I was 2 years, 7 months when my younger brother was born. Yet, even with my first memory logged, I have no memories of his birth or him as a baby. I remember moving into a new house, but not the new family member.
Just in thinking back to this time, my memory of finding a discarded chess set in the new house involved a vacuum in the background and my only brother. That is the only memory I can recall interacting with my older brother and being his only younger brother. Memories after this are tagged with my updated familial status.
What's your earliest childhood memory? Is it possible my niece has one from when she was in diapers?
My parents left me with friends for two weeks while they and my sisters went on vacation to the Grand Canyon. It was clearly a traumatic separation because I remember a lot from that period. It was a week after my 2nd birthday.
There are other memories from my early youth but I couldn’t date them precisely except to say that I was younger than four.
2 1/2. There was a family reunion in another state- one of the Carolinas, I believe- and when we were being photographed a relative told me, “That’s a clown smile, give me a real smile.” For years after I was embarrassed by my smile, so that’s probably why I remember it.
My earliest memory is of my nanny taking a nap in one of the upstairs bedrooms. She left when I was 26 or 27 months old and I never had another nanny. I don’t have any pictures of her, so I couldn’t tell you exactly what she looked like at the time.
I remember being at a family outing in a park where there was an old coke machine (the chest style) in a forest kind of area. My mother told me I was well under two when that occurred. It was because she also remembered the coke machine (being quite out of place in a forest) that she could pinpoint the park and the date we visited it.
I began talking and reading much earlier than most children, (talking 6 - 8 months; reading at 2 and a half yrs) perhaps the connection suggested is true.
I really only remember from maybe five on. There may have been something from a trip to Florida when I was maybe four but nothing really early.
I was grown when I asked my mom about why I might have become scared of dogs. She recounted two tales of dogs attacking me and I didn’t remember either one.
It seems that on my dad’s side of the family a lot of people have memories from infancy, but they are usually fragments, mostly visual, and for the most part seem random or unimportant.
For example, I have foggy memories of getting my diaper changed when I was barely crawling age. It was a cloth diaper while my mom was doing it up the pin popped open and I got stabbed in the hip. I do not remember getting pricked at all. My memory is of my mom freaking out, my grandmother taking over, and my mom coming back with a Band-Aid. I don’t remember any words at all, but I remember my mom’s tone of voice and my grandmother’s being much more blase about it all.
My point of view was limited because I was lying on a change table so I mostly remember the white ceiling and the plastic quilt fabric from the table itself, and the tissue with just a spot of blood on it that my grandma had dabbed away. My sister also has memories from babyhood, mainly her crib and one memory where everything is all bleary because she was crying and her eyes were full of tears. Our dad had shaved his beard and she didn’t recognize him or something. She has no memory of our dad with his beard, but remembers that moment of being scared/upset.
My cousin remembers a first taste of some kind of medicine and touching a hot toaster while being carried around as a baby (my aunt was carrying her in the kitchen and my cousin was able to reach the toaster.) There are also aunts and uncles on my dad’s side of the family who have snippets of memory from a really young age.
No one on my mom’s side of the family seem to be able to remember much earlier than pre-school.
I have a memory from when I was about 6 months old. I just remember being on my back looking up at some blue things floating around my head, surrounded by whiteness.
I mentioned it to my mother, who seemed surprised and said that memory would have been of me in my bassinet (which was white) at 6 months old,and the blue things floating around my head were in a bluebird mobile that I apparently really liked. I do recall not being able to form any kind of connection to words for that moment. I know I was intrigued by them (as an adult I can identify the feeling).
I have several memories from when I was very young from 1-3.
We moved from Ny to PA a month after I turned 2. I have a memory of sitting in the moving truck and wanting to ride in it with my dad, and not in the car with my mom, sister and cat. I don’t remember anything about the house we moved from.
We went to NY that Christmas and I was terribly sick. I remember being under my grandmother’s end table just trying to be separate and quiet.
There aren’t any fully formed memories between those. I remember a huge snowstorm, and building a snow dog which a dated photograph tells me was the winter I was 3.
I feel like consistent memory started for me right around age 4. My sister is four years older than I am, and considerably more intelligent. She has told me a number of times that anything before about age 10 is a stirred up blur to her. She remembers a dress she had, or that our parents drove a Volvo, but if I ask, “Do you remember when Aunt Evelyn came to visit and took us out to dinner and taught us to play pinball?” she does not remember that.
I remember being at a sitter’s house and having her yell at me for pooing in my diaper. I remember feeling confused and somewhat indignant for being chastised, since i had not yet been potty trained. The sitter was putting the cloth diaper in the toilet, I assume to flush away the poo, and I was standing just outside the bathroom threshold.
Since:
- I was not tall enough to see into the bowl.
- I have the sense that this happened when we lived in Pennsylvania.
- I was not potty trained
I think this must have happened before I was 24 months old.
I remember a variety of things from when I was 3, including my 3rd birthday party (I was living in England and had a “Dougal” cake) and falling into the Dublin duck pond which was evidently a major trauma for me.
My earliest memory is sitting in a stroller when we’d just moved into our new house. I was about 2 at the time. I remember looking up out of the big picture window in the living room and watching a jet pass overhead with an enormous roaring noise. My mom says that this was the day that the house down the street blew up (gas explosion) which may be why it sticks in my brain.
My earliest, readily recallable memory would be telling someone that I was “fwee” years old. I remember being corrected by my older brother.
10 months here (as documented at least twice in older threads)-looked out my parents’ car window at a brilliant orange sunset which looked like a huge tiger to me (and yes that word popped into my head at the moment in question-I was speaking at 7 months). Confirmed when I was an adult and my mom disclosed the date of said vacation.
I have very distinct memories from my sister’s christening; she was born when I was 18 months old so I was probably not much older than that at the time. For a long time I’d thought it was a very vivid dream, but I asked my mom about it once and she identified the event immediately.
My anecdote would seem to back this up, tho it is clear that animals can have memories without needing words to signify them.
My earliest memories center around songs.
My first was when I was less than a year old and I was having my diaper changed and “If” by Bread was on the radio. I was at my babysitters house and I was looking up at some artwork on the wall. I remember the song making me feel “weird”.
My second was from about 3 years old. I was at my aunt’s house, sitting down outside in the late summer or early fall and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” was playing on a radio outside.
My brother also has memories from infancy. One of his was when he was having his diaper changed and Sesame Street was on TV. He even remembers the exact bit that was playing.
I won’t go into the lampshade I was deathly afraid of in my grandparents’ home when I was 3.
I remember being bathed in the sink when I was pretty small - it was at my grandmother’s house, though I don’t remember if it was her or my mom that was giving me the bath.
I do remember sitting in the sink, with the water about up to my waist, and playing with…I don’t know the words for them. Beads, for little babies to play with. Oh wait, these! http://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-71055-Snap-Lock-Beads/dp/B00000IZQQ
I remember that putting the beads together was HARD, both in getting the insert part into the hole and in pushing them together hard enough that they’d snap together.
I was probably about a year old? Maybe younger? And I was vexed because (Mom? Grandma?) kept wanting to get me clean, and they clearly didn’t understand the problem that I was facing, getting these beads to fit together! It was IMPORTANT!
I have a very strong memory, and my memories start very young. Most are just glimpses of things, but they start at about a year and a half, until my memory becomes solid, just before I was 3.
My first memory is from when I was under two years old. I had a large stuffed turtle toy that was my favorite, and it was thrown out because my dad said I had peed on it, but I was upset and I KNEW I hadn’t peed on it, because I loved my turtle. I remember my grandpa, I was less than two and I had a dolly which I named suzy and I remember my grandpa calling me suzy, and that he was sick so I had to be quiet, and that my doll suzy, when you turned her head closed her mouth, and that I was getting my dolly to bite grandpa & he was hurt. I remember their house, it had the glass stucco , and yellow flowered bushes which would grow things like looked like peas, but were poison so I used to feed them to my dolly.
From when I was 2, I remember going with my mom to the university while she was in art classes & I remember taking a sauna with her & there were a bunch of naked ladies in the sauna. I remember one day of being in a day care. I remember living in an apartment in Lethbridge and I remember first seeing my bedroom and it was the first time I had a room of my own and I did not like the curtains my mom had made. I remember my parents having a reel to reel recorder they had borrowed - and I remember doing arts projects with them.
I remember going shopping with my mom & her friend and her friends little boy who was my age & wondering why the boy Kirk had different parts when we were in the bathroom. I remember I didn’t like taking a bath with my mom’s friends little boy Kirk because he splashed. I remember a lady who used to baby sit me made caterpillars out of milk cartons. I remember a floor buffer, and I remember having lots of people over for christmas, including my cousin Michelle who was older than me. I remember visiting Calgary & visiting my cousin in Calgary.
I remember moving up North and being in the truck for a very long time. I remember a white horse a neighbour had and going for a ride. I remember my third birthday & having a cake shaped like a 3.
The weirdest one was when I was at my great grandparents place and I was not even 3, and I remember that I had forgotten certain things from when I was even younger - and wondering why I would forget things from earlier.
I remember a few things from when I was 2 so it seems plausible that Nicole remembers you singing to here. Memory is a funny thing though. I’ve often said that I hope I’m never called as a witness as I think my memory is rather mutable.
My earliest vivid memory was at my second birthday party in Galveston, TX. My father took me into the surf and a big wave hit us and he dropped me into the water. I fought my way to the surface and he picked me up terrified. I always knew that and remembered it but it only came up in conversation last month. People have accused me of having false memories as well but I am always willing to let them cross-check them with other family members, documents, and photos. I always win. The long-term memories started at age two and I remember lots, if not most stuff, since age three. If have heard some experts claim that kids don’t have true long-term memories until about age five and that is absurd.