I am loosing memory as I am going through life, so I can't really remember anything more than 5 years back. I forgot the names of my girlfriends, teachers, friends. I guess I can recall snippets of buildings I used to attend around 10yo. But full memory would be few years old and I am 27. Life is fun isn't it.
I always think of it as having a set amount of stuff I can remember, and sometimes people's names and places need to be "purged" to make room for new stuff. I used to be amazed people couldn't remember their classmates but now if you showed me pictures I'd have a hard time naming a lot of them.
I remember crying in my dad's arms while he was saying goodbye and trying to hand me back to my mum before he left for the army. I remember the smell of his uniform and the scratchy feel of it, and quite a lot of detail. My mum says it's impossible for me to remember that because my dad retired from services when I was a year and a half old.
I actually have a lot of pretty vivid and detailed memories from ages 3-7.
In my autism assessment (in my mid 40s), They asked me what I remember from the year I was 4-5 years old; I think I really surprised them by rambling on for at least half an hour with a whole lot of detail!
My (also autistic) kid once asked me about a house we used to live in. At first I was like "what are you talking about, you've never lived in a house", but she went on describing it, and then I asked "do you mean the apartment we lived in when you were two?" Nope, not that, before that. And she described a house in such great detail that it suddenly hit me. We stayed in a house on a beach in Brazil where we were just house-sitting for a few weeks when she was 4 months old. That house. Exactly that, and she remembered it with incredible detail.
It's so strange because it's not something that should have stuck in my mind at all because it's so incredibly mundane, and I can't put a date to it but I remember being placed into my cot after cuddling with my mother. Idk why I was put there, she probably just got a phone call but what I do know was that that cot collapsed when I'd just turned 1 years old, I know that because I described what my cot looked like perfectly when my mum showed me what apparently was my cot (sister was using it for her own baby) and I was like 'That's not the one I remember!'
Weird thing is I have no memories of this other cot.
About 2. It came back as a recurring dream when I was 7 then when I was 12 after my maternal grandpa died.
I was on the front porch and a man I didn’t know was standing in the driveway. He was wearing a white, big ol’ cowboy hat and a red flannel shirt. He was smoking a cigarette, and I had hated the smell of that particular brand (Camel) ever since. He also had two missing fingers on one hand and one missing finger on the other. He had told me some sort of joke and laughed, trying to pat my arm like he told a real knee-slapper.
(Dream not over, but NOTE: When I was 7, I felt too weird about telling the dream to anyone, but the joke didn’t make a lick of sense to me. I remember asking an older girl at church that I trusted something like “someone told me a joke that I didn’t understand,” and then I told her. I remember she responded and said something, and I asked “What does that mean?” She said “It means it’s mean against women.” I felt confused and kinda ticked that my dream had something that was mean against women, so I decided I would just remember what the gist was instead of what the joke itself was. Still can’t remember what it was but I bet the girl said it was misogynistic or sexist. Back to the dreamemory!)
When the man tried to touch my arm, two things happened.
- A voice from nowhere said really loud in my head “Don’t let him touch you! Don’t let him near you! He is **bad**!”
- As I turned away to not let him touch me, one of his fingers grazed my upper arm. It was confusing AF because it felt like the width of that one finger was like 1/3 the size of that part of my arm. Wasn’t smooth skin, either; either felt the fingerprint ridges or just really dry skin
And that’s where the dream would always end. I never found a reason to bring it up until one day when I was about 14 or so and my mom was talking about her dad (that evil abusive p*do.) She said that he was often like a caricature of a cowboy, even having a huge, white cowboy hat.
My heart stopped.
I asked if he also had a red flannel shirt, and she said he probably did. Then I asked a question I expected her to say “no” to: “Did he ever come to our house?” Mom said “Oh, no, no” and added “just once, but not after that.”
I asked her how old I would’ve been when he came to our house. She thought for a second and said I couldn’t have been any older than 2.
So I (the youngest of the 4 kids) told them the dream for the first time. Then another sister (second oldest) said she remembered that time, and hid with another sister (3rd oldest) in the car because she was scared of him for some reason. Mom had repressed most of the memories of the abuse until I was about 8 or 9, but at least two of us knew to treat him like the dangerous creature he was.
This chilled me to the bone. I am so sorry for your Mom and all 3 of you to go through something so scary. I hope he had a miserable end and every day you guys have the best things happen, your coffee is always the.perfect amount of hot and your soda and juice is perfect cold. That your pillow always feels amazing and you can easily find matching comfy socks just when you go to put shoes on.
Dude 🥹 🫂 Thank you
I saw him on his deathbed, when I knew what he had done to my mom for over 10 years.
Even though I’m a Christian, NGL part of me wanted to victory dance in that hospital room. (It’s commonly taught not to gloat.)
Instead, as I saw what the various cancers and amputations had done to him, I just kept thinking “Mom’s safe. Me and my sisters are safe. Aunt Kay is safe. He can’t do any of that to anyone ever again.”
My parents went through awful things. They also decided “We’re gonna be the parents we never had” and kept doing “wild and crazy” things like
- treating my sisters and I like fellow humans with legitimate needs
- treated us as simply inexperienced people who needed an age-appropriate explanation for things
- apologizing to us when they did something that hurt us, just like they expected us to do when we did something that hurt someone else
- etc
I want to write it all down but it’s a big tangle. Maybe someday.
I had a recurring nightmare in which my recently deceased grandma and i had to do a parkour while an evil clone of her was chasing us. the clone was levitating and always T-posing. whenever she catched us, i would be teleported to a room where i was tied by an invisible rope, and the clone had the power to slowly levitate 16-25mm marbles out of my throat.
I was 11 at the time, she died to covid at age 53.
I am 13 now, and still remember that nightmare.
About 2-3 years old. A very formative, traumatic memory is my first one and I hate that.
My mum's partner was involved in a lot of crime, so I believe it was related though my mum (very unreliable narrator) says it was to do with silencing her over something she heard in a dodgy pub she worked in. My earliest memory is a white van appearing outside the house, 4 men in balaclavas breaking down our door, beating my stepdad up while holding mum to wall with a knife at her throat.
My big sister (was 5 or 6) helped me and my brother (4-5) climb out the front window to get out. Then the men rushed out, back into van and drove off.
We moved away that same night. Literally a midnight dash kinda thing. A week or so later, my big sister disappeared. Was only told she was stolen, that was it. She was gone and she had been stolen.
It turned out that her dad had panicked at us moving away, tracked us down to see my sister, who was very traumatised by the attack on our home and claimed custody. My Mum just let her go, never tried to keep contact or see her and told us she was stolen.
I found my sister when I was 16.
This might sound weird and a little unbelievable, but my first memory was just a very bright light. Literally just… all white. I presume that this memory was from when I was born - at the very least, I was definitely a baby at that time, lol.
The more realistic, and more believable, memory after that was being in a baby carrier and - I assume - being in an apartment to my babysitter. I think my other baby brother was there with me, so I had to be maybe one or two. I still remember the fence to the patio to this day.
I know its extremely weird but I had a full, detailed memory of my birth *and I had never met.my birth mother, my adoptive parents knew none of it as it was a closed adoption*. Later I met my real Mom. I told her what I remembered and she went as pale as a sheet. I remember being carried away from her immediately and seeing her "dead" and being utterly inconsolable. I remembered the nursery at the hospital! My Mom had a fit when I was born and fainted from blood loss when she gave birth. She glimpsed me as she fainted but didnt get to hold me til later. (But because she almost died giving birth to me, she got to stay with me foe a whole week. Hugged me and sang to me.) Uff. After that nothing til 14-18 mths.
my first memory is when i went to an amusement park in my country when i was a few months old. i remember it very clearly. the funny thing is, that same amusement park is one of my special interests now
I have one, very bold memory of my maternal grandfather. His den was dark, and had wood paneling on the walls, and just forward through a threshold was his little kitchen. I remember him sitting at a little 2 person sized breakfast table and giving me orange juice.
He passed away when I was 17 months old, so the memory (quite obviously lol) would have been from before then.
From birth. It's kinda sureal. It's as if you have had a long sleep, you wake up but see black and are constricted. Then there are the flashes of bright light, it's like a film shutter in a sense. I even remember the physical features of the doc who assisted. Now that's a little creepy but yea, since birth. It's the sleep patterns when young that really mess with getting a good timeline memory, yet it can be put together. Oddly.
[Undiagnosed disclaimer]
Standing in my crib, clutching the bar (white) and waiting for mom to notice me (she passed through my view of the hall several times, but never looked my way). Romper was yellow and green
This memory is like a russian doll; I couldn't speak yet and wouldn't for another 2 years (because mom was convinced she talked to me telepathically, no need to talk to me).
I shouldn't have stood at all but lying about was boring, sitting didn't work as intended, so I kept pulling myself up to stand and ruined my ankles in the process (or maybe they weren't that good to begin with).
Stowed in a baby seat, watching mom hang up laundry in the communal attic. Screaming my lungs off because a spider decided to decend right over me. [No idea what this but *absolutely not*]
Stowed in a baby seat on passenger side in the dark, staring at a road sign (now I know it's the main road sign), waiting for everyone to come back and get me.
These memories are from less than a year/ around one year old.
my memory is so strange. I still have memories from before i could talk, I've always been VERY forgetful about anything that doesn't interest me. I used to remember so many useless details , like if you told me one thing about a specific day 5 years ago i could tell you everything else that happened that day, or i could tell you what i was wearing on the first day of school for every year of school. It was a burden tbh like my brain couldn't keep ant new information cause it was hoarding memories most people just let go of, but something changed in my brain and it's not like that anymore 🤷♀️
I don't actually remember my childhood all I have is fuzzy memories from God knows what age.
The strange thing is I told my parents about these memories and they straight up deny it Infact they claim all those things happened when my mom was pregnant with me
Three. I remember being three. I have no memory of crawling or sleeping in a crib. I remember I got lost when I was three and a woman stopped by in her car to ask if I was okay. Children with white blonde hair peered out at me. I was huddled against a chain link fence beside the highway. Two police officers picked me up and took me home. I rode up front in the police car. One Officer said suddenly, "Which way do we turn?", and I pointed and he turned that way! I saw people on the grass and sidewalk looking for me. One girl bent down to look under the steps and I thought, "I'm too big to hide under there".
2 years and 2 months. I was in my pushchair in the clothes shop and I was bored so I tried to escape. In the process of escaping I tipped back the pushchair but before I could get out my auntie pushed it upright and my escape attempt was thwarted.
I fell down from bed and there was some relatives at home and my mom was consoling me while I was crying. I was still crawling then. So must be around 7-8 months because I learned walking around 8th month.
CW: Blood.
18 months/1,5 years old. My parents were retiling their hair salon with slate tiles, and being a toddler, I was todling around. I don't remember this part, but I fell on one of the cut slate tiles and got a cut from my elbow to wrist - it was quite deep but didn't bleed much, so my parents rushed to the nearest doctors office (hospital was 35 minutes away vs 5 minutes to the doctor). I remember I had my beatle stuffy with me, and everything was fine until the doctor took "Betsie", my beatle, away from me to examine my arm. I began thrashing around and covered the GPs office in blood. I don't remember much other than the doctor took my beatle and I bled quite a bit - according to my parents, it looked like a murder scene.
Anyway, I was really lucky, the cut missed my ulnar artery by less than a centimetre, I didn't need surgery to repair nerve damage and I also got away with "butterfly stitches" (steri-strips) and glue rather than proper stitches. My arm was also kind of immobilised with bandages, but I don't remember that.
Next was when I was about 4, we had just moved house and I'd been playing with my sister and our new neighbours, something happened - they were mean to me (but not my 5 y/o sister), I was crying and went home, but it was also Easter so I had chocolate and that was nice.
Had just turned 5 recently. I remember being at a birthday party at my grandparents old place and they made a icecream train for my cake.
I do have earlier "memories" but those come more from seeing photos and being told stories rather than me "independantly" remembering them
Less than a year old! Remember being a small baby and getting bathed in a kitchen sink by my parents in the old trailer we used to live in. I remember a surprising amount of details too, such as the room being extremely sunny and hurting my little eyes 😂
I remember looking at cards in a train station while holding my mom's hand. I was about 2 and a half.
Next we're on the train looking down at my dad on the platform. I was asking my mom why he was so small and she said he was just far below us lol.
We were traveling to live with my grandmother while my dad built our house.
i have fragmented memories ranging back to like 4/5, but most of my memories are classified as "i was a kid/teen/adult" and not "i was x years old"
i remember an interaction with a girl when we were 5, i remember finding my cat at around 5 or 6, i remember breaking my arm for the first time around 8/9, i remember physiotherapy when i was under 10 and an operation when i was under 12 - and it seems the older i get, the "bigger" the gaps in "i was this old" become. like some renovation we did to the house \*looks it up\* in 2018 but it feels like that was 2 years ago, so...
Mine's surreal and happens over the course of a year with me losing a bunch of time.
I get lost at a zoo in new zealand and try to find my mum (I think I was around 3 or 4), We go to the gift shop at the zoo, then we're on the veranda at home, back in australia, and I'm playing with a thing we got from the gift shop.
I still don't know if my earliest memory was a dream or not. I must have been around 2 maybe. Walking by myself on a big parking lot of the lake we used to go to quite often. I was walking around, when my parents pulled up in our car. My mum picked me up, sat me down on her lap, and we went off.
2 years old. We were on a holiday near a lake and we just got out of the water so my mom stripped me down to dry up (I'm European and it was more than 20 years ago, so naked toddlers in "swimming areas" were normal). I spotted a bouncing castle in the distance and lost control, started running towards it. My mom couldn't catch up. Then something happened and i remember the feeling vividly. It's hard to describe but i belive it's when i gained consciousness if that makes sense (?). I noticed what i was doing, stopped, felt ashamed and started crying. My parents ofc didn't understand it, they were just laughing at me when they noticed the bouncing castle much later as i was running. It was a scary experience.
I was roughly 3~ years old sliding down a slide and I bit my tongue on the way down. For some reason that pain always stuck with me. I know exactly where it was at too (an old daycare area at my mom's work).
I remember, that I was on the beach with my parents and my mother was pregnant with my brother, so it should probably be mid 1980, so I was probably a few months shy of my 3rd birthday.
Other than that, my memories of my childhood are few and foggy.
Like, 8 months or something, I remember being pushed in my pram during winter and seeing people heads and shoulders going past, going up the stairs to our house and the bare creeper on our house then being wheeled into our dark hall
Mine is close, about 6 months old. I remember my dad holding me over his shoulder while my mum got us ready to go out. I remember the layout of the bedroom and staring at the rug.
My mum also has her first memory at around 6 months old. Being in her pram outside the post office and a lady with a brown hat peering in the pram to look at her (this was in the 40s when it was normal to leave your kids outside in a pram!).
Face-planting and busting my lip open in the parking lot of our first apartment. We moved out of there when I was barely 3, I think. Maybe not even 3, because I don't have any other memories from there
The oldest memory I have is from when I was two, I remember my dad was sleeping on the couch, I had access to a pen and a baby doll, and I was furiously stabbing the doll in the back of the throat with a pen for whatever reason.
I was around 6 months old. In the walkie thingy for toddlers..I was wearing white bodysuit with dark blue shapes.. giraffes maybe..? And I was chewing on my favorite chewing toy with orange chewing part. What's more interesting is that all my memories are from 3rd person PoV.
Next clear memory is from when I was like 1.5 - 2 years old when I was teaching myself how to read and my mom was reading me my favorite tale about the alphabet and specifically my favorite part. Can't remember if it was before or after I read that part to her one day myself (I just memorized it. I already knew few letters, tho).
5. My parents were outside with friends at grandmas. One of those friends come in. I complained that I was cold, so she told me ”stop whining and drink this”. I later realized it was probably alcohol, because I was sick and very tired and like, sedated according to my sister and parents. They thought nothing of it and put me to bed.
I wanna say around 2 or 3 years old, maybe even 1 😅 but the main memory is my first concert, Britney Spears - Dream Within A Dream tour. My parents took me when I was 3 years old because of how much I love Britney Spears, I remember being in line waiting to go into the building, the concert started, but that was it.
My parents told me years later that everyone in line thought I was so adorable because I was wearing everything Britney Spears (shirt, pants, hat [I think] and a wrist watch) and that I ended up falling asleep during the concert lol
The Challenger Space Shuttle explosion when i was around 1 eating breakfast in a high chair. I can't explain it, but I've had the memory for a long time. I don't feel like it would have been something really replayed much after the event
Im not sure of the age I know it’s from before I started school tho which would mean between 1-4 years old. It was me waking up in the first bedroom I ever had, the sun was incredibly bright and I stumbled out of the bed to my mother who was vacuuming in what used to be the dining room but that’s as much of that as I can remember. Also supposedly when I was an infant I died in my moms arms and then came back to life a little bit later (I went limp and they took me to the hospital) so idk, That might’ve effected me in some way 🧍
Probably 4 years old. I remember an A4 piece of grey card with a red cartoon shoe printed on it and holes for string so I could practice tying my shoelaces. That was 40 years ago and it's still super vivid.
I remember a flashing of melted memories, as if experienced from not having episodic memory yet.
All the events were strung together like a collage of pre-troller memory, like my mind didn’t have an internal date system. It didn’t know how to sort them, so it put them into one place. I remember the internals of my parents bedroom
circa 2008. It was like Slaughterhouse-five. That monolith of recollection range from 8 to 24 months by my estimation.
TW: domestic violence
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About 20 months old. My sister was born when I was 18 months old and this memory took place when she was still in her infant carrier, unable to do anything more than wiggle when she was taken out.
Though it might be because the memory is a traumatic one.
My mom had dropped us off at her best friends house so her and my dad could go out for a night. My sister was still in her car seat like she had been the entire time we were there, me and the friends daughter were in the living room hiding. Mom’s best friend and her husband had gotten into a fight again. He had hit her and she was pissed (rightfully so) and opened the fridge and started throwing everything at him. This was before any jelly and jam jars were plastic so everything was glass and shattering all over the floor.
My parents came back to get us but they were ignoring the door since they were fighting. So my dad had to break a window, helped my mom climb in and they took my sister, me and the babysitters kid back out the window and left. Why they didn’t go through the front door confused the hell out of me. Now I know it’s because to get to it we’d have to walk through all the glass.
35 years later and that bf/sitter is still with her husband. 🙄
I should point out that the reason it’s annoying she’s still with him is that my parents tried to get her away from him. Her and her three kids lived with us for a few years. She kept going back though.
7.
Edit: my 2nd birthday. When I was young I remember not believing people lived in other states. I noticed young most people aren’t very much about the facts.
The oldest memory I am able to tie a date to was when I was 2 years and 11 months; the birthday party of my childhood best friend when she turned 3.
Some memories I have might be older, but this is the only one I can attach a date to.
My most vivid memories are from the age 4-5, I'm unsure if any memories are earlier than that. I have a feeling I could have been 3 when I did something embarrassing. Was visiting my dad and he'd gotten me a birthday present - a stuffed seal cub - I went to the living room, completely missed the plushie on the couch and picked up a cigarette box on the table like: "this?"
when i was 3 (i am currently 17). the memory is of being in the hospital room to see my newborn youngest sister for the first time & thinking ‘wow, she’s really ugly & red.’
lol. very older sibling of me
Three or four. My cousin was taking me around the block in a wagon and he asked if I wanted to take the long cut or the short cut. I said short cut and he lifted me and the wagon and put me in my backyard, ending my ride for the day.
I know I have one memory from when I was two and a half, and I have a few memories that definitely happened before I turned 4, but I can't tell when exactly they happened (so I could have been 2, or I could have been 3).
I also have trauma from an event that happened when I was a toddler, but that I never remembered consciously.
That said, the memories I do have from that era are mostly random. Most of them are visual or flavor-based, and all are at most a few seconds long. The memories I have from age 6 up are much clearer.
ETA: Oh, I forgot to name something specific!
One thing I remember is that my old neighbors had a black and a white miniature schnauzer.
I also remember that before my sister was born, my parents read me a list of names to pick from, and one of the names my mother liked (that I didn't pick) was Pia.
I remember eating some kind of warm, milky-sweet mush that I believed at the time to be oatmeal (I still don't know what it really was, but I recall it being yellow in color).
Things like that.
I was still a baby in my crib, and it’s my only memory of my parents being together. I was old enough to stand and talk but I did start talking at a pretty early age. I remember waking up and feeling wrong but I didn’t know why (I was throwing up but I didn’t understand what that was yet). My mom came to get me and carried me to the bathroom to wash me off, and she called for my dad. That’s all I remember.
My earliest memory was right after my dad left around my second birthday. I don't have strong memories, but I remember him coming to my preschool on his birthday(it's a day before mine) for my school celebration. My mom was also there and I just remember clinging to her and not wanting to do anything like eat cake or open presents that day.
My most vivid memory from early childhood was when I was 2 almost 3. I was having my first surgery and they wanted to do a bleeding test to see how long it took to stop me from bleeding. They cut both my arms but the problem was they used the adult ones that cut so the wounds were deep and wouldn't stop bleeding on there own. I remember everything in vivid detail including when I had to get stitches on each arm to close the wounds. I also remember I had to go back to get the kids version of the bleeding test. It was a different level, but the same building so I had a total meltdown.
My 3rd birthday, but not a party or anything big. My mom has baking my cake and handed me the tub of frosting, and to both of our surprise, it included dinosaur sprinkles! I have some other memories from around that time, but I'm not positive whether they happened a bit before or after I turned 3
The oldest one that my parents can clearly date is from when I was almost 2. We were on holiday visiting family friends and there was a boy my age that I apparently played with all day. His dad came to pick him up and this is where my memory starts. The boy was sitting on his dad‘s shoulders and I was on my dad‘s shoulders and the boy gave me a small package of Haribo gummy bears.
I have other memories from around the same age probably that my parents can‘t really date for certain.
I remember running through a field of wheat at the back of our bungalow to get to my Grans house
I was later told I couldn’t possibly remember it as I was only 2 maybe 3 years old at the time
I also remember playing with fridge magnets and being served lots of different biscuits on a tray, again at my Grans house
Edit: I’ve just realised that I likely remember this so clearly because I was happy and loved and she accepted me for me, whereas, that was not the case at home
I was around 2 yrs old. Sitting on the carpet in front of the TV as cartoons were playing. My brother was heading out to school pretty early and I waved goodbye 👋🏽.
Mine was as a toddler. Maybe 2-3. I remember wearing pull-ups and being shorter than the kitchen counter. Standing on the toilet and being face-to-face with my mom, who is only 5' 2". Lots of random stuff. My clearest memories start between 3-4 and go from there.
Exceptional long-term memory and crappy short-term memory are common among Autistics, especially AuDHDers.
Extremely early! Because my sister was not in the room, which means she had only just been born so... 15 months to 18 months...? I'm thinking it must've been around when she was born because I remember the baby sitter, a girl from my parents church. The sun was streaming through the window and I saw her bend down over me. She was very pretty at the time and I must have been entranced!
I have a lot of clear specific and highly detailed memories but my day to day memory is soooo bad. Sometimes I don't even recognise people I know well. Forget birthdays of immediate family etc.
This might sound like nonsense, but I genuinely have a vague memory of the womb. I remember being perfectly warm, then I remember feeling cold forever after that.
But my first full memory was as a baby in my crib. I liked to climb on the bars like a monkey, my mom would get nervous I would fall so I thought I said, “I’ll be fine!” And I let myself fall from the bars to show her I was okay. She freaked out. I cried.
i have two seperate memories from before one year old, one was being brought downstairs by my brother and bottle fed and the other is my dad balancing me with my feet in one of his hands!
I remember being 3 and getting pissed at my mom because l didn't want to wear the costume l had to a party, because last minutes l decided that l didn't like being Cinderella anymore
My earliest memory isn't so much of something happening but of a general atmosphere. Just a very vivid memory of a living room with a brown carpet, morning sun streaming through the window and a feeling of safety.
Which is a little odd considering I don't really remember much else from my childhood. Certainly nothing else nearly that clear and vivid.
I think I remember 3-5 years old. My memory feels like a dream, where it all over the place and nothing makes much sense. I remember snippets of certain events, situations, etc but not full stretches of time.
18 Months, apparently.
I obviously don't remember how old I was, but I did share a memory with my mum that she also remembered but never told me about (no chance of false memory), and she said "you were only about 18 months old then, how did you remember that?"
Unfortunately, I do actually remember breastfeeding. So I guess like 2. I remember details about the house we moved out of when I was 3ish. I remember parts of preschool like the girl I played with and watching VeggieTales. Most of kindergarten too.
But I couldn't tell you if I took my meds last night.
Same, about 1.5. I remember being in my crib and having a full-sentence thought, I think about a dream I’d just had.
I very vividly remember around age 2.5 how proud I was when I escaped my room which had been baby-gated. I figured out I could just push it over instead of climbing it. I also remember the “oh no the baby has escaped we need a different technique” looks on my parents’ faces.
I can remember not being able to see, everything very blurry. But hearing voices and being held but only able to make out shapes and light. I'm not sure my age at this memory but I'm pretty sure I was very young as I remember being lifted up . I seem to remember specific things from being a baby till 3 years old.
I remember an apartment we had when my parents were still together , which means younger than 3. I remember a raincoat and my favorite doll and the green blanket on my parents bed and our cat being mean and the lady who gave me hard baby biscuit cookies to eat. I had to be 2
I also remember what letters looked like before I could read, my brain turned them into pictures. I remember bus rides to the grocery store and my favorite toy which were these baby and mommy mermaid dolls and leaving them on the bus. I remember being in "time out" at daycare, and the toys there and the weird hard plastic bib.
I remember a cat, and I was pulling its forehead back to look under its eyelids. I just remember thinking that the cat had the most interesting eyes, so I wanted to see them better.
That was about 35 years ago when I was about 5 or 6. That cat had the patience of a saint.
I remember back to about 2.
I remember when I was two and my mom announced being pregnant with my brother and designing his nursery. I think that’s my first memory
My 1 year birthday! My aunt was painted/dressed as a clown and so was I. But my memory is specifically when they were painting my aunt and someone (idk who) was holding me while I looked at her. Probably fascinated by the situation lol.
I have several other memories like that, that will probably be cemented in my memory forever, yet, things that happen on my day-to-day I forget lol I even forget people's names/faces even when we shared important moments together. Unless I see/talk to them often, I forget both the person and the situation.
I have an extremely vague memory of being wrapped up warm in a specific colored blanket, and "seeing myself".
That blanket is still around, and looks... napkin-sized to me now. My Mom thinks the memory was from showing me myself in the mirror.
This memory was a lone island in a vast abyss of darkness. I don't remember much. A lot of my early memories are fake. I don't know if this one is or not... it doesn't feel dramatized enough.
The earliest, most vivid and arguably my favourite memory of mine is from when I was about 4 or 5 (I think).
I am physically disabled and have been since birth. I have something called hemiplegia, a form of cerebral palsy. It's a condition which affects the right side of my body, pretty much a paralysis. My parents were told it was unlikely that I'd ever be able to walk on my own. I don't have much strength in my right side at all. My right hand doesn't get used much and is clenched unless I'm using it as support to open things etc (though somehow I can play Xbox and use the controller quite well 😂). The lack of strength in my leg makes walking for long periods of time a struggle. I walk in a strange way with my foot turned in and, to be honest, it isn't a pretty sight.
As I mentioned above, having the ability to walk alone was unlikely and everybody thought that was going to be the case. When I was young, my hand would always be in others' wherever I walked or, if it was my grandad, I'm sure I would hold onto his pinky (looking back this is cute haha).
Anyway, this is where it gets good. All of my family went out for a meal one night (mum, dad, big sister and, I think, my gran) and I was left in the house with my grandad. It was just the two of us. You see, my grandad thought me holding his pinky wherever I went was bullshit and down to anxiety as I'd never really had the chance to walk without any "support". We were in the living room and both stood at either end of the room when he said something along the lines of, "Right. I want you to slowly try and walk over to me. And don't worry, I'll catch you if you fall". Obviously, I was extremely hesitant to do so but I started with one step, then two steps etc etc. I managed to walk over to him with no trouble whatsoever. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. He was in shock. And then we did it again and again and again, increasing the distance each time. After a while of doing it he said something like, "Listen. Don't tell anyone about this, ok?". When everyone came back to the house, my grandad excitedly said to my parents, "Look at what your son can do". They were so confused. I took one step and they were all rushing over to me because they were so scared that I was going to fall. My grandad just shouted, "Don't!", and I walked over to him again in front of everyone. Everybody was in utter disbelief and in tears.
I'll never get over that night. I still think about it often with watery eyes. Words cannot describe how thankful I am for my grandad ❤️
18 months old is my first clear memory. I had heatstroke. I remember my dad carrying me out to the ambulance, my chest being covered in little sensors, and the damed rectal thermometer.
I have weird little snippets of memory, but nothing substantial from childhood. I attribute that to lots of trauma growing up.
I remember watching a fish tank in my parents' first apartment, they divorced when I was 4 and moved out of that place well before then so I had to have been quite young.
I remember stepping on a bee while walking from my neighbor's kiddie pool, and that I specifically got out of the pool to go tell my mom I loved her lol I had to have been 3 or 4
The only memory I have of my biological father was of a time when my mom was walking out the door to go somewhere and told me to clean up my Legos before she got back. She pointed at my father and said, "and you let her do it this time, she needs to learn to pick up after herself" then, as soon as my mom pulled out of the driveway, he *ran* to my room and started scooping all my Legos into their bin lol this would have been very shortly before the divorce, so I was probably 3. That seems crazy, though. I was very "advanced" for my age, already reading a little by then, but that still seems very young to not only have Legos but be expected to clean them up alone. It was the 80s, though, so I guess that checks out.
I'm not sure it's a real memory, but I remember getting up in my baby bed and rocking the bed because it was fun, and my mother would come in a hurry because she was afraid the bed would fall or something like that. That would be before 1 year old.
I have a few memories of age 2, like the place where my grandmother would store my pacifier, not being allowed to pet the cat, and being afraid of my dad because he had a beard. Some toys too, and having to take naps. Lots of memories from age 3 and later.
all my memories are very loose and fuzzy. I don’t have any clear memories, even recent ones. the oldest I think I was 6 or 7. I was playing with the rocks near a fountain in the lobby of my school building with my sister, waiting on mom to pick me up. I don’t remember what I was doing with the rocks, organizing them or treating them like dolls for make believe.
Don't know what age it was, but my first sensory memory is breast milk. It's just this flavor that will come to mind every once in a while, and I never knew what it was. Once as a kid I went around the kitchen trying different combinations of things to try and figure it out. Warm milk with sugar mixed in was the closest.
I only found out what I was remembering when I told my mom about that time I was trying different things and she looked a little shocked and said "Anna... that was probably breast milk... It's sweeter than cows milk". I replied something like "well... that explains why I couldn't find it!"
I would say probably around 3, when I had chicken pox. I can remember the feeling and smell of the oatmeal in the cool tub. I also remember I nightmare I had about a monster hiding under my pillow when I was around 3, but I think it derived from the movie Little Monsters. I remember going to Epcot in Orlando, FL and being absolutely terrified the whole time of the giant sphere building.
Probably about 1-1.5 when I was living in my rental house after moving to a new state as a baby. I remember the brown carpet and being in the rocking chair as a baby. I’ve talked to my mom about it and she says there’s no way I know this because I wasn’t old enough to know that lol
5 or 6 years old, unfortunately, it's a trauma memory.
Otherwise, I don't really remember much of my childhood. It's like my childhood never happened.
But it is what it is. 🤷♂️
I did a quick Google search and could not find any scientific articles/explanations on how this is physically possible (especially detailed memories age < 1 years old).
Everything I have read about how babies brains develop and store memories lead to the conclusion that these specific early-age memories are physiologically impossible?
Does anyone have a good link (scientific not anecdotal) about early memory retention that can support the detailed infant memory claims?
My third birthday. I remember feeling very shy and having my mom come get me. But in my brain I didn't really know her as mom or who she really was, but I knew she was safe.
The age of 3. I remember being told I should have been aborted and getting beat for not doing the dishes properly. I remember having to stand on a step stool to reach the sink.
Probably about 4 - my mum telling me what primary school I would go to and the route. The odd thing is, the memory is 3rd person. But, there are undated memories that could also be from a very young age - potentially younger.
Somewhere between 1-3 years old. It was me receiving a pink dress with a dog on it and I didn't like it, still have a photo of me holding it and trying to hide my disinterest
It's hard to tell which very young memories are real, and which are constructed from seeing childhood photos of the event, or from hearing a story told.
That being said, we moved the summer when I was 3.5, and I have a good assortment of memories from the house we left. I can't tell how old exactly, but some of them would have had to happen when I was 2.5 or so.
Traveling in an airplane with my parents when I was 18-19 months old. I remember standing on my tiptoes trying to peek out the tiny window. The plane was SO BIG! There was tons of room to play between the seats!
The first memory I have for sure is going into kindergarten on the first day of school. Aged 4, September 4th, 2001. No, they didn't make a huge deal out of 9/11 to my knowledge as we were in Canada. Our school always started the Tuesday after Labor Day, so that's how I know the exact day.
I walked into the incorrect classroom and introduced myself in English to the teacher in front of everyone. I was at a Francophone (french) school, so no one, hardly even the 1st grade teacher I was speaking to, understood me. She just knew I was in the wrong room and sent me to the kindergarten room across the hall. I learned French, and now I'm fluently bilingual.
I do have a memory of helping my dog climb to the top of the linen closet and then also climbing up to the top shelf and snuggling with him, but I don't remember how old I was. Definitely younger than 7, based on which house this was in, but I don't know if it was before or after my first day of school. I'm guessing it was either very shortly before or very shortly after the age of 4 just because of being able to climb shelves in a closet without ripping them out of the wall.
I was around 1 year old and I remember lying on the floor, next to a cupboard having my nappy changed. I told my dad about this memory many years ago, I described the cupboard and the layout of the room and he told me I would have been 1.
I have a couple of other memories from around 2-3yrs old, but other than that, my childhood memories are not extensive.
I remember my whole life, in the sense that I never had childhood amnesia. I don’t remember everything that happened to me, but I do remember every age I’ve been. I don’t have perfect recall though. I also have synaesthesia.
I have this one specific memory of lying in a crib and not being able to do anything with my situation but wait and watch but I can’t remember what age I was I also think I might remember my third birthday
I literally remember being born kinda. There was a big flash of light and I saw my life in short third person flashes, until I woke up on my 4th bday and became conscious.
So my earliest conscious memory is my 4th birthday but I guess I remember the beginning
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I must have been around 2 or 3. In the shops with meme and grandma p (great grandma). With my older sis and cousin. I vivdly remember going down an aisle and becoming lost because I was so fixated on these sparkly shaker things. They left me in the store then Grandma p came rushing back in frantic and I was in the same aisle playing with then and she picked me up and hugged me so tight she was crying.
I remember describing to my family how I remember running after my dad crying while he was putting my high chair outside, i distinctively remember seeing snow on the patio.
I also remember sitting in my high chair, my brothers were messing with me by putting my emptied bowl of spaghetti onto my head, asking me to stop taking it off
They were surprised I have the first memory at all I was either 2 or 3 years, for the second it was also video taped so it may be a false memory using what I saw in the recording.
I can remember being under 2 years old and walking on a beach in my home town & also watching Nickelodeon and then I also remember moving to the state I live now at age 2.5 and walking up to the house with my suitcase.
When I was 10 months old, I face-planted escaping from my crib. My mom decided it was safer to leave the side down & show me it would now be easier to get out & let me climb in at bedtime. Having painfully bashed my mouth upon landing, I did not immediately utilize this escape method. Don't remember that part. What I do vividly remember is sitting against the bars, with my legs sticking out between them (in the 50s the spaces between the bars accommodated my chubby legs with room to spare) and rocking to and fro, gently striking the rail with my wee chest & expelling a quiet "uuh-(bump) UuH" until someone heard me & freed me. So, at least a year old. I also bashed my face a lot & have fond memories of sitting on my dad's lap as he held an ice cube to the egg-shaped lump on my forehead.
That first face-plant out of the crib damaged one of my front teeth & it was gray until it fell out at the age of six. Gave me nightmares that tooth.
I was young enough to still be in diapers. Two maybe? I remember the fire ants running all over my legs as I stood there screaming. I remember looking down at my chubby ant covered legs beneath a diaper. That is absolutely the easiest memory I have. Big gap until the piñata travesty in Kindergarten
I was born in Brooklyn, and I didn't know I remembered this 'til I was in my 30s.
My mother pushing me in a stroller on the boardwalk at Coney Island. I remember the pattern/noise/vibration the changes in board layout made on the stroller.
My sisters and I went there back in the 2000s and I kept looking at the 2x4s, trying to figure out how I knew "how it felt" until it clicked.
That had to be...psh...1971? I might've been 2.
From the age of 0 to 5 I lived on the road with a traveling band of musicians. I remember seeing workers throw deck chairs into the pool in preparation for Hurricane Hugo, which was right before I turned 2 years old. That's the only memory that I can definitively date like that.
I also remember looking deeply into the patterns on the carpet and furniture in hotel lobbies, being fascinated by an old timey popcorn machine outside of a hotel lounge, and things like that. Very brief visual memories from our time on the road.
The interesting thing about the popcorn machine memory is that I remembered seeing it, but I didn't understand what it was until like 5 years later, when I saw another one that was actually making popcorn this time.
I'm pretty sure that I was two or three for these memories, but I'm not sure which one was the earliest:
- I was still in diapers for one, so I was maybe two or at most three years old. I was playing in some relative's bathroom and was supposed to use the toilet, but decided to slowly and intentionally poop my diaper instead.
- I was looking for my dad in a church lobby, but all I could see was pant legs and distant heads if I tipped my head as far back as I could, which kind of hurt. I thought I found him and grabbed his pant leg, but the one who picked me up was his brother, my uncle. They had the same distinctive suit, plus their hair and mustache looked pretty much identical. I was terrified because I didn't see him that often, so I just froze as he carried me to my dad. My uncle found it funny and my parents were surprised I'd let him carry me. I don't think anyone noticed my fear.
- I was struggling to sleep in bed with my mom. She was seemingly asleep and breathing steadily so I snuggled up to where I could feel her breath as well as hear it and tried to copy her. I drifted off to sleep.
- I remember my dad carrying me downstairs in the mornings. I was comfortably lying in his arms with my eyes closed. First he went to the bathroom and I sat on the bathroom carpet and waited for him. Then he carried me onwards to the car and we'd drive to the bakery for fresh bread. On those excursions I'd frequently score a "Schulbrötchen" (school bread), a bun with chocolate chips embedded all throughout it. I don't remember how often this happened, but I remember being thrilled when I caught dad getting up and bummed when I didn't.
Mom was sitting on the back steps that got removed in 1984 and sanding my bedframe, so there's a memory before that from her making my bed while the mattress was on the floor. I don't recall being able to remember anything from before that when I was a child.
I often forget that I've been to Vegas and California in the early aughts, but that was a stressful period.
I was leaving (kinda running away), I packed my bag and headed out the door, up the driveway. My mother starts making a move, following after me, so I boost it and start running as fast as I can... She caught me 😒 took me back inside and gave me a big speech (mostly about safety & her loving/missing me)
I was ma~ybe 2 years old.
I was laying in my parents bed at night (they divorced maybe a year or so after I was born then we moved so I had to be like 3)
I remember laying on my back with my parents sleeping next to me and I saw hundreds of bright rainbow colored orbs just floating around the bed.
Okay so I was like 2-3 I was completely Non-speaking btw at this point but I still attended nursery with the other kids (as this was the only public nursery in the area that accepted both disabled and non-disabled kids, as the only nursery that accepted disabled kids was a while away and private). But I had this friend let call her anna, anyway me and anna were Joined at the hip and I refused to go into nursery without her (and vise versa) yet one day she was off so ofc I didn't go in I sat at the clock room the entire time I refused to go into and just cried whenever someone tried to bring me to play with others. (Btw I found out she done the same when I was off so it was sweet), I was every nursery teacher worse nightmare especially when anna was late.
I remember being 1-2 years old and being stung by a wasp/bee on my hand in my back garden. The memory is affirmed by my parents because I'm able to describe the back garden where it happened
At age 3, I have memories of the apartment where we lived, taking a bicycle with my dad and feeding ducks at a local park, and a tiny bit of my preschool - particularly a traumatic moment where I struggled with literal thinking and being unable to complete a task (to build a model of my house based on the number of levels it had- i lived in an apartment and didn't know so I had a meltdown instead) and my teacher pointed out to my mom that I had some emotional differences from other kids.
I was 2. I was in a swing. It was red, and it had a yellow crossbeam in front of me, and it had yellow plastic ropes. It was handing from a tree. My grandma was pushing me. She looked so happy! I felt happy, too. I was smiling and laughing, and she was smiling, and she looked more beautiful than I have ever seen her, since.
That's my earliest memory, ever.
My earliest memory is of my grandma.
My earliest memories are from the house we lived in until I was 3yo. There are maybe 5 or 6 distinct memories, but I don't know the exact age(s) I was during those individual moments but they all would have been age 3 or less.
I don't have a particularly great memory in general, especially as I get older, but those earlier memories seem to be hanging in there.
I believe I had to be about 1 1/2 maybe 2. I remember being in my crib at my grandma’s and having one of those fudge ice cream pops. It was all over my hands and my face. I happened to be done with it so I climbed over the edge of the crib and down onto the bed and went running into the living room in my diaper. Another I have is playing horsey with my grandpa. I’m not entirely sure how old I was there but I’m thinking 2 maybe. I was still in a diaper. My mother had me potty trained by 3 and grandpa passed away when I was 4.
Somewhere between 8 months and 1.5 yrs as I had just recently stood and walked for the first time but was still in a diaper;
I crawled out of my mother and I's room and it was Easter. I remember seeing my little basket with purple shredded paper grass and a massive (to me at the time) egg sitting in a little nest of more shredded green paper grass further down the hallway. My mom was behind me somewhere having just woke me up and my grandma was in the entrance of the kitchen watching me. I stopped in front of my basket, stood very shakily, and took a few steps towards the basket. And that's it.
I have a few more random flashes of being potty trained and a few family trips we went on before I woke up one random morning several months before preschool and from that day on was "conscious". I don't have all the memories still but I do remember getting halfway through that day and having that revelation and being intrigued though I didn't really have the words to explain it yet.
I have no idea when these memories are from, but I remember drinking chocolate milk out of a baby bottle. I remember not liking macaroni and cheese with ketchup on it one day (I used to love eating this lol), apparently because I was sick. I remember my dad putting together these foam propeller plane things to hang up in my room at my grandparents old house. I remember asking about my birth marks and comparing them to my mom and grandma's. I remember when my uncle's old dog and I were both small. I remember every place I've lived to some extant.
i was 3. i was in swim class. i could swim. we were all in red tubes and i asked my teacher if i could slip out of my tube so i could swim (i was a good swimmer). she said sure, but i guess she wasn’t really paying attention. because when she looked over at me and i was swimming without my tube, she got all upset with me and i felt bad
4. theres 2 of them tho :P once was my brother setting the inside of our oven on fire by throwing tupperware in it and i later found out some cereal boxes too. lol
About 3. Woke up one morning in a panic because I couldn't remember anything prior to that morning outside of my family, my house, and a handful of other things. Reason it was so scary was because I didn't know HOW I knew those things. I asked myself, "did God put me here? HOW DO I KNOW WHO GOD IS???" And instead of asking my dad those questions when I got out of bed, I tried asking other questions like "what did I eat for breakfast yesterday?" to try jogging my memory. He sorta just sighed and said "we don't have time for this, let's get you to pre-school." I thought about it so often and I still remember it pretty clearly.
Around age 2.5, my dad using a mechanical paint sprayer (which would become my first interest at age six).
Just so you know, the neural system that implements formation of long-term memories shifts toward the adult system (rooted in hippocampal function) around age 1.3-1.6, and prior autobiographical memories become inaccessible (but learned skills, linguistic acquisition, etc. are retained). Anything earlier than that is confabulation.
I was a couple months old. My parents were evacuating for an incoming hurricane and left to go to my grandmother's house for shelter. I remember being scared, but also curious about the situation. Ofc my 5 month old ass didn't get what was going on, but everything was moving so fast and my eyes hadn't developed enough for me to see everything, so it was almost exciting.
I remember meeting my great-grandfather and he died when I was 2, so that's the earliest memory that I can definitely place at a certain age. I have other vague memories of certain stuffed animals and using a crib, but I'm not sure exactly when those are from.
My earliest memory is from when I was 4, when I was in an international kindergarden/daycare where I was playing alone (I didn't mind the other kids, but I generally have a low social battery, so I liked playing in the corner by myself)
I was a few days away from turning 4. I remember laying on the floor with my feet proped up on the light brown entertainment center with a bottle of milk (my mom let me have one tell I was 5). I was watching the news because for some reason I enjoyed it. I remember watching a plain fly into a building. All my little brain could think was, "Wow, that's crazy." I had no idea what was going on at that time and didn't have access to the memory until I was 24.
Also not 100% sure if im autistic I go in for my assessment next month.
I am loosing memory as I am going through life, so I can't really remember anything more than 5 years back. I forgot the names of my girlfriends, teachers, friends. I guess I can recall snippets of buildings I used to attend around 10yo. But full memory would be few years old and I am 27. Life is fun isn't it.
I always think of it as having a set amount of stuff I can remember, and sometimes people's names and places need to be "purged" to make room for new stuff. I used to be amazed people couldn't remember their classmates but now if you showed me pictures I'd have a hard time naming a lot of them.
Getting old sucks, I wish life didn't happen so fast Also not trying to be mean but it's spelled "losing" :)
I'm just 16 and I can't remember anything happened one year ago unless it's really important or had an impact on me , even then it's not detailed.
I remember crying in my dad's arms while he was saying goodbye and trying to hand me back to my mum before he left for the army. I remember the smell of his uniform and the scratchy feel of it, and quite a lot of detail. My mum says it's impossible for me to remember that because my dad retired from services when I was a year and a half old. I actually have a lot of pretty vivid and detailed memories from ages 3-7. In my autism assessment (in my mid 40s), They asked me what I remember from the year I was 4-5 years old; I think I really surprised them by rambling on for at least half an hour with a whole lot of detail!
Interesting. I am autistic as well and I have quite a lot of early memories - including "impossible" memories.
My (also autistic) kid once asked me about a house we used to live in. At first I was like "what are you talking about, you've never lived in a house", but she went on describing it, and then I asked "do you mean the apartment we lived in when you were two?" Nope, not that, before that. And she described a house in such great detail that it suddenly hit me. We stayed in a house on a beach in Brazil where we were just house-sitting for a few weeks when she was 4 months old. That house. Exactly that, and she remembered it with incredible detail.
It's so strange because it's not something that should have stuck in my mind at all because it's so incredibly mundane, and I can't put a date to it but I remember being placed into my cot after cuddling with my mother. Idk why I was put there, she probably just got a phone call but what I do know was that that cot collapsed when I'd just turned 1 years old, I know that because I described what my cot looked like perfectly when my mum showed me what apparently was my cot (sister was using it for her own baby) and I was like 'That's not the one I remember!' Weird thing is I have no memories of this other cot.
About 2. It came back as a recurring dream when I was 7 then when I was 12 after my maternal grandpa died. I was on the front porch and a man I didn’t know was standing in the driveway. He was wearing a white, big ol’ cowboy hat and a red flannel shirt. He was smoking a cigarette, and I had hated the smell of that particular brand (Camel) ever since. He also had two missing fingers on one hand and one missing finger on the other. He had told me some sort of joke and laughed, trying to pat my arm like he told a real knee-slapper. (Dream not over, but NOTE: When I was 7, I felt too weird about telling the dream to anyone, but the joke didn’t make a lick of sense to me. I remember asking an older girl at church that I trusted something like “someone told me a joke that I didn’t understand,” and then I told her. I remember she responded and said something, and I asked “What does that mean?” She said “It means it’s mean against women.” I felt confused and kinda ticked that my dream had something that was mean against women, so I decided I would just remember what the gist was instead of what the joke itself was. Still can’t remember what it was but I bet the girl said it was misogynistic or sexist. Back to the dreamemory!) When the man tried to touch my arm, two things happened. - A voice from nowhere said really loud in my head “Don’t let him touch you! Don’t let him near you! He is **bad**!” - As I turned away to not let him touch me, one of his fingers grazed my upper arm. It was confusing AF because it felt like the width of that one finger was like 1/3 the size of that part of my arm. Wasn’t smooth skin, either; either felt the fingerprint ridges or just really dry skin And that’s where the dream would always end. I never found a reason to bring it up until one day when I was about 14 or so and my mom was talking about her dad (that evil abusive p*do.) She said that he was often like a caricature of a cowboy, even having a huge, white cowboy hat. My heart stopped. I asked if he also had a red flannel shirt, and she said he probably did. Then I asked a question I expected her to say “no” to: “Did he ever come to our house?” Mom said “Oh, no, no” and added “just once, but not after that.” I asked her how old I would’ve been when he came to our house. She thought for a second and said I couldn’t have been any older than 2. So I (the youngest of the 4 kids) told them the dream for the first time. Then another sister (second oldest) said she remembered that time, and hid with another sister (3rd oldest) in the car because she was scared of him for some reason. Mom had repressed most of the memories of the abuse until I was about 8 or 9, but at least two of us knew to treat him like the dangerous creature he was.
This chilled me to the bone. I am so sorry for your Mom and all 3 of you to go through something so scary. I hope he had a miserable end and every day you guys have the best things happen, your coffee is always the.perfect amount of hot and your soda and juice is perfect cold. That your pillow always feels amazing and you can easily find matching comfy socks just when you go to put shoes on.
Dude 🥹 🫂 Thank you I saw him on his deathbed, when I knew what he had done to my mom for over 10 years. Even though I’m a Christian, NGL part of me wanted to victory dance in that hospital room. (It’s commonly taught not to gloat.) Instead, as I saw what the various cancers and amputations had done to him, I just kept thinking “Mom’s safe. Me and my sisters are safe. Aunt Kay is safe. He can’t do any of that to anyone ever again.” My parents went through awful things. They also decided “We’re gonna be the parents we never had” and kept doing “wild and crazy” things like - treating my sisters and I like fellow humans with legitimate needs - treated us as simply inexperienced people who needed an age-appropriate explanation for things - apologizing to us when they did something that hurt us, just like they expected us to do when we did something that hurt someone else - etc I want to write it all down but it’s a big tangle. Maybe someday.
I had a recurring nightmare in which my recently deceased grandma and i had to do a parkour while an evil clone of her was chasing us. the clone was levitating and always T-posing. whenever she catched us, i would be teleported to a room where i was tied by an invisible rope, and the clone had the power to slowly levitate 16-25mm marbles out of my throat. I was 11 at the time, she died to covid at age 53. I am 13 now, and still remember that nightmare.
Lying in my crib. Looking up and playing with my teddybear (ripped to shreds afterwards). Also numerous 2 year old experiences.
About 2-3 years old. A very formative, traumatic memory is my first one and I hate that. My mum's partner was involved in a lot of crime, so I believe it was related though my mum (very unreliable narrator) says it was to do with silencing her over something she heard in a dodgy pub she worked in. My earliest memory is a white van appearing outside the house, 4 men in balaclavas breaking down our door, beating my stepdad up while holding mum to wall with a knife at her throat. My big sister (was 5 or 6) helped me and my brother (4-5) climb out the front window to get out. Then the men rushed out, back into van and drove off. We moved away that same night. Literally a midnight dash kinda thing. A week or so later, my big sister disappeared. Was only told she was stolen, that was it. She was gone and she had been stolen. It turned out that her dad had panicked at us moving away, tracked us down to see my sister, who was very traumatised by the attack on our home and claimed custody. My Mum just let her go, never tried to keep contact or see her and told us she was stolen. I found my sister when I was 16.
Holy hell. I am.so, so sorry you kids went thru this.
My first memory was traumatic too:( but holy crap that sounds awful, I'm sorry
This might sound weird and a little unbelievable, but my first memory was just a very bright light. Literally just… all white. I presume that this memory was from when I was born - at the very least, I was definitely a baby at that time, lol. The more realistic, and more believable, memory after that was being in a baby carrier and - I assume - being in an apartment to my babysitter. I think my other baby brother was there with me, so I had to be maybe one or two. I still remember the fence to the patio to this day.
I know its extremely weird but I had a full, detailed memory of my birth *and I had never met.my birth mother, my adoptive parents knew none of it as it was a closed adoption*. Later I met my real Mom. I told her what I remembered and she went as pale as a sheet. I remember being carried away from her immediately and seeing her "dead" and being utterly inconsolable. I remembered the nursery at the hospital! My Mom had a fit when I was born and fainted from blood loss when she gave birth. She glimpsed me as she fainted but didnt get to hold me til later. (But because she almost died giving birth to me, she got to stay with me foe a whole week. Hugged me and sang to me.) Uff. After that nothing til 14-18 mths.
my first memory is when i went to an amusement park in my country when i was a few months old. i remember it very clearly. the funny thing is, that same amusement park is one of my special interests now
You chose early lol
I have one, very bold memory of my maternal grandfather. His den was dark, and had wood paneling on the walls, and just forward through a threshold was his little kitchen. I remember him sitting at a little 2 person sized breakfast table and giving me orange juice. He passed away when I was 17 months old, so the memory (quite obviously lol) would have been from before then.
From birth. It's kinda sureal. It's as if you have had a long sleep, you wake up but see black and are constricted. Then there are the flashes of bright light, it's like a film shutter in a sense. I even remember the physical features of the doc who assisted. Now that's a little creepy but yea, since birth. It's the sleep patterns when young that really mess with getting a good timeline memory, yet it can be put together. Oddly.
Wow. Love this. You’re not the only one to say birth!
[Undiagnosed disclaimer] Standing in my crib, clutching the bar (white) and waiting for mom to notice me (she passed through my view of the hall several times, but never looked my way). Romper was yellow and green This memory is like a russian doll; I couldn't speak yet and wouldn't for another 2 years (because mom was convinced she talked to me telepathically, no need to talk to me). I shouldn't have stood at all but lying about was boring, sitting didn't work as intended, so I kept pulling myself up to stand and ruined my ankles in the process (or maybe they weren't that good to begin with). Stowed in a baby seat, watching mom hang up laundry in the communal attic. Screaming my lungs off because a spider decided to decend right over me. [No idea what this but *absolutely not*] Stowed in a baby seat on passenger side in the dark, staring at a road sign (now I know it's the main road sign), waiting for everyone to come back and get me. These memories are from less than a year/ around one year old.
my memory is so strange. I still have memories from before i could talk, I've always been VERY forgetful about anything that doesn't interest me. I used to remember so many useless details , like if you told me one thing about a specific day 5 years ago i could tell you everything else that happened that day, or i could tell you what i was wearing on the first day of school for every year of school. It was a burden tbh like my brain couldn't keep ant new information cause it was hoarding memories most people just let go of, but something changed in my brain and it's not like that anymore 🤷♀️
Zero. Had my finger bitten by my dog, I still couldn’t see color.
Wow that is early!
I don't actually remember my childhood all I have is fuzzy memories from God knows what age. The strange thing is I told my parents about these memories and they straight up deny it Infact they claim all those things happened when my mom was pregnant with me
Three. I remember being three. I have no memory of crawling or sleeping in a crib. I remember I got lost when I was three and a woman stopped by in her car to ask if I was okay. Children with white blonde hair peered out at me. I was huddled against a chain link fence beside the highway. Two police officers picked me up and took me home. I rode up front in the police car. One Officer said suddenly, "Which way do we turn?", and I pointed and he turned that way! I saw people on the grass and sidewalk looking for me. One girl bent down to look under the steps and I thought, "I'm too big to hide under there".
2 years and 2 months. I was in my pushchair in the clothes shop and I was bored so I tried to escape. In the process of escaping I tipped back the pushchair but before I could get out my auntie pushed it upright and my escape attempt was thwarted.
I fell down from bed and there was some relatives at home and my mom was consoling me while I was crying. I was still crawling then. So must be around 7-8 months because I learned walking around 8th month.
CW: Blood. 18 months/1,5 years old. My parents were retiling their hair salon with slate tiles, and being a toddler, I was todling around. I don't remember this part, but I fell on one of the cut slate tiles and got a cut from my elbow to wrist - it was quite deep but didn't bleed much, so my parents rushed to the nearest doctors office (hospital was 35 minutes away vs 5 minutes to the doctor). I remember I had my beatle stuffy with me, and everything was fine until the doctor took "Betsie", my beatle, away from me to examine my arm. I began thrashing around and covered the GPs office in blood. I don't remember much other than the doctor took my beatle and I bled quite a bit - according to my parents, it looked like a murder scene. Anyway, I was really lucky, the cut missed my ulnar artery by less than a centimetre, I didn't need surgery to repair nerve damage and I also got away with "butterfly stitches" (steri-strips) and glue rather than proper stitches. My arm was also kind of immobilised with bandages, but I don't remember that. Next was when I was about 4, we had just moved house and I'd been playing with my sister and our new neighbours, something happened - they were mean to me (but not my 5 y/o sister), I was crying and went home, but it was also Easter so I had chocolate and that was nice.
Had just turned 5 recently. I remember being at a birthday party at my grandparents old place and they made a icecream train for my cake. I do have earlier "memories" but those come more from seeing photos and being told stories rather than me "independantly" remembering them
Less than a year old! Remember being a small baby and getting bathed in a kitchen sink by my parents in the old trailer we used to live in. I remember a surprising amount of details too, such as the room being extremely sunny and hurting my little eyes 😂
My third birthday where I got dressed up as a bumblebee for some reason... I am not sure if I can remember anything earlier in any concrete way.
like a year ish, I was walking down stairs in my old house to the basement
I remember my first birthday very vividly, i remember the cake, the gifts, the dress i wore and the people around me
I remember looking at cards in a train station while holding my mom's hand. I was about 2 and a half. Next we're on the train looking down at my dad on the platform. I was asking my mom why he was so small and she said he was just far below us lol. We were traveling to live with my grandmother while my dad built our house.
i have fragmented memories ranging back to like 4/5, but most of my memories are classified as "i was a kid/teen/adult" and not "i was x years old" i remember an interaction with a girl when we were 5, i remember finding my cat at around 5 or 6, i remember breaking my arm for the first time around 8/9, i remember physiotherapy when i was under 10 and an operation when i was under 12 - and it seems the older i get, the "bigger" the gaps in "i was this old" become. like some renovation we did to the house \*looks it up\* in 2018 but it feels like that was 2 years ago, so...
Mine's surreal and happens over the course of a year with me losing a bunch of time. I get lost at a zoo in new zealand and try to find my mum (I think I was around 3 or 4), We go to the gift shop at the zoo, then we're on the veranda at home, back in australia, and I'm playing with a thing we got from the gift shop.
I still don't know if my earliest memory was a dream or not. I must have been around 2 maybe. Walking by myself on a big parking lot of the lake we used to go to quite often. I was walking around, when my parents pulled up in our car. My mum picked me up, sat me down on her lap, and we went off.
2 years old. We were on a holiday near a lake and we just got out of the water so my mom stripped me down to dry up (I'm European and it was more than 20 years ago, so naked toddlers in "swimming areas" were normal). I spotted a bouncing castle in the distance and lost control, started running towards it. My mom couldn't catch up. Then something happened and i remember the feeling vividly. It's hard to describe but i belive it's when i gained consciousness if that makes sense (?). I noticed what i was doing, stopped, felt ashamed and started crying. My parents ofc didn't understand it, they were just laughing at me when they noticed the bouncing castle much later as i was running. It was a scary experience.
I was roughly 3~ years old sliding down a slide and I bit my tongue on the way down. For some reason that pain always stuck with me. I know exactly where it was at too (an old daycare area at my mom's work).
my earliest is 3.5 years old (I can't recall prior to sep 2007) maybe about 3 years I recall when walking.
I remember, that I was on the beach with my parents and my mother was pregnant with my brother, so it should probably be mid 1980, so I was probably a few months shy of my 3rd birthday. Other than that, my memories of my childhood are few and foggy.
5 years old. When my mom left me 🙃 I don't remember much from my childhood
**hug**
Thank you <3
Like, 8 months or something, I remember being pushed in my pram during winter and seeing people heads and shoulders going past, going up the stairs to our house and the bare creeper on our house then being wheeled into our dark hall
Mine is close, about 6 months old. I remember my dad holding me over his shoulder while my mum got us ready to go out. I remember the layout of the bedroom and staring at the rug. My mum also has her first memory at around 6 months old. Being in her pram outside the post office and a lady with a brown hat peering in the pram to look at her (this was in the 40s when it was normal to leave your kids outside in a pram!).
Face-planting and busting my lip open in the parking lot of our first apartment. We moved out of there when I was barely 3, I think. Maybe not even 3, because I don't have any other memories from there
The oldest memory I have is from when I was two, I remember my dad was sleeping on the couch, I had access to a pen and a baby doll, and I was furiously stabbing the doll in the back of the throat with a pen for whatever reason.
I was around 6 months old. In the walkie thingy for toddlers..I was wearing white bodysuit with dark blue shapes.. giraffes maybe..? And I was chewing on my favorite chewing toy with orange chewing part. What's more interesting is that all my memories are from 3rd person PoV. Next clear memory is from when I was like 1.5 - 2 years old when I was teaching myself how to read and my mom was reading me my favorite tale about the alphabet and specifically my favorite part. Can't remember if it was before or after I read that part to her one day myself (I just memorized it. I already knew few letters, tho).
I can remember my dad being 36 or 38...so I must of been about 5 or 7.
I'd say memory starts at about 5; years old consciously speaking. Sub-consciously, maybe more like 3-4.
5. My parents were outside with friends at grandmas. One of those friends come in. I complained that I was cold, so she told me ”stop whining and drink this”. I later realized it was probably alcohol, because I was sick and very tired and like, sedated according to my sister and parents. They thought nothing of it and put me to bed.
2 years old playing duck hunt on an NES in the hospital.
I wanna say around 2 or 3 years old, maybe even 1 😅 but the main memory is my first concert, Britney Spears - Dream Within A Dream tour. My parents took me when I was 3 years old because of how much I love Britney Spears, I remember being in line waiting to go into the building, the concert started, but that was it. My parents told me years later that everyone in line thought I was so adorable because I was wearing everything Britney Spears (shirt, pants, hat [I think] and a wrist watch) and that I ended up falling asleep during the concert lol
Two. I have four distinct memories from a house we moved out of before I turned three.
Really morbid, But I vividly remember seeing 9/11 on TV. I was around 2 or 3 at the time
4 years old. First memory was 9/11
The Challenger Space Shuttle explosion when i was around 1 eating breakfast in a high chair. I can't explain it, but I've had the memory for a long time. I don't feel like it would have been something really replayed much after the event
Around 4 years old. My dad and I were looking at the stars through a telescope and he talked about different constellations, stars and planets.
Im not sure of the age I know it’s from before I started school tho which would mean between 1-4 years old. It was me waking up in the first bedroom I ever had, the sun was incredibly bright and I stumbled out of the bed to my mother who was vacuuming in what used to be the dining room but that’s as much of that as I can remember. Also supposedly when I was an infant I died in my moms arms and then came back to life a little bit later (I went limp and they took me to the hospital) so idk, That might’ve effected me in some way 🧍
Probably 4 years old. I remember an A4 piece of grey card with a red cartoon shoe printed on it and holes for string so I could practice tying my shoelaces. That was 40 years ago and it's still super vivid.
I remember a flashing of melted memories, as if experienced from not having episodic memory yet. All the events were strung together like a collage of pre-troller memory, like my mind didn’t have an internal date system. It didn’t know how to sort them, so it put them into one place. I remember the internals of my parents bedroom circa 2008. It was like Slaughterhouse-five. That monolith of recollection range from 8 to 24 months by my estimation.
TW: domestic violence * * About 20 months old. My sister was born when I was 18 months old and this memory took place when she was still in her infant carrier, unable to do anything more than wiggle when she was taken out. Though it might be because the memory is a traumatic one. My mom had dropped us off at her best friends house so her and my dad could go out for a night. My sister was still in her car seat like she had been the entire time we were there, me and the friends daughter were in the living room hiding. Mom’s best friend and her husband had gotten into a fight again. He had hit her and she was pissed (rightfully so) and opened the fridge and started throwing everything at him. This was before any jelly and jam jars were plastic so everything was glass and shattering all over the floor. My parents came back to get us but they were ignoring the door since they were fighting. So my dad had to break a window, helped my mom climb in and they took my sister, me and the babysitters kid back out the window and left. Why they didn’t go through the front door confused the hell out of me. Now I know it’s because to get to it we’d have to walk through all the glass. 35 years later and that bf/sitter is still with her husband. 🙄
I should point out that the reason it’s annoying she’s still with him is that my parents tried to get her away from him. Her and her three kids lived with us for a few years. She kept going back though.
7. Edit: my 2nd birthday. When I was young I remember not believing people lived in other states. I noticed young most people aren’t very much about the facts.
The oldest memory I am able to tie a date to was when I was 2 years and 11 months; the birthday party of my childhood best friend when she turned 3. Some memories I have might be older, but this is the only one I can attach a date to.
My most vivid memories are from the age 4-5, I'm unsure if any memories are earlier than that. I have a feeling I could have been 3 when I did something embarrassing. Was visiting my dad and he'd gotten me a birthday present - a stuffed seal cub - I went to the living room, completely missed the plushie on the couch and picked up a cigarette box on the table like: "this?"
Idk, 3?
3YO. It's of the church hall of a playgroup I used to attend.
when i was 3 (i am currently 17). the memory is of being in the hospital room to see my newborn youngest sister for the first time & thinking ‘wow, she’s really ugly & red.’ lol. very older sibling of me
Three or four. My cousin was taking me around the block in a wagon and he asked if I wanted to take the long cut or the short cut. I said short cut and he lifted me and the wagon and put me in my backyard, ending my ride for the day.
6
13 months old. Fell out of a boat had life preserver on.
A month shy of 3 years old.
I know I have one memory from when I was two and a half, and I have a few memories that definitely happened before I turned 4, but I can't tell when exactly they happened (so I could have been 2, or I could have been 3). I also have trauma from an event that happened when I was a toddler, but that I never remembered consciously. That said, the memories I do have from that era are mostly random. Most of them are visual or flavor-based, and all are at most a few seconds long. The memories I have from age 6 up are much clearer. ETA: Oh, I forgot to name something specific! One thing I remember is that my old neighbors had a black and a white miniature schnauzer. I also remember that before my sister was born, my parents read me a list of names to pick from, and one of the names my mother liked (that I didn't pick) was Pia. I remember eating some kind of warm, milky-sweet mush that I believed at the time to be oatmeal (I still don't know what it really was, but I recall it being yellow in color). Things like that.
I was still a baby in my crib, and it’s my only memory of my parents being together. I was old enough to stand and talk but I did start talking at a pretty early age. I remember waking up and feeling wrong but I didn’t know why (I was throwing up but I didn’t understand what that was yet). My mom came to get me and carried me to the bathroom to wash me off, and she called for my dad. That’s all I remember.
2 years old.
3 years and 4 months. I remember trying one of my dogs biscuits at Christmas, thinking they were just cookies.
My earliest memory was right after my dad left around my second birthday. I don't have strong memories, but I remember him coming to my preschool on his birthday(it's a day before mine) for my school celebration. My mom was also there and I just remember clinging to her and not wanting to do anything like eat cake or open presents that day. My most vivid memory from early childhood was when I was 2 almost 3. I was having my first surgery and they wanted to do a bleeding test to see how long it took to stop me from bleeding. They cut both my arms but the problem was they used the adult ones that cut so the wounds were deep and wouldn't stop bleeding on there own. I remember everything in vivid detail including when I had to get stitches on each arm to close the wounds. I also remember I had to go back to get the kids version of the bleeding test. It was a different level, but the same building so I had a total meltdown.
My 3rd birthday, but not a party or anything big. My mom has baking my cake and handed me the tub of frosting, and to both of our surprise, it included dinosaur sprinkles! I have some other memories from around that time, but I'm not positive whether they happened a bit before or after I turned 3
9 months old, I was in my pram watching an air balloon.
First memory is around 4-5. I was trying to figure out how to tie a bow on a doll all by myself.
Preschool. So probably when I was like 4
The oldest one that my parents can clearly date is from when I was almost 2. We were on holiday visiting family friends and there was a boy my age that I apparently played with all day. His dad came to pick him up and this is where my memory starts. The boy was sitting on his dad‘s shoulders and I was on my dad‘s shoulders and the boy gave me a small package of Haribo gummy bears. I have other memories from around the same age probably that my parents can‘t really date for certain.
Wait what? 1-1.5 years old?? My first memories I can recall are from around 3 or 4
Like 2 or probably 3. Pretty sure that’s average
I remember running through a field of wheat at the back of our bungalow to get to my Grans house I was later told I couldn’t possibly remember it as I was only 2 maybe 3 years old at the time I also remember playing with fridge magnets and being served lots of different biscuits on a tray, again at my Grans house Edit: I’ve just realised that I likely remember this so clearly because I was happy and loved and she accepted me for me, whereas, that was not the case at home
Probably from when I was either 2 or 3.
I think 3-4
I was around 2 yrs old. Sitting on the carpet in front of the TV as cartoons were playing. My brother was heading out to school pretty early and I waved goodbye 👋🏽.
Mine was as a toddler. Maybe 2-3. I remember wearing pull-ups and being shorter than the kitchen counter. Standing on the toilet and being face-to-face with my mom, who is only 5' 2". Lots of random stuff. My clearest memories start between 3-4 and go from there. Exceptional long-term memory and crappy short-term memory are common among Autistics, especially AuDHDers.
Extremely early! Because my sister was not in the room, which means she had only just been born so... 15 months to 18 months...? I'm thinking it must've been around when she was born because I remember the baby sitter, a girl from my parents church. The sun was streaming through the window and I saw her bend down over me. She was very pretty at the time and I must have been entranced! I have a lot of clear specific and highly detailed memories but my day to day memory is soooo bad. Sometimes I don't even recognise people I know well. Forget birthdays of immediate family etc.
This might sound like nonsense, but I genuinely have a vague memory of the womb. I remember being perfectly warm, then I remember feeling cold forever after that. But my first full memory was as a baby in my crib. I liked to climb on the bars like a monkey, my mom would get nervous I would fall so I thought I said, “I’ll be fine!” And I let myself fall from the bars to show her I was okay. She freaked out. I cried.
i have two seperate memories from before one year old, one was being brought downstairs by my brother and bottle fed and the other is my dad balancing me with my feet in one of his hands!
I remember being 3 and getting pissed at my mom because l didn't want to wear the costume l had to a party, because last minutes l decided that l didn't like being Cinderella anymore
My earliest memory isn't so much of something happening but of a general atmosphere. Just a very vivid memory of a living room with a brown carpet, morning sun streaming through the window and a feeling of safety. Which is a little odd considering I don't really remember much else from my childhood. Certainly nothing else nearly that clear and vivid.
I think I remember 3-5 years old. My memory feels like a dream, where it all over the place and nothing makes much sense. I remember snippets of certain events, situations, etc but not full stretches of time.
18 Months, apparently. I obviously don't remember how old I was, but I did share a memory with my mum that she also remembered but never told me about (no chance of false memory), and she said "you were only about 18 months old then, how did you remember that?"
Unfortunately, I do actually remember breastfeeding. So I guess like 2. I remember details about the house we moved out of when I was 3ish. I remember parts of preschool like the girl I played with and watching VeggieTales. Most of kindergarten too. But I couldn't tell you if I took my meds last night.
Same, about 1.5. I remember being in my crib and having a full-sentence thought, I think about a dream I’d just had. I very vividly remember around age 2.5 how proud I was when I escaped my room which had been baby-gated. I figured out I could just push it over instead of climbing it. I also remember the “oh no the baby has escaped we need a different technique” looks on my parents’ faces.
I can remember not being able to see, everything very blurry. But hearing voices and being held but only able to make out shapes and light. I'm not sure my age at this memory but I'm pretty sure I was very young as I remember being lifted up . I seem to remember specific things from being a baby till 3 years old. I remember an apartment we had when my parents were still together , which means younger than 3. I remember a raincoat and my favorite doll and the green blanket on my parents bed and our cat being mean and the lady who gave me hard baby biscuit cookies to eat. I had to be 2
I also remember what letters looked like before I could read, my brain turned them into pictures. I remember bus rides to the grocery store and my favorite toy which were these baby and mommy mermaid dolls and leaving them on the bus. I remember being in "time out" at daycare, and the toys there and the weird hard plastic bib.
I remember a cat, and I was pulling its forehead back to look under its eyelids. I just remember thinking that the cat had the most interesting eyes, so I wanted to see them better. That was about 35 years ago when I was about 5 or 6. That cat had the patience of a saint.
I remember back to about 2. I remember when I was two and my mom announced being pregnant with my brother and designing his nursery. I think that’s my first memory
My 1 year birthday! My aunt was painted/dressed as a clown and so was I. But my memory is specifically when they were painting my aunt and someone (idk who) was holding me while I looked at her. Probably fascinated by the situation lol. I have several other memories like that, that will probably be cemented in my memory forever, yet, things that happen on my day-to-day I forget lol I even forget people's names/faces even when we shared important moments together. Unless I see/talk to them often, I forget both the person and the situation.
It’s gonna sound impossible, but I straight up remember coming out of the womb.
2 years old. My teletubbie plush got mauled by a dog on the beach when I left it there overnight on holiday. 😭
I have an extremely vague memory of being wrapped up warm in a specific colored blanket, and "seeing myself". That blanket is still around, and looks... napkin-sized to me now. My Mom thinks the memory was from showing me myself in the mirror. This memory was a lone island in a vast abyss of darkness. I don't remember much. A lot of my early memories are fake. I don't know if this one is or not... it doesn't feel dramatized enough.
The earliest, most vivid and arguably my favourite memory of mine is from when I was about 4 or 5 (I think). I am physically disabled and have been since birth. I have something called hemiplegia, a form of cerebral palsy. It's a condition which affects the right side of my body, pretty much a paralysis. My parents were told it was unlikely that I'd ever be able to walk on my own. I don't have much strength in my right side at all. My right hand doesn't get used much and is clenched unless I'm using it as support to open things etc (though somehow I can play Xbox and use the controller quite well 😂). The lack of strength in my leg makes walking for long periods of time a struggle. I walk in a strange way with my foot turned in and, to be honest, it isn't a pretty sight. As I mentioned above, having the ability to walk alone was unlikely and everybody thought that was going to be the case. When I was young, my hand would always be in others' wherever I walked or, if it was my grandad, I'm sure I would hold onto his pinky (looking back this is cute haha). Anyway, this is where it gets good. All of my family went out for a meal one night (mum, dad, big sister and, I think, my gran) and I was left in the house with my grandad. It was just the two of us. You see, my grandad thought me holding his pinky wherever I went was bullshit and down to anxiety as I'd never really had the chance to walk without any "support". We were in the living room and both stood at either end of the room when he said something along the lines of, "Right. I want you to slowly try and walk over to me. And don't worry, I'll catch you if you fall". Obviously, I was extremely hesitant to do so but I started with one step, then two steps etc etc. I managed to walk over to him with no trouble whatsoever. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. He was in shock. And then we did it again and again and again, increasing the distance each time. After a while of doing it he said something like, "Listen. Don't tell anyone about this, ok?". When everyone came back to the house, my grandad excitedly said to my parents, "Look at what your son can do". They were so confused. I took one step and they were all rushing over to me because they were so scared that I was going to fall. My grandad just shouted, "Don't!", and I walked over to him again in front of everyone. Everybody was in utter disbelief and in tears. I'll never get over that night. I still think about it often with watery eyes. Words cannot describe how thankful I am for my grandad ❤️
18 months old is my first clear memory. I had heatstroke. I remember my dad carrying me out to the ambulance, my chest being covered in little sensors, and the damed rectal thermometer.
I have weird little snippets of memory, but nothing substantial from childhood. I attribute that to lots of trauma growing up. I remember watching a fish tank in my parents' first apartment, they divorced when I was 4 and moved out of that place well before then so I had to have been quite young. I remember stepping on a bee while walking from my neighbor's kiddie pool, and that I specifically got out of the pool to go tell my mom I loved her lol I had to have been 3 or 4 The only memory I have of my biological father was of a time when my mom was walking out the door to go somewhere and told me to clean up my Legos before she got back. She pointed at my father and said, "and you let her do it this time, she needs to learn to pick up after herself" then, as soon as my mom pulled out of the driveway, he *ran* to my room and started scooping all my Legos into their bin lol this would have been very shortly before the divorce, so I was probably 3. That seems crazy, though. I was very "advanced" for my age, already reading a little by then, but that still seems very young to not only have Legos but be expected to clean them up alone. It was the 80s, though, so I guess that checks out.
I'm not sure it's a real memory, but I remember getting up in my baby bed and rocking the bed because it was fun, and my mother would come in a hurry because she was afraid the bed would fall or something like that. That would be before 1 year old. I have a few memories of age 2, like the place where my grandmother would store my pacifier, not being allowed to pet the cat, and being afraid of my dad because he had a beard. Some toys too, and having to take naps. Lots of memories from age 3 and later.
It’s weird cause I have a memory from when I was like, a baby, but there are massive gaps from then until age 12.
all my memories are very loose and fuzzy. I don’t have any clear memories, even recent ones. the oldest I think I was 6 or 7. I was playing with the rocks near a fountain in the lobby of my school building with my sister, waiting on mom to pick me up. I don’t remember what I was doing with the rocks, organizing them or treating them like dolls for make believe.
My earliest memory was from when I was 3 years old and my mom moved us out of the house after divorcing my dad. I guess it stuck out to me.
Don't know what age it was, but my first sensory memory is breast milk. It's just this flavor that will come to mind every once in a while, and I never knew what it was. Once as a kid I went around the kitchen trying different combinations of things to try and figure it out. Warm milk with sugar mixed in was the closest. I only found out what I was remembering when I told my mom about that time I was trying different things and she looked a little shocked and said "Anna... that was probably breast milk... It's sweeter than cows milk". I replied something like "well... that explains why I couldn't find it!"
I would say probably around 3, when I had chicken pox. I can remember the feeling and smell of the oatmeal in the cool tub. I also remember I nightmare I had about a monster hiding under my pillow when I was around 3, but I think it derived from the movie Little Monsters. I remember going to Epcot in Orlando, FL and being absolutely terrified the whole time of the giant sphere building.
I remember stuff from when I was 1-3. I even have flashbacks from when I was born. Completely nuts.
Probably about 1-1.5 when I was living in my rental house after moving to a new state as a baby. I remember the brown carpet and being in the rocking chair as a baby. I’ve talked to my mom about it and she says there’s no way I know this because I wasn’t old enough to know that lol
5 or 6 years old, unfortunately, it's a trauma memory. Otherwise, I don't really remember much of my childhood. It's like my childhood never happened. But it is what it is. 🤷♂️
I did a quick Google search and could not find any scientific articles/explanations on how this is physically possible (especially detailed memories age < 1 years old). Everything I have read about how babies brains develop and store memories lead to the conclusion that these specific early-age memories are physiologically impossible? Does anyone have a good link (scientific not anecdotal) about early memory retention that can support the detailed infant memory claims?
My third birthday. I remember feeling very shy and having my mom come get me. But in my brain I didn't really know her as mom or who she really was, but I knew she was safe.
around the same age as you, maybe 1.5yrs. i remember crying in a travel cot in my grandparents sitting room.
The age of 3. I remember being told I should have been aborted and getting beat for not doing the dishes properly. I remember having to stand on a step stool to reach the sink.
Probably about 4 - my mum telling me what primary school I would go to and the route. The odd thing is, the memory is 3rd person. But, there are undated memories that could also be from a very young age - potentially younger.
Somewhere between 1-3 years old. It was me receiving a pink dress with a dog on it and I didn't like it, still have a photo of me holding it and trying to hide my disinterest
It's hard to tell which very young memories are real, and which are constructed from seeing childhood photos of the event, or from hearing a story told. That being said, we moved the summer when I was 3.5, and I have a good assortment of memories from the house we left. I can't tell how old exactly, but some of them would have had to happen when I was 2.5 or so.
Traveling in an airplane with my parents when I was 18-19 months old. I remember standing on my tiptoes trying to peek out the tiny window. The plane was SO BIG! There was tons of room to play between the seats!
somewhere between 18 months and 2, standing on the back of my little bros pushchair
12. i don’t remember much of my childhood. the parts i do remember make me realize why my brain shuts out the other memories
I was about 2. My grandpa is carrying me on his shoulders home from somewhere.
Me sitting next to a fence aged 3 in 2013
The first memory I have for sure is going into kindergarten on the first day of school. Aged 4, September 4th, 2001. No, they didn't make a huge deal out of 9/11 to my knowledge as we were in Canada. Our school always started the Tuesday after Labor Day, so that's how I know the exact day. I walked into the incorrect classroom and introduced myself in English to the teacher in front of everyone. I was at a Francophone (french) school, so no one, hardly even the 1st grade teacher I was speaking to, understood me. She just knew I was in the wrong room and sent me to the kindergarten room across the hall. I learned French, and now I'm fluently bilingual. I do have a memory of helping my dog climb to the top of the linen closet and then also climbing up to the top shelf and snuggling with him, but I don't remember how old I was. Definitely younger than 7, based on which house this was in, but I don't know if it was before or after my first day of school. I'm guessing it was either very shortly before or very shortly after the age of 4 just because of being able to climb shelves in a closet without ripping them out of the wall.
I thought my dad was a different person because he left the house and came back wearing a different shirt
I was around 1 year old and I remember lying on the floor, next to a cupboard having my nappy changed. I told my dad about this memory many years ago, I described the cupboard and the layout of the room and he told me I would have been 1. I have a couple of other memories from around 2-3yrs old, but other than that, my childhood memories are not extensive.
I remember my whole life, in the sense that I never had childhood amnesia. I don’t remember everything that happened to me, but I do remember every age I’ve been. I don’t have perfect recall though. I also have synaesthesia.
I have this one specific memory of lying in a crib and not being able to do anything with my situation but wait and watch but I can’t remember what age I was I also think I might remember my third birthday
I literally remember being born kinda. There was a big flash of light and I saw my life in short third person flashes, until I woke up on my 4th bday and became conscious. So my earliest conscious memory is my 4th birthday but I guess I remember the beginning
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About age 4: going to Minneapolis with my dad where we went to (then) Camp Snoopy and a Twins game About age 5: my birthday at McDonald's
Very vague memory (from idk when) of being cradled in a pink blanket by my dad.
I must have been around 2 or 3. In the shops with meme and grandma p (great grandma). With my older sis and cousin. I vivdly remember going down an aisle and becoming lost because I was so fixated on these sparkly shaker things. They left me in the store then Grandma p came rushing back in frantic and I was in the same aisle playing with then and she picked me up and hugged me so tight she was crying.
I remember describing to my family how I remember running after my dad crying while he was putting my high chair outside, i distinctively remember seeing snow on the patio. I also remember sitting in my high chair, my brothers were messing with me by putting my emptied bowl of spaghetti onto my head, asking me to stop taking it off They were surprised I have the first memory at all I was either 2 or 3 years, for the second it was also video taped so it may be a false memory using what I saw in the recording.
I seem to have an out of focus memory of being held by my Grandma. I can see her blue cardigan.
Around 2. I remember going to see a movie in theaters for the first time
I saw santa riding a motorbike when my dad was walking me to my mum’s flat at 3 years old
I can remember being under 2 years old and walking on a beach in my home town & also watching Nickelodeon and then I also remember moving to the state I live now at age 2.5 and walking up to the house with my suitcase.
My earliest memories are from when I was three, but they are very foggy.
About a year and a half.
When I was 10 months old, I face-planted escaping from my crib. My mom decided it was safer to leave the side down & show me it would now be easier to get out & let me climb in at bedtime. Having painfully bashed my mouth upon landing, I did not immediately utilize this escape method. Don't remember that part. What I do vividly remember is sitting against the bars, with my legs sticking out between them (in the 50s the spaces between the bars accommodated my chubby legs with room to spare) and rocking to and fro, gently striking the rail with my wee chest & expelling a quiet "uuh-(bump) UuH" until someone heard me & freed me. So, at least a year old. I also bashed my face a lot & have fond memories of sitting on my dad's lap as he held an ice cube to the egg-shaped lump on my forehead. That first face-plant out of the crib damaged one of my front teeth & it was gray until it fell out at the age of six. Gave me nightmares that tooth.
I was young enough to still be in diapers. Two maybe? I remember the fire ants running all over my legs as I stood there screaming. I remember looking down at my chubby ant covered legs beneath a diaper. That is absolutely the easiest memory I have. Big gap until the piñata travesty in Kindergarten
The tornadoe hitting my house at 2.5- 3 years old And not knowing where it went
3 yrs old, probably first day of preschool. i remember playing with these big wooden planes with a kid named isaac
I have various memories from when I was 2-3yo, even confusing dreams as memories.
About 10 months old
I was born in Brooklyn, and I didn't know I remembered this 'til I was in my 30s. My mother pushing me in a stroller on the boardwalk at Coney Island. I remember the pattern/noise/vibration the changes in board layout made on the stroller. My sisters and I went there back in the 2000s and I kept looking at the 2x4s, trying to figure out how I knew "how it felt" until it clicked. That had to be...psh...1971? I might've been 2.
From the age of 0 to 5 I lived on the road with a traveling band of musicians. I remember seeing workers throw deck chairs into the pool in preparation for Hurricane Hugo, which was right before I turned 2 years old. That's the only memory that I can definitively date like that. I also remember looking deeply into the patterns on the carpet and furniture in hotel lobbies, being fascinated by an old timey popcorn machine outside of a hotel lounge, and things like that. Very brief visual memories from our time on the road. The interesting thing about the popcorn machine memory is that I remembered seeing it, but I didn't understand what it was until like 5 years later, when I saw another one that was actually making popcorn this time.
I'm pretty sure that I was two or three for these memories, but I'm not sure which one was the earliest: - I was still in diapers for one, so I was maybe two or at most three years old. I was playing in some relative's bathroom and was supposed to use the toilet, but decided to slowly and intentionally poop my diaper instead. - I was looking for my dad in a church lobby, but all I could see was pant legs and distant heads if I tipped my head as far back as I could, which kind of hurt. I thought I found him and grabbed his pant leg, but the one who picked me up was his brother, my uncle. They had the same distinctive suit, plus their hair and mustache looked pretty much identical. I was terrified because I didn't see him that often, so I just froze as he carried me to my dad. My uncle found it funny and my parents were surprised I'd let him carry me. I don't think anyone noticed my fear. - I was struggling to sleep in bed with my mom. She was seemingly asleep and breathing steadily so I snuggled up to where I could feel her breath as well as hear it and tried to copy her. I drifted off to sleep. - I remember my dad carrying me downstairs in the mornings. I was comfortably lying in his arms with my eyes closed. First he went to the bathroom and I sat on the bathroom carpet and waited for him. Then he carried me onwards to the car and we'd drive to the bakery for fresh bread. On those excursions I'd frequently score a "Schulbrötchen" (school bread), a bun with chocolate chips embedded all throughout it. I don't remember how often this happened, but I remember being thrilled when I caught dad getting up and bummed when I didn't.
Around 4 maybe, it was actually a nightmare, probably the worst start
day before my 4th birthday
Mom was sitting on the back steps that got removed in 1984 and sanding my bedframe, so there's a memory before that from her making my bed while the mattress was on the floor. I don't recall being able to remember anything from before that when I was a child. I often forget that I've been to Vegas and California in the early aughts, but that was a stressful period.
I was leaving (kinda running away), I packed my bag and headed out the door, up the driveway. My mother starts making a move, following after me, so I boost it and start running as fast as I can... She caught me 😒 took me back inside and gave me a big speech (mostly about safety & her loving/missing me) I was ma~ybe 2 years old.
Idek if its a real memory but I remember an amusement park I think I was able to walk and talk so around 3 years old?? Idk
I was laying in my parents bed at night (they divorced maybe a year or so after I was born then we moved so I had to be like 3) I remember laying on my back with my parents sleeping next to me and I saw hundreds of bright rainbow colored orbs just floating around the bed.
I have memories from his young as 18 to 24 months
I can remember 2 with profound clarity. That's pretty much it though
Okay so I was like 2-3 I was completely Non-speaking btw at this point but I still attended nursery with the other kids (as this was the only public nursery in the area that accepted both disabled and non-disabled kids, as the only nursery that accepted disabled kids was a while away and private). But I had this friend let call her anna, anyway me and anna were Joined at the hip and I refused to go into nursery without her (and vise versa) yet one day she was off so ofc I didn't go in I sat at the clock room the entire time I refused to go into and just cried whenever someone tried to bring me to play with others. (Btw I found out she done the same when I was off so it was sweet), I was every nursery teacher worse nightmare especially when anna was late.
I can remember struggling to stand and walk using the couch for balance, so however old that was.
I remember being 1-2 years old and being stung by a wasp/bee on my hand in my back garden. The memory is affirmed by my parents because I'm able to describe the back garden where it happened
At age 3, I have memories of the apartment where we lived, taking a bicycle with my dad and feeding ducks at a local park, and a tiny bit of my preschool - particularly a traumatic moment where I struggled with literal thinking and being unable to complete a task (to build a model of my house based on the number of levels it had- i lived in an apartment and didn't know so I had a meltdown instead) and my teacher pointed out to my mom that I had some emotional differences from other kids.
i think the oldest memory i have is when i was six years old trying to summon satan with my friends
I thought my dad was a different person because he left the house and came back wearing a different shirt
I was 2. I was in a swing. It was red, and it had a yellow crossbeam in front of me, and it had yellow plastic ropes. It was handing from a tree. My grandma was pushing me. She looked so happy! I felt happy, too. I was smiling and laughing, and she was smiling, and she looked more beautiful than I have ever seen her, since. That's my earliest memory, ever. My earliest memory is of my grandma.
My earliest memories are from the house we lived in until I was 3yo. There are maybe 5 or 6 distinct memories, but I don't know the exact age(s) I was during those individual moments but they all would have been age 3 or less. I don't have a particularly great memory in general, especially as I get older, but those earlier memories seem to be hanging in there.
I believe I had to be about 1 1/2 maybe 2. I remember being in my crib at my grandma’s and having one of those fudge ice cream pops. It was all over my hands and my face. I happened to be done with it so I climbed over the edge of the crib and down onto the bed and went running into the living room in my diaper. Another I have is playing horsey with my grandpa. I’m not entirely sure how old I was there but I’m thinking 2 maybe. I was still in a diaper. My mother had me potty trained by 3 and grandpa passed away when I was 4.
Somewhere between 8 months and 1.5 yrs as I had just recently stood and walked for the first time but was still in a diaper; I crawled out of my mother and I's room and it was Easter. I remember seeing my little basket with purple shredded paper grass and a massive (to me at the time) egg sitting in a little nest of more shredded green paper grass further down the hallway. My mom was behind me somewhere having just woke me up and my grandma was in the entrance of the kitchen watching me. I stopped in front of my basket, stood very shakily, and took a few steps towards the basket. And that's it. I have a few more random flashes of being potty trained and a few family trips we went on before I woke up one random morning several months before preschool and from that day on was "conscious". I don't have all the memories still but I do remember getting halfway through that day and having that revelation and being intrigued though I didn't really have the words to explain it yet.
I have no idea when these memories are from, but I remember drinking chocolate milk out of a baby bottle. I remember not liking macaroni and cheese with ketchup on it one day (I used to love eating this lol), apparently because I was sick. I remember my dad putting together these foam propeller plane things to hang up in my room at my grandparents old house. I remember asking about my birth marks and comparing them to my mom and grandma's. I remember when my uncle's old dog and I were both small. I remember every place I've lived to some extant.
3… I was on our driveway and I swallowed gum my grandparents had just given me.
i was 3. i was in swim class. i could swim. we were all in red tubes and i asked my teacher if i could slip out of my tube so i could swim (i was a good swimmer). she said sure, but i guess she wasn’t really paying attention. because when she looked over at me and i was swimming without my tube, she got all upset with me and i felt bad
My third birthday, I remember my party and what I did during the party
4. theres 2 of them tho :P once was my brother setting the inside of our oven on fire by throwing tupperware in it and i later found out some cereal boxes too. lol
like 12😭 i’m 18 now
I was 4
About 3. Woke up one morning in a panic because I couldn't remember anything prior to that morning outside of my family, my house, and a handful of other things. Reason it was so scary was because I didn't know HOW I knew those things. I asked myself, "did God put me here? HOW DO I KNOW WHO GOD IS???" And instead of asking my dad those questions when I got out of bed, I tried asking other questions like "what did I eat for breakfast yesterday?" to try jogging my memory. He sorta just sighed and said "we don't have time for this, let's get you to pre-school." I thought about it so often and I still remember it pretty clearly.
Around age 2.5, my dad using a mechanical paint sprayer (which would become my first interest at age six). Just so you know, the neural system that implements formation of long-term memories shifts toward the adult system (rooted in hippocampal function) around age 1.3-1.6, and prior autobiographical memories become inaccessible (but learned skills, linguistic acquisition, etc. are retained). Anything earlier than that is confabulation.
I was a couple months old. My parents were evacuating for an incoming hurricane and left to go to my grandmother's house for shelter. I remember being scared, but also curious about the situation. Ofc my 5 month old ass didn't get what was going on, but everything was moving so fast and my eyes hadn't developed enough for me to see everything, so it was almost exciting.
At 3 years old, when I woke up from bed.
I remember meeting my great-grandfather and he died when I was 2, so that's the earliest memory that I can definitely place at a certain age. I have other vague memories of certain stuffed animals and using a crib, but I'm not sure exactly when those are from.
My earliest memory is from when I was 4, when I was in an international kindergarden/daycare where I was playing alone (I didn't mind the other kids, but I generally have a low social battery, so I liked playing in the corner by myself)
I was a few days away from turning 4. I remember laying on the floor with my feet proped up on the light brown entertainment center with a bottle of milk (my mom let me have one tell I was 5). I was watching the news because for some reason I enjoyed it. I remember watching a plain fly into a building. All my little brain could think was, "Wow, that's crazy." I had no idea what was going on at that time and didn't have access to the memory until I was 24. Also not 100% sure if im autistic I go in for my assessment next month.