Does your memory go back to a very early age?

some at 2 but mostly starting at three

I remember when I was sperm.

I remember moving to our new house as well at two. My mother even said “That’s our new house!” while in the car driving up to it. I repeated what she said. I remember some things from our old house before that such as the living room and being in the backyard. That must’ve been when I was two as well.

My memory has often been a curse.

Definitely back to 3 or 4 as I remember stuff from before I went to kindergarten.

a couple flashes from a big trip when I was 2 1/2

otherwise not much until I was a few years older

I remember my past life as a slave in ancient Egypt. That's me with the bamboo pole.

I remember having a Hudson Hornet pedal car when I was two years old: 1953.

When they still made Hudsons.

I once said to my mother that I remember getting my father's galoshes one day and she was amazed. She said I did that for a while when I was just turning two. I remember her saying, "Look, George, he's doing it again."

One thing I find really odd - I remember looking at various members of my family as "new to me", grandparents etc. who were very much around and in our lives.

I remember thinking my grandfather was like Fred Flintstone.

I can vividly recall moments from age 4, nothing earlier.

I think your memory is inversely proportional to the amount of drugs you've done in your youth.

Just sayin'.

Due to changes in the evolving brain you aren't actually remembering events from age three or four. You are remembering it second hand-- as a memory imprinted later in life.

I remember my mother and grandmother watching Queen Elizabeth's coronation, I was 2.

[quote]it's science baby

Is this something you say often?

[quote] Due to changes in the evolving brain you aren't actually remembering events from age three or four. You are remembering it second hand-- as a memory imprinted later in life.

I have heard this before, but the things I remember are not things that someone would have told me about. So I'd like to see the science on this, Mr. Wizard.

[quote]I have heard this before

I haven't. It's total bullshit, from someone who had a very poor memory of early childhood.

I distinctly remember my first memory. I was 2.5 years when the moon landing happened in 1969. (Yeah I’m old). I remember being, for some reason, crouched under the coffee table in front of the large tv. My dad made us all watch. I can still smell the smells. Feel the rug under me. See the tv. Everything.

Most of our memories were implanted under hypnosis during the sleeper cell programming.

R15, JFK, Jr. said in interviews that he wasn't sure if he remembered saluting his father's coffin or did seeing the footage of it make him think that he did.

It’s not impossible to remember things from early childhood, but the current thinking is that most — not all, but most — of those memories are lost by the age of seven.

I too remember events that occurred before I was three (which is when my brother was born, and we moved to a larger place). I remember the look of rooms and things that happened while we were there.

When I mentioned these memories to my mother, she was surprised. She’d forgotten nearly all, but they gradually came back to her - along with confirming incidents - as we spoke.

I remember nursery school during WW2. They served grapefruit juice and I hated it.

That would be 1945. Ha ha..I have the oldest memory.

I remember being in my walker, so I was between 1 and 2. My brother is 11 months younger than me, and I remember being in a two seater stroller, looking over his head.... again between 1 and 2. I remember tons from 3 on.

My family moved to a new house when I was 5 and I have a lot of memories about life in the old house. But I can’t put the memories in any worthwhile chronological order, they are all jumbled together.

Though I do have memories sssociatrd with seasons and holidays. My memories probably go back to age 3.

Clear, specific memories starting at the age of 3.

I remembering visiting NYC when I was 3 years old. My mother showed me a souvenir replica of the Statue of Liberty and explained that we were going to go inside the statue. I remember being scared, because I thought she was talking about the tiny replica itself, and I didn't understand how we were going to fit.

R26 your mom should have thrown you on the ocean and spared us from this awful story.

I remember my Grandmother taking me to see The Little Mermaid when I was 2 years old. I mentioned this to my mom about 10 years ago and she didn’t know what I was speaking about and told me “but I never took you to see The Little Mermaid” and I said “you didn’t, Grandma did” and she said no and then my Grandmother started laughing and said “yes I did”. She was shocked I remembered this and my mom never even knew lmao.

I remember things from when I was 2 and a half to 3 years old

I remember being in a crib and the night when I first slept in a real bed. Also have a memory of being given a bottle (with nipple) of water on a hot day while I napped in my crib. Think my first solid memories began while still in a high chair, so perhaps I was still 3 at the time? I've always been good remembering names, dates, and phone numbers.

I remember my parents watching the moon landing and I was born in late 1966. I have other vague memories from that age but they’re just personal moments.

OP, I am exactly your age and I can recall the theme song to "The Pruitts of Southampton" (The Phyllis Diller Show) which ran for ONE season starting in.....1966 when we were three! I didn't recall seeing it, just knowing the tune.

We also moved that year a few weeks before I turned three and yet I can draw an accurate floor plan from the old house. I'd say we do actually remember lots of things from being toddlers still.

Hell I consider myself luck when I can remember what I went into a room for.

I remember as soon as I came out of my mothers womb as a baby. I rolled around and ate her cunt. I also chewed up the afterbirth too I remember eating my moms hot dripping cunt up until I was thirteen.

Early memories for me.

-Saying ,"Diane" watching Cheers and my mom being beside herself. When did Shelley Long leave?

-My mom signing me up for preschool.

-I remember my changing table, busy box in my crib.

-Pointing out the, "mommy and daddy" on the Luvs diaper box.

Born in 1982

My aunt's house up the street from ours. Her house was grand in comparison to ours, which was my parents' starter house. I remember the kitchen - the cream wood cabinets and quality of light - there were windows over the sink and a window in the pantry and a side door always open to a small porch, but with a screen door closed. Linoleum floor. Wood table. I had older sisters and when they became too annoying I would walk up to my aunt's house and into the kitchen and sit there in the quiet. I don't remember that uncle at all, nor really that aunt's face, just remember clearly the kitchen being peaceful and the dancing light and a fly buzzing. There was a grandfather clock on the landing by the stairs in the front hall so sometimes I would sit and wait for it to chime.

I remember making Christmas cookies with my mom and older siblings when I was maybe two or three, and visiting my very ill (and dying) grandfather, same time frame.

I also remember my older sister teaching me how to count to ten in Spanish, and reading from cereal boxes, and I know I was three at the time because my family made a big fuss that I could do those things!

Because some photos my mother took were printed with the month and year, I know I can remember back as early as 2 years and 3 months. There was a snow storm that left an accumulation of snow over our midwestern town. I was too young to generally need snow boots, so I didn't have any. But I wanted desperately to play in the snow. My mother fashioned boots for me out of some plastic bags. They worked for as long as I need them, which was probably not more than 10 minutes. I remember her doing that because I was so excited about playing in the snow. I have the memory and I have the photo to date the event.

My first memory is laying in my crib and my mother came in and started singing to me. I was somewhat incredulous as her voice is grating, and I remember wishing she would shut up.

I remember crawling out of my crib and down on my older cousin and my mother screaming at his for not watching me.

My earliest memory is about 40 seconds long from when I was 10 months old. I have told this story to two different therapists who said it is possible and that they had other patients who had a similar experience. My mother was pushing me in the baby carriage, my older brother, who had just turned 3, was by her side and we were on the way to the local park. As we were leaving my aunt (my mother's sister who lived next door) was standing outside. She approached the carriage and peaked inside at me and I looked up at her. I understood every word of their brief 20 second conversation. They were talking about the weather and that it was a perfect day to go to the park.

Quite amazingly, I was also aware that it was early October and that it was around 10:00 in the morning and as my aunt walked away to go back indoors after their brief conversation she said to my mother, "Have fun, see you later" -- a conversation I remember every word of. I do not remember the 15 minute walk to the park or being at the park or returning home.

My next memory was at 18 months old. It was something very upsetting that I had become aware of or was made aware of; a thought that entered my head, but I didn't know how to articulate it and didn't want to share it with my parents anyway. That thought, like a piece of knowledge planted in my head, had lasted less than a minute but it is a profound thought, or I should say, piece of information. It has stayed with me all these years.

I do not remember my second birthday party bash even after looking at all of the many photos years later. My next memory starts at 2.5 and I have only very few memories from that point, until I turned three. I have a lot of memories from age three to age five.

I also remember the day my mother brought my little sister home from the hospital. I had just turned 3 the week before. I was wondering why she was so small, adorable but tiny, and why my mother didn't think to get herself a bigger baby. I knew my mother was coming home with a baby sister that would be smaller than me or a miniature version of me but I thought she could walk and talk or at least sit up so we could play together. I was worried that I couldn't play with my new little sister and because of that she would be sad. I was concerned that she was bored lying in her crib.

I remember moving day when she was 18 months old and I was aware that I was going to start Kindergarten later that year. My parents bought a house in the suburbs as the apartment in the city was too small for the five of us. I remember most everything about the move from the city to the suburbs.

I have a lot of memories from the age of 3-5 and recall a lot after that point from my elementary grade school days. I remember hating to have to go to Kindergarten everyday, even though I had nice teachers and classmates and went to a great school. I wanted to stay home and play in the large backyard we had and swim in the pool on hot days and practice rollerskating on the small hilly cul-de-sac we lived on. Good thing Kindergarten was only 3 hours a day back then.

*that was supposed to include 'falling'. Apparently my memory was better back then than it is now.

Yes

R41 doesn't remember his 8th grade teacher reminding students concision would be rewarded.

I remember sitting in a high chair with a polka dotted bib, so I must’ve been about 12-18 mos. I also remember my dad screaming at me for climbing on the hood of our VW. I was probably about two at that time. Later, at about six, I told him to fuck off, and he followed me upstairs to where I was hiding in terror under my bed, and spanked me. I was always pushing the limits.

My mother died suddenly when I was five and I remember quite a few things from before then. Maybe as far back as two or three.

I remember walking along the beach with my mother (we lived in a beach house in Australia) and dodging the little sand crabs at the shoreline. I remember being hit over the head with a shovel by my cousin (a frog was on my head and he wanted to kill it). I remember a road being flooded and my mother having to turn the car around. I remember sitting on the living room floor playing with a G.I. Joe while my mother was on the couch watching TV with a boyfriend. I remember spending time at my grandparents' house. I remember sitting in the back seat of a car and eating licorice from a brown paper bag on a day trip. I remember going to have professional photos taken with my mother and aunt and cousin and how he wore an orange sweater to cover up the fact he was wearing a cast on his broken arm. I was four when the whole Lindy Chamberlain thing ("a dingo stole my baby") happened and I remember my aunt insisting she was guilty as we all watched it on TV and her being really angry about it. I remember the knee high socks with the animals on them that I used to wear. I remember seeing a lizard for the first time in the backyard of my grandparents' house and being so scared I couldn't move or speak. I remember the puffy stickers that were on my kindergarten bag. I remember getting sneaked into drive-ins multiple times by hiding in the back seat with a blanket over me. I remember being taken to a Village People concert and being fascinated by the Indian. I also remember the house we lived in before the beach house where I posed for photographs.

I also remember singing along to this song whenever it came on the radio.

Most of my pre-3 memories were "assisted" by home movies but my memories were pretty good at the time. When my parents were driving somewhere when I was four I insisted they were using the wrong exit because I had a very clear memory of our trip at a year and a half. Now that's gone of course. From 3 forward I have spotty memories, mainly of highlights like vacations or field trips. But from age 9 I remember well. I used to pick dates and try to remember things, not the weather or the day of the week but what was happening, who was there, and that kind of things; and I could usually do it, but I fear as I get older that's been somewhat compromised..

I remember... when my twin brothers we born - I was 3 1/2 - and I remember vividly being told my mom was having twins and I wanted to name them Jack and Jill

I think I remember JFK's assassination and everyone being glued to the TV

I was born in 1960 (Eldergay - yes...)

My first extensive memory was of a major life event: a move to a new house and city when I was a little 3 year 7 months. I remember arriving in the new city at night (although I remember nothing about the trip to get there, which I’m told was a long train ride) a long drive to the new house, and walking in to see all the furniture I recognized from our old house. Finally there were the first words I can remember hearing: my father telling my mom to “put the kids to bed.”

Prior to this I just have one briefer memory, which was probably from within months of when the events described above happened. My mom confirms that our previous house had a garage and I remember one occasion when she gave me the key to unlock the padlock on the garage. Once I had the key, I ran ahead to open the lock. I must have been very excited, as kids tend to get when allowed to manipulate things like keys and push buttons. I remember absolutely nothing else about that house, even from pictures. But after the move to the new house at 3, I remember plenty.

My parents fighting over me. Mom grabbed me and started running down the street. My mom turning on the bedroom light and walking over to my crib. She rubbed something on my gums so I must have been teething. I remember sitting in a high chair and someone bringing me a strawberry angel food cake with two candles stuck in it.

I have only a few vague memories before puberty, which hit around 11 for me. After that, I have much clearer memories. I remember watching programs after school in our garage, which had been converted into a kid's playroom. (Dark Shadows, I Dream of Jeannie, the Munsters). I remember some of my teachers, especially in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. I remember that a Swedish neighbor rented or somehow got a hold of a tiny reindeer on Christmas Eve. (My older sister swears it was a dog with antlers tied on it). Smells and sounds of my grandmother's house in Montana (mothballs, glassed in porch). Lots of little fragments of memories - but nothing substantial until after 11.

Earliest memory was 3-going-on-4 in 1987. The Whittier Narrows earthquake in Southern California -- my older siblings were getting ready for school in the next morning and then the whole house started to shake and rumble. My next cognizant memory was of the Seoul '88 Olympics.

Treasure your gift OP. I have many memories from 2 on.

I remember a room in our house had a door with glass door knobs, I remember walking into the TV room one night when my parents were out and my older siblings movies about giant grasshoppers were on. I remember the very first song I learned at age 3. (it was a purple Disney records of children's song. I remember my first dream at 3 or so. It's weird.

I’ve been telling people I remember what it feels like to be in a womb when I was a baby. No need to breathe and no need to think literally anything. I told my mom when I was around 4 that I remembered how I felt like curving my body when I was in her stomach but she didn’t take it seriously. I would imagine this would feel the same after we die. The best part of not being born is that you don’t need to think. Perfect transcendence

I remember as far back as 3 years old. I very vividly remeber my mother being pregnant with my little brother. I used to take ramen noodles and try to push them through my mother's belly button to feed him.

I remember my first birthday party, it was the only one I had as a kid so it wasn’t a mixed memory. Also remember my family moving when I was 18 months old.

Earliest memory is waking up with an ear ache at age 4 in 1956 and walking into the living room where my parents were watching television, a first run episode of "I Love Lucy", so it had to be a Monday at 9:00 PM. I sat curled up on my father's lap while the ear drops heated up on the gas stove, watching my first "ILL". Wish I could remember which episode it was.

R38 is a perfect example of an implanted memory. You don't remember those things. Your brain fills in the stories from the pictures. I'd imagine there is some research out there linking these supposed "early memories" to creativity. You hear a relative mention something in the background and it sticks in your head and you build a story, not even realizing you heard the original comment. From eyesight to memory, your brain works by filling in the voids. You will never know the difference because both the created story and actual memories are created by the same brain trying to differentiate them.

So, how far back does your memory go, R58, if you are clearly so unable to relate to people who can remember being so young?

My youngest brother swears he remembers being born: the noise, the lights; the confusion.

I have a vivid memory from age 2 1/2: we were outside a certain building and I remember the coat my mother wore. Recently I told her about it as we passed the same building, and she agreed that the details were accurate.

I have very very few memories from kindergarten and first grade, but mostly I don't remember anything before 1980, when I turned eight. (Thank god.)

I had surgery at the age of two and I remember two things clearly. I remember the neighbors bringing balloons and I remember being wheeled out of my room down the hall on the way to pre-op or wherever.

Piss off, R58. You write well, but you do not think well. You do not reason well.

While there may be truth in your statement when you write about the theory of implanted memory, generally, there is not enough in my post for you to reach your conclusion about my memory. You have done no independent investigation into the matter. You didn't speak to me for further detail. And you weren't there to see it first hand. With your conclusion, you over reach greatly and you make statements you cannot possibly support. It's fine that you took the Psych class, but your clinical skills are poor. If you understood this as well as you seem to believe you do, you would also understand you don't have nearly enough information to conclude anything about the accuracy of my post.

I remember the event because as a child, it was exicting to me, it was notable to me, I was fully concentrated on going out an playing with the snow. I can't tell you what I had for breakfast that day. I can't tell you who else was there, except me and my mother. And I have no idea what I did after coming back in. I suppose we took the boots off, but I don't remember anything except that very exciting push to go play in the snow and, at the risk of sounding like Peggy Lee, the disappointment when it wasn't the fun I had anticipated. The cold and the snow were hard for a very small child to contend with and that was all new to me. The only other thing from that approximate part of my life that I can recall came months later when I worked to gain the coordination in my hands to hold up three fingers on my third birthday so that I could show everyone I was three. Another big deal to a child.

I can also remember being put into my crib for a nap, in my parents bedroom, but not napping. I often did not nap in the afternoon. It was my preference to sing. And I sang through naptime often. I suppose I often napped, but if I did, there is no memory of it. There are no photos of that and I can't say with authority how old I was. But it was a crib.

The photo in the family photo album did not implant a memory in my brain, but it did give me actual evidence of when it occurred. That's all it did. And even if I have recalled any of it incorrectly, that does not repair any of the deficiencies in your post.

Here's the truth.

My earliest memory is of my 2nd birthday party, and I have several vivid memories of my 2nd year. I will also add that there are very few photos from my early childhood, certainly none from the events that I remember. I can remember what I and other people were wearing, the weather, tastes, smells and sounds.

[quote]Here's the truth.

I think life is more beautiful than you realise.

R12 - Are you describing memories of memories? I can "remember" things before or around age two - driving across a bridge to get to a new house when I was two, walking along the water in Brooklyn n a surface that I think was asphalt hexagons, getting my fingers stuck in a recess between the floor of a fountain and the circular wall (it was empty), a party dress of tulle that "popped up" after I put it on (2nd birthday maybe?). But these are all memories I have been aware of a long time. I don't feel like they are "real" memories. But how would you distinguish? I also know I have some memories that are distorted because my perception of events at the time was wrong. I thought I went to a circus where a guy got killed or mauled by the lion. I was annoyed because I didn't see it (I know), but I later found out I definitely hadn't been there, but there was an incident at that circus later. I wasn't even that young for that one. Probably at least 7.

I have no photos and my parents traveled a lot and took us everywhere - it wasn't that out of the ordinary for us to travel as kids - so what I remember has to have come from being there at the age of three at my grandmother's winter place in Bal Harbour (Miami) in 1956. I have the vaguest recollection of how we got there (Eastern Airlines) and the rental car my Dad drove (I think it was a Mercury convertible, I know it was tan) but I remember being fascinated by the electric windows, pushing the button to make 'em go up and down every chance I got.

I clearly remember the highlights: dinners at the new Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House in Sunny Isles, the playground across the street from Nana's place with a teeter-totter and a sort of foot powered carousel (you ran alongside it to get it going, then hopped onboard), neither of which I'd ever seen before at home, watching my sister in diapers run halfway across Collins Avenue before my Mom caught her, seeing my father unsuccessfully try to break open a coconut for what must have been half an hour, the Howard Johnson's where we'd go for ice cream, and the organ-grinder with a little monkey at the opening of the first Jordan Marsh store in Miami.

Later photo of the Rascal House, maybe circa 2000 judging by the cars, and looking exactly like it did on the day it opened in 1954 - they never changed a thing. It closed about ten years ago.

I knew Wolfie's. I found myself in Miami back in circa 1986 staying in some cheap hotel overnight and walked out to find a place to eat and it was across the street and what a miracle! SUCH a great place!

And I'd always go back whenever I was in Miami. Sit up at the counter. Chat with the old Jewish guys from New York.

I was SO sad to hear it had closed.

They had one in Boca Raton as well for a while, which I went to a few times.

The Miami one, it's true, never changed its look. It was 50s Americana in aspic.

I remember being in my stroller at the zoo, which had to be at an early age because my 1960s family wouldn't have carted around an older kid in a stroller like they do today.

I remember watching Bewitched when they broke in to say Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot. I would have been three years and eight months old at the time.

I remember bits and pieces of the first family vacation on which I was taken...I remember sitting on my father's shoulders and the waves hitting us. I was 18 months old.

I remember hearing music at 4 years old ('82)

TL; DR - there are different kinds of memories, and brief images are remembered from earlier ages than memories of entire events or stretches of time.

I think there's a difference between snapshot memories and event memories. I'm sure there are proper terms for these things, but what I mean is this: A snapshot memory is an image or a fleeting moment. I remember being anesthetized for surgery, but I don't remember it as a process; I remember a single moment of the experience. The surgery was in October 1959, when I was 2 years and 10 months old. That's the oldest memory I can date, but I have other "snapshots" from early childhood that could be earlier. A snapshot memory could be very detailed, but, like a photograph, it is of a single moment in time.

What I'm calling "event memory" is the memory of a process or series of events. Not just an image (however detailed the image might be) or a brief few words someone said, but the event itself, including context. For me, The earliest such thing I can definitely date is a trip my family made to Ocean City, MD, in the summer of 1963, when I was 6 and a half. I have a lot of other memories from that trip that I can piece together into a coherent, if incomplete, memory of the entire event.

Anyway, I'm a bit dubious - no offense intended - of claims of elaborate memories of entire events at the age of 2 or 3. At that age, we don't even have the worldly. context to process most events outside our home. I think it's easy to take a snapshot memory and later knowledge of (or photographs of) the event and piece them into a not-quite-false but not-quite-true elaborate memory.

I think we all have lots of memories like this, even from much later in life. We can't remember everything we've ever seen or done, so when we call up a memory of an event, we fill in the blanks with assumptions or (intentionally or otherwise) imagination.

I

Human memory is actually a mess and horribly unreliable. Tons of it, even recent occurrences, have details that your brain filled in with things that never actually happened or happened differently from what you recall. I agree with R74. For example, the person above who claimed to, at the age of 3, remember the announcement on tv of Martin Luther King being shot. That elaborate context and the worldly knowledge it would require to allow you to knit all that information together into a coherent memory makes it impossible that you remember it. You could have been told about it in a "Remember when you were little and Martin Luther King was shot. You were sitting right there in front of the tv. I remember it like it was yesterday." way by your parents or whomever was there. Or, it could be something you saw someone else experience later in your life and incorporated into your own life story. Humans have terrible memories.

Yes r74 & r75. You guys really said what I have wanted to do since this thread started. I have trouble recalling and reiterating what happened last week, let alone what happened in 1967. I think that we only remember things as well as the last time we remembered them. You know?

My earliest memories are from when I was about 4 or 5 years old, but everything that happened before I was 10 is kind of blurry, with few details.

As a teenager and young adult, I seemed to have a very good (above average) biographical memory, would often remember exact dates of events.

But I'm in my early 30s now and already notice a decline.

Who was the creep who sabotaged my thread with all his freaky "theories"?

Please continue...and ignore him while you do so.

I have plenty of memories from before I was 10 but they are not very detailed.

I remember my dad teaching me how to swim, playing musical chairs in preschool, playing with my dog and it biting me when I got too aggressive, my dog peeing on the same spot on the carpet, and other stuff. I even remember names and faces of people who were in my class, and random conversations I used to have. Looking back, a lot of these memories seem so inconsequential which makes me wonder why I still remember those and not stuff that was more important.

I'm 66 years old and I have memories dating back to my crib years. Such as waiting anxiously for my bottle to be brought to me, and standing up in the crib screaming to be taken out in the morning.

R82 That's funny you mention that because although I have lots of memories from an early age, most of them are not, or no longer, associated with any feelings or emotions which makes me wonder why I still remember them. In contrast, other memories of events which seemed trivial at the time seemed to take on more of a significance as I get older.

I have trouble rememdering where I'm logged into, thanks for asking, OP!

[quote]I'm 66 years old and I have memories dating back to my crib years. Such as waiting anxiously for my bottle to be brought to me, and standing up in the crib screaming to be taken out in the morning

So, r82, what I'm hearing is that nothing much changed for you?

I remember playing in a sandbox and on the front porch of our old house when I was 2-years old. I also have VERY vivid memories of Halloween that same year. (Must be gay .. lol!) I also have memories of when we moved to a new house, still age 2.

R85 No R82 but I sometimes wonder if holding onto memories is a symptom of not making enough new ones.

Not ^^^