff that I don't. It makes me so sad. I've forgotten so much. With the other 2 kids, DS1 and DD3, I try to journal and take tons of pictures.

    I fell off a roof onto a sidewalk, on my head, when I was like 11. I was unconscious for almost 3 days, so I wonder if that trauma has something to do with my memory issues. I can barely remember shit from last week, let alone last year.

    Thankfully, my DH has a great memory, so he can remind me of the past. If he dies, I'm screwed.

  • unforgivenunforgiven
    Posts: 12,891Confessional Manager
    @girdyolee That quote was mine... before I got an official name. I forgot about this thread. It's nice to know I'm not the only one...Still sucks though :(

    confessional-manager

    "What looks like torture is a time to rejoice
    What sounds like thunder is a comforting voice
    When what is beautiful looks broken and crushed
    And I say I don't know you
    But you say it's finished"
  • GirdyOleeGirdyOlee
    Posts: 436Member
    I totally agree @unforgiven.
  • SilverKat
    Posts: 17Member
    I have a really distinct memory of "waking up" at my 4th birthday party! It was weird, even then. I was opening a present that I particularly liked - one of those popcorn toys that you pushed.
  • AlbertaMomAlbertaMom
    Posts: 789Member
    I remember being about two and grabbing my moms hand and getting.burned with her cigarette. I remember what the house we were in looked like but not whose it was.
    I also remember very clearly my brother being born when I was three and getting to stay at my aunts and swimming in her pool. I remember the conversation she had telling me I would still be her favorite niece.
    Lilypie Pregnancy tickers
  • fatchickonabikefatchickonabike
    Posts: 5,512Member
    I have two memories from around the ages of 13-18 months. My mother has confirmed both of them. The first memory, age about 13 mo, was in our kitchen. I was bouning a beach ball with my babysitter. The other was playing with a wooden shapes puzzle while my mother had her eyes checked by the optometrist.
    "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof bullshit detector.” - Ernest Hemingway
  • shate98shate98
    Posts: 2,773Member
    I remember being about 2 and misbehaving at the breakfast table(I have no idea what I was doing though). My Mom had both of her arms in casts at the time, and having no way to get me to knock it off, poured a glass of cold water over my head.

    I also remember being in Disney World and my parents trying to make me go take a picture with Mickey, but I thought his big head made him look SO scary. And I remember meeting Snow White and being so excited I couldn't get any words out. I remember her complimenting my dress.
    "As you wander through your life, whatever be your goal,
    keep your eye upon the doughnut, not upon the hole."
  • pugmom
    Posts: 20Member
    My earliest memory is very tactile. I remember laying on a rough rug in front of the fireplace, and I had a bottle- and I remember the smell ( not the taste-thank God) of formula in the bottle, and the dog laying up against my side. Her back was curled against me, and she was hot from the reflected heat from the fireplace. I'll have to ask my mom, because I have no idea how old I was. My mom says (just called her), that she took away our bottles when we were about a year old.
  • pugmom
    Posts: 20Member
    After talking to my mom, she's thinking I was somewhere between 6-9 months, because they never burned a fire in the fireplace after May, so I would have been no older than 9 months. Wow. Thanks for having this discussion, because I never even mentioned this memory to my mom, and she remembers putting me on that rug for "tummy time".. and she washed it the summer just before I turned one, and it fell apart in the wash- so there aren't even PICTURES of that rug.  And she's never mentioned it to me before! THANK YOU!

  • ann_winsann_wins
    Posts: 132Member

    I had repressed memories until I was 33. I was hypnotizied and uncovered abuse all of over the place. Needless to say very upsetting. But I asked for it. I needed to know what happened. I could feel the abuse but didn't know the details. I applauded after coming to - I was so glad to know what happened, why I behaved, believed and etc the way I did.I.e. I had been sucicidal for years.

    It is remarkable that I had memories of my mother not wanting me and feeling all alone while just a few months old in a baby carrier. The memories later confirmed on how I wasn't wanted.

    It's been a long recovery road for me as I still get pieces of my past. I'm 56 now and find it amazing how those earlier years can stand so solid so hard to undo. I'm relentless and will return to who I'm supposed to be a little each day (alot on some days)  I don't want this past to define me that I'm still punching through the mess. That makes me mad.

    I know I've come along way and I'm proud of myself. I've gotten myself in a lonely place that is not the best. Had to divorce my family in 2007 becasue of their continued cruelty - I'm glad I did so - that's powerful. But it left me with an abandoned feeling. I'm sure I'll get on the other side. Just hope its soon

    Had to vent - sorry going off the thread - didn't realize that was waiting to be said. Glad I'm comfortable here to share such sensitive stuff, 

    >:D<
  • TVmommyTVmommy
    Posts: 453Member
    I remember very clearly my 1st birthday party. I was sitting in my highchair and my mother brought out my cake it was a bunny with a red vine bowtie and m&m eyes. Right after she set it down the door bell rang. It was my uncle Eric. By the time they got back into the kitchen I had cake everywhere, even my ears! My aunt confirmed the story for me last year. I am 35 now and have told that story all of my life.
    Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best! At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires.
  • StillTryingStillTrying
    Posts: 54Member
    I was about 2.5 or 3 I think...  My mom had a minor surgery and my dad and I went to visit her in the hospital.  My dad had my dress on me backwards and I wasn't wearing underware.  I also remember picking flowers from my mom's garden and putting them in a mayonnaise jar and bringing them to her in the hospital.  She laughed.  It was great.
  • saraweil
    Posts: 1Member
    My earliest memory is when I was 2 years old and my mom was having a baby shower for my little sister. I remember a whole bunch of people, aunts, cousins, granmothers, friends. I remember drinking coke and eating ruffled chips with onion dip. I remember my mom being as big as a whale (actually I called her a beluga whale which bit me in the ass because that's what she called me when I got preggers).
  • GypsyMamaGypsyMama
    Posts: 617Member
    I remember standing in my crib in the hospital looking out the window after getting my tonsils out. I remember the nurse giving me a popsicle. I was 2.
  • OpheliaOphelia
    Posts: 3,300Member
    I remember my dad's parents taking me to their hous when it was still dark out to stay with my aunt. She had porcelain dolls all over her room and I wanted to play with them. My grandparents came home when it was light out and told me I had a new baby sister. I was a little over 2.

    I also remember my sister getting hit by a car when she was 2, I was 4. My dad was walking us to a little restaurant for lunch, my sister saw my mom across the street yelled "mommy" and slipped out of my dad's hand. The car was going really ffast and didnt see her. When she got hit she flew and landed down the street in front of a cemetery. I can remember screaming and the lady in the house it happened in front of happened to be a friend of my parents, she heard it happen and took me in her house. She had a baby in a swing, she was watching sesame st. my dad's bro came and got me and we watxhed the helicopter take my sister away and I stayed at his house. I was so scared. My parents came to get me the next morning and told me Les had a broken leg and she would be ok.
    Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile.. -Grateful Dead<3
  • LostDreams
    Posts: 32Member
    I have a vague memory I believe to be of an illness I had when I was a year old, a few other vague memories that seem to be from when I was 2, for age 3 I have a lot of pretty clear memories.  From there on I seem to be able to recall a lot.  With just a little information from others I can pull up enough other information that it is definitely a memory (and not just recalling the story being told by others). 

    But there are some ... anomalies ... I remember doing try-outs for a couple things but no recollection of the results of the try-outs.  I have dozens of memories (including losing my virginity) that I can't place any more specifically than a 2 or 3 year span.  I've occasionally thought about hypnotism to pull some of those details out, mostly for curiosity's sake, but after hearing about all the false "recovered" memories (because someone had an agenda regarding abuse or alien abductions or satanic cults or just a counselor who wanted the money from on-going therapy) I'm hesitant. 
  • mericksmom
    Posts: 388Member
    I have a few like a wedding or visiting great grandma....or the birth of my sister (3 and half years apart).  The one that I hated was when I was about 3 and finally got a trike and I rode it down the road and back... I got my butt beat that day.

    Then there was the one time at 5 where I fell out of the truck going down the rd.  Mom swerved enough so that I hit the dirt rather than the road and I remember trying to grab onto everything so not to fall.  I remember the tires so close as I fell.  This was in kindergarten right before the student of the year.  I was that student and had  a road rash face when they took the picture.
  • amyclarkamyclark
    Posts: 213Member
    One of my earliest memories is of my Auntie Joanne coming over and we had Chinese food and my brother and I cuddled on the couch together and watched this movie Flight Of The Dragons.  I must have been 2 or 3 cause my Auntie passed away when I was 4 and she as really sick for quite a while before hand and my mom wouldn't take us to see her near the end.
  • KiinuKiinu
    Posts: 1,161Member
    I remember the first apartment my parents had, I remember the kitchen floor before it got fixed and my room before it got painted pink so I had to be younger than 5. We moved out of there when I was 7 but I know the repairs weren't done right away and my room wasn't painted until my brother was moved to another room. 

    I remember going to the hospital to see one of my newborn siblings, I know I was walking, and my sister was walking, I can't remember if my brother was walking or not.. so I can't tell you which youngest sibling it was, I was 5 or 7. I'm leaning towards 5 because my youngest brother was so sick, I don't think we ever went to visit him after his birth.
  • battibatti
    Posts: 2,178Member
    I remember climbing down what seemed to be a HUGE step down into a sunken living room and seeing my dad watching Clash, right as Medusa is wiggling her crazy snakes. I got scared and climbed back up, and for some reason I specifically remember noticing a pic of my uncle in his navy uniform. I told my mom this and she said we moved from that house before I was 6 months old.. never had another place with a sunken living room, and for whatever reason, that picture didn't make it back on the wall any where else.

    SMSM_s_5

  • bluemom
    Posts: 154Member
    My earliest memory, I was 3, my sister and I were at daycare and I was worried that they were being mean to her because she just cried and cried(she was 1). I remember the toy shelf and sitting in front of it playing with cars. That was the only daycare I ever went to and we were only there a week. I think traumatic or emotional memories are the easiest to remember. I know that someone said toddlers and babies can't remember, but it really has more to do with language than age. Once we have language we start to store memories in a part of the brain that is easier to access. My childhood was very chaotic and unpredictable and I have very few childhood memories. I think that is true of a lot of people. I am always shocked when my kids talk about things they remember, especially my 3 and 7 year olds. My 7 year old remembers the directions to our old house, we moved when she was three. We went to the movies and my 3 year old was talking about when she went to the movies "lasterday". I wasn't really paying attention, thinking she was just babbling, but then I realized she was talking about seeing Toy Story, the only other movie she's ever been to, she was 18 months old. I had forgotten alll about it.
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