I have fairly solid memories from kindergarten onwards, so 5 years old. I do have a memory that I mentioned to my mom where I was sitting in a small yard playing with a black and white cat. Turns out, the yard was in housing, the cat had belonged to my now deceased sister, the cat had died shortly after my memory which is why I really do not remember much about it other than a single flash memory.
The earliest memory that I can date with certainty is from 1978, so I must have been 3-4 years old.
I was sitting on an operating table just before surgery to have my tonsils removed. I remember a kind, young nurse gently showing me various pieces of equipement to keep me from becoming antsy, I guess. It worked like a charm until she put an anesthesia mask on her face. I freaked out.
The year is certain as I found the documents relating to the surgery in a big box that my parents gave me when they moved in 2017. As for the events themselves, they have been confirmed by my mother who was in the operating room. However, I cannot be completely certain that the way I remember them is exactly what happenend.
I really remember very little before school. I do know that I didn’t go to kindergarten, probably because it didn’t exist at that place and time, so I entered first grade at the age of 6, and I do recall some separation anxiety.
The funniest part of that part of my childhood education that I think I’ve probably related before was that I was impressed by how pretty the 2nd grade teacher was, and I lobbied hard to get promoted to 2nd grade. With my Mom’s support, I got taken to the principal’s office and run through some reading tests, and was duly promoted to the 2nd grade. 
That attraction of the pretty second-grade teacher left me forever one year younger than my other classmates throughout the entirety of my elementary and high school years. Which also meant that one particular year when we were all running around naked in the showers after gym class, I was the only one not yet with pubic hair!
My earliest sort-of-clear memory is my Dad visiting me in Junior kindergarten. I can vaguely recall the layout of the room.
Nobody’s early memories are all that accurate. Our brains are NOT accurate in memory, but are designed to motivate us on the assumption they are. Many of my, and everyone’s, memories we think are clear and certain are completely wrong in every way, totally false. It is wired into us, unavoidable. Once you realize that, accept it, you actually get better at reconstructing the past.
My earliest confirmed memories are from age 3 - 4. All were during the year we moved to and lived in Isfahan, Iran.
Specific memories from that time:
- Being put to bed early while my parents were packing up the apartment.
- Riding an airport bus at night to the plane - many lights and jet engine whines.
- Being invited to the flight deck and sitting in the jumpseat for at least an hour - I didn’t want to go back to my seat! I distinctly remember the Captain, First Officer, and Flight Engineer showing me what they do. I didn’t understand any of it, but all the dials and gauges were fascinating, and I was thoroughly entrhalled. This specific memory is what triggered my lifelong love for anything aviation-related and eventually my career. I later confirmed that this was a 747-200, an American Airlines flight to Athens (our layover en route to Tehran).
- We stayed in a hotel in Tehran while housing and other details were being arranged for Isfahan. I remember playing in the hotel hallway with a green ball.
- Our first dinner in Tehran was with my uncle at an Italian restaurant. I remember walking down the stairs from street level to get to it, which I must have found very unusual.
- I have memories of driving around Isfahan, looking out the window at the mountains and the sky, which was extremely blue.
- I remember attending a school play that my cousins were in. It was held on an outdoor stage, and they were wearing funny paper masks.
- I remember the garbage man who came to our apartment every week. he was nice but smelly.
- I got the chickenpox while we were there - I remember sitting in bed feeling itchy and eating a bowl of Trix.
- The only memories I have of our evacuation were being stopped repeatedly by soldiers who stood at the car door talking to my dad. I remember them being dusty-smelling but very nice. This would have been while we were driving back to Tehran.
- I remember walking up the loading ramp of the C-130 that was our ride out of Tehran. We sat on side benches, and everyone was given a pair of orange earplugs that my mom had to help me put in.
Mentioned this before, my Tiger in the Clouds…
Was in the back seat of my father’s maroon Cadillac. I recall looking out the left side window, and beholding an orange sunset, and I distinctly recall the word “tiger” popping into my mind at that moment.
I told my mom about it years later, and she confirmed all the details, a trip to Niagara Falls along I-90 in May, 10 months after I was born, so the sun angle would have been correct. They had (in the days before child seats) put down my crib mattress in the back seat for me to sleep and play on, and that had to be in place for me to be elevated enough to see out the window like I did. They read to me from a very early age and I was talking (and walking) by seven months, note.
I also recall the globe at the 1964 World’s Fair, 2 years old. I recall some other fragments from that time, incl. trying to start the car in the garage, and seeing and getting stung by a Portuguese man-o-war on a Miami beach.
I clearly remember the arrival of my little sister when I was 3-1/2 mostly because there were new rules about not waking the baby. And, of course, the first days of preschool (4) and kindergarten (5). I have other early memories but no way to date them to a particular year.
I have a few memories from the house we moved out of when I was five, so probably from age three or four. I remember playing dress-up with the girl next door who was about the same age (unfortunately all she had for dress-up were girls clothes). I remember taking shelter in the basement during a tornado, and how green the rainstorm looked outside from what I could see out of the basement window. I remember our back yard having a really steep downhill slope, and I remember my parents having the house added onto in the back. I have a vague memory of watching the Beatles cartoon show on TV.
In grade school when we had our pictures taken we would get a composite photo of the entire class along with our individual photos. I’m guessing if I came across one of those, I could probably still recognize and name a large percentage of my classmates. Same with HS (it was a small graduating class, about 150 kids).
Not picking on you - but using your post as an example to ask questions:
How do you know your “memories” are actual recollections of sensory input you received and emotional experiences you had at a certain age, as opposed to your mind “filling in gaps” and “telling stories” after the fact. For example, perhaps when you were in Cyprus your parents said, “Remember how you used to love picking blackberries at this time of year?”
I have no desire to question every memory described herein. I just wonder how confident folk can be about the fidelity of what they now consider to be remote memories.
My mother and my father divorced before I was in kindergarten, but I have a few memories of them. The earliest, I think, involves me somehow having gotten hold of a slinky and showing it to Mom. She said I should show it to my Dad, who was in the bathtub.
No idea how old I would have been, though younger than kindergarten age.
My family moved states and i started Kindergarten in our new town so that clearly delineates when certain memories took place.
I do NOT have many clear active memories of living in the old state. More pictures/images of places–the apartment complex we live in, my aunt’s beach house, the playground I played in.
My earliest clear active memory of the old state is being babysat at my neighbor’s apartment. Though unfortunately that is because (trigger warning) they were sexually molesting me so it is burned into long-term memory,
We moved into what became our ‘permanent’ house when I was 3, and I have a few memories from our condo before that. Mostly scenes and loose emotions, and not really coherent experiences.
I remember going to a neighbor’s (presumably some other kid my age) condo across the green and eating Flintstones vitamins like candy.
I remember having a bag of banana chips in my room, and maybe getting in trouble for having taken them (I cannot remember what my room looked like, however).
I remember playing an age-appropriate board game with frog pieces with my grandfather- maybe my birthday.
I remember the birth of my brother, 15 days before I was 3 years old. I remember that my sister and I were not allowed to go downstairs, where my mother and the baby were, and that my father made us breakfast, rather than my mother as usual. And I remember how happy my dad’s face was on the occasion. I also remember my 3rd birthday, I remember getting a little red tricycle as a birthday present.
I have too many memories from ages 4 to 6 to list. Kindergarten “nannies” by name, hairstyle, clothing and of course personality, the kids there, especially those who lived close to me, and especially those that were my friends or my enemies, our apartment layout, the furniture, the yard, the specific swing set there, our adventures in the nearby woods, such as a quartz-containing rock face we could get sparks out of by throwing pieces of scrap steel at it, the frog eggs and youngs in the brook etc.
Also certain specific events, such as the time I won a kindergarten ski competition, or the time we went on a sleigh horse ride just before Christmas and how the horse’s ass smelled like ass all the way, or the same Christmas when the biggest present I got was a huge disappointment to me: a scale set of farming machinery and vehicles, when I wanted to get monsters and monster trucks.
Learning to read at 4, I remember reading Tarzan books, and spending countless hours with animals of the world type books, as well as astronomy for beginners type books.
I can date all of these because we moved when I was 6, and the memories from after that are completely different in setting etc.
Whether I have memories going back to age 3 is open to question. I may have impressions, sights and sounds from that era stuck in my brain.
I remember my 3rd birthday party. I also remember the 1969 moon landing from the same year. I knew it was a big deal because the adults were making a big deal out of it. But I didn’t really understand the significance of it until later. I was only 3. You say men are on the moon? Ok. I believe you. You say milk comes from cows? Ok. I believe you. I was still figuring the world out. The two things I specifically remember about the moon landing were watching it on this crappy little black and white TV that we had, and my mother taking me outside and pointing up at the moon and telling me that’s where they were.
We lived in Point Pleasant, WV, in the late 60s and lived there when the Silver Bridge collapsed. I remember people talking about the bridge collapse, and I remember people talking about Mothman. I remember my mother telling me that Mothman was just a legend and wasn’t real.
We moved around a lot in those days so I can place a lot of memories to a specific year. I remember the house that we lived in when I was 3, and I remember the house that we lived in when I was 4 (and onwards from there).
My memories from when I was 4 are a bit hit and miss. I remember a few specific things but I don’t remember anything close to the entire year. My biggest memory was my sister whacking me over the head with one of my father’s stethoscopes and needing to go into my father’s office to get a stich put in my head (1 stitch, it’s the only stitches I’ve ever had).
My memories from age 5 are much more solid. We moved to a new town. I remember the police coming to the door at night to tell us that my father died in a car crash. I started kindergarten. I remember getting on the school bus for the first time. I remember the gray sectioned roll-out mats that we had to sleep on for nap time. Lots and lots of memories from when I was 5.
I can’t remember my kindergarten teacher’s name, but I remember her face. Same with my 1st grade teacher. 2nd grade onward I remember names. To be fair, I’ve never been great with names. I always remember faces though.
For the moon landing, I don’t just remember the moon landing itself. I remember watching it on our crappy old black and white TV. I remember the neighbors (a nice old couple) being there. I remember my mother lifting me up and taking me outside, and pointing up at the moon. That makes me confident that it’s an actual memory and not just a false memory from seeing numerous videos of the event over the years.
When I was a teenager, I told my mother that I remembered what I thought was my 4th birthday party. But when I described what I remembered (the cake, the little 6 or 7 year-old girl named Cindy who lived next door who came to the party, etc) my mother told me it was actually my 3rd birthday that I was remembering. My mother also surprised me that she had actually kept in touch with the neighbors (which I knew nothing about) and I got to meet the teenage version of Cindy. She had changed a lot, but I still recognized her.
After my father died, our family kinda fell apart. These aren’t memories pieced together from stories, because we didn’t sit around and tell stories. We never talked about the past.
I’m sure some of the details are a bit off. But while they might be flawed, I know for certain that they are memories. They aren’t reconstructions from stories or pictures. They are real memories.
I also learned to read at 4. Surprised the heck out of my 1st grade teachers when they tried to teach me to read and I already could read quite well. I remember my 1st grade teacher taking me up to the principal’s office to show him how well I could read my dinosaur books.
I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when I was 7. I laid on the couch and read the entire thing in one sitting. I had read children’s books like Curious George up until then, but I never read children’s books after that. It was all “real” books like Treasure Island from that point on.
I think I have memories from the age of 3-5, but it’s more likely that those memories were reconstructed from tales from parents and photographic snapshots that were preserved.
I remember 2 nightmares from my crib. One involved small garden sized snakes coming out of the wall of the bedroom above my crib. The other involved balloons with horribly nasty red faces floating above my crib.
I can tell the memories I detailed above are not reconstructed from parental tales / photographs, since almost all of them have nothing to do with either.
For me I would say 3. My dad bought an old car (1930s) and as they were pushing into a shed I was standing on the running board and accidentally pulled the handle down, fell off, and the car running over my legs. I remember being in a lot of pain but because I could still walk my parents never took me to the hospital. My parents had bought this farm when I was 2 1/2 and I have no memories of the previous house. I also remember my aunt and uncle’s old farm house with the lean to back porch They built a new house and tore down the old one when I was 3.