• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Earliest Memories

I have fragmented memories of being on holiday in Ireland at 18 months old, but then my memories really don't start again until my mother was pregnant with my brother, when I have memories of trying to sit on her lap and her telling me she didn't have much lap left, then seeing my baby brother in the carry cot beside my parents' bed. I am two and a half years older than him, so my 'proper' memories start when I was just over two.
 
A limp banana skin on the ground next to a rubbish bin in the carpark at the Falls in Betws-y-Coed.
(holiday in Wales aged two)
 
gordonrutter said:
Are we checking to see if Bad Bungle is a replicant?
Click to expand...

Yes No, I think memories are not just images/sounds/smells, they are also feelings. On reading B.B's post I thought, what was that two year old feeling about the seeing that banana skin next to the bin? :bananas:
 
pandacracker said:
Yes No, I think memories are not just images/sounds/smells, they are also feelings. On reading B.B's post I thought, what was that two year old feeling about the seeing that banana skin next to the bin? :bananas:
Click to expand...
Probably thinking 'I feel I should help', but not helping.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Probably thinking 'I feel I should help', but not helping.
Click to expand...
You and pandacracker are pretty much bang on - mild depression in a two year old that the banana skin should have been in the bin, not next to it. The skin looked like it had lain there for quite a while, no chance of rectifying matters without an adult lecture on not picking icky things up.
 
Bad Bungle said:
You and pandacracker are pretty much bang on - mild depression in a two year old that the banana skin should have been in the bin, not next to it. The skin looked like it had lain there for quite a while, no chance of rectifying matters without an adult lecture on not picking icky things up.
Click to expand...
I was really just riffing on the Blade Runner replicant test.
However... a social conscience in one so young, that's amazing.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I was really just riffing on the Blade Runner replicant test.
However... a social conscience in one so young, that's amazing.
Click to expand...

Why do you say that? I was very moral from toddler age, to the point of probably being a little prig.
 
GNC said:
Why do you say that? I was very moral from toddler age, to the point of probably being a little prig.
Click to expand...
I personally don't remember having fully-formed moral opinions myself at that age, although I do have some memories from when I was very young.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I personally don't remember having fully-formed moral opinions myself at that age, although I do have some memories from when I was very young.
Click to expand...

I suppose we're getting into philosophical questions of how far morality is part of your evolutionary makeup.
 
GNC said:
I suppose we're getting into philosophical questions of how far morality is part of your evolutionary makeup.
Click to expand...
[Raises eyebrow, Spock-like]
 
Newly published research indicates the earliest demonstrable date for retrievable memories is about a year earlier than previously believed, earliest memory recall varies quite a bit among individuals, and people tend to mistakenly attribute their earliest memories to later timeframes as they age.
What Is Your Earliest Memory? Can Start From the Age of Two-and-a-Half According to New Research

New study and a review of decades of data pushes the memory clock back over a year, but the study confirms everyone is different.

On average the earliest memories that people can recall point back to when they were just two-and-a-half years old, a new study suggests.

The findings, published in peer-reviewed journal Memory, pushes back the previous conclusions of the average age of earliest memories by a whole year.

They are presented in a new 21-year study, which followed on from a review of already-existing data. ...

“... [T]hose early memories are systematically misdated. Over and over again we find people think they were older than they actually were in their early memories.” ...

Overall, it shows that children’s earliest memories come before when they think it happened, as confirmed by their parents. ...
Click to expand...
FULL STORY: https://scitechdaily.com/what-is-yo...-of-two-and-a-half-according-to-new-research/
PUBLISHED ARTICLE: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2021.1918174
 
What Is Your Earliest Memory? Can Start From the Age of Two-and-a-Half
Click to expand...

I am certain that I can remember particular incidents and occurrences from a much-younger age than that. Definitely long before I could talk or walk.

My first memory is: I was unstable but upright, clinging onto the sides of my cot, immediately beside a upper-floor window in our sitting-room; looking out, watching a coalman dragging massive sacks of coal from the back of a huge horse-drawn wagon in the city streets below. A tray of recently-cooked baking was sitting, cooling, on the sideboard. I had just woken up, both from sleep and....semi non-existence. My best estimate as to my age would be that I was under two years old
 
When I was a young child (6 years old or so) I believed I could remember being born. I can still remember, vaguely, the memory I associated with being born... being under a light that hung down from the ceiling directly overhead, with "doctors" (2 or 3 people in gowns) gathered around and looking down at me. I strongly associated the memory with the local village hospital, where I was actually born.
 
The earliest thing I can remember is probably just when I could walk so maybe 1974 when I'd have been 1, stepping out of my Mum's kitchen to explore the garage connected to our kitchen and my Mum gently guiding me back into the kitchen. There was a metal cage with different vegetables stored. I can still see it.
 
Last edited:
I remember rats or mouse running around in the kitchen while I was between 2 and 3 1/4 years old. We were living half way out in the country side. We were having hens and pigs in the backyard. An uncle lived on the property and did some farming besides his factory job.
 
Last edited:
Earliest verified was about 18 months. I was propped up, standing, on the top of a fence with my father holding me. I vaguely think I have one earlier than that, but could not get it verified so it doesn't count. It was me sitting on the rug on the floor, entranced with the beautiful dust motes moving in the air.

Early memories are so interesting! I had read that they are usually overwritten by later memories. I know I only have a few before 4 years of age. Also, I am not sure that most of them are real and not made up afterwards.
 
I'm exactly one year nine months older than my sister and I have a memory of my mother nursing her in the back of my father's Bedford van. Some-one familiar with female biology can put an age range on that for me. What is retained with the early memories are fascinating glimpses of the thought process behind them at the time.
 
Mine was standing up in the cot crying at mass shaped figure by the door and my mam and dad being asleep....don't if the figure was real or just my infant brain imagine it.
 
I have a slightly embarrassing memory to share

I remember sitting in a stroller at an age when it was almost no longer appropriate - maybe 4 or so - and browsing through a large mail order catalog of the type Sears and Montgomery Ward put out. I loved looking at them, with color pictures of all kinds of things. I remember when I got to the women's underwear section I would feel an unusual stirring in my lower regions and thinking "why does looking at scantily clad ladies make me feel like I have to pee?" I was totally clueless about the details of human sexual reproduction, and in fact learned them later than most. I had the same experience and the same question a number of times throughout my childhood, and only put two and two together some time later.

Edit: Sorry about the sloppy grammar. I'm too lazy to fix it.
 
Last edited:
I have a memory of falling out of bed and being stuck between the bed and the wall; my mum assures me that the bed was moved from that position before I turned 3. I also remember the presents I got for Christmas 1979 at my grandparents when I would have been not quite 3, so I suspect the earlier memory would have been from around the same time.
 
I remember jumping in the jolly jumper in the middle of our kitchen on a spring/summer day with all of the farmers, who were helping my dad with planting, having dinner (that is noonish for those of you who are not rural people). This had to be somewhere between when I was 12 -18 months old (my birth month is February). I estimate this because I was in the jolly jumper, and my mom said that I never crawled, but just started walking when I was 18 months old.

I remember being in a crib when I had chicken pox and looking at the wallpaper - deer and forest scene with a path. When I got older, I would imagine walking down the path. My mom kept record of when I had childhood illnesses and her date shows that I was 2 years and 1 month old when I had chicken pox.

My brother (who is 18 months younger) and I once were left in our old red pickup on a sunny summer day in the field while my dad went for a wander to check the field. I don't know how long he was gone for, but it seemed forever and we felt abandoned. We were both crying out eyes out when he returned. I'm going to guess that I might have been 3.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top