I cannot remember what I did last week but I can remember vividly some events of my very early years.

Many memories include when I was under the age of 5.

The WEIRDEST AND UNEXPLAINABLE OF ALL, is that I remember being a baby in a pram in a yard at my grandmother's house. I was crying (because I was damp!), my mother was hanging out the washing, and I remember crying louder to get her attention. It is so vivid that I could draw a sketch of the yard, which had an old building with wooden doors on it, position of doorways, the gates leading into the yard etc etc. (I would not have gone to this house after the age of about 5).

I know this sounds really silly and you'll think I'm nuts, and it probably can't be, but I wonder if anyone else has similar experiences??? - Probably not!

You probably can. It is generally thought that we don't have memories from before the age of three. However I have quite clear and distinct memories from a house my family moved out when I had just turned 2, and we've never been back there.

I have many memories of around the ages of three and four but to have memories of being a baby in a pram seems ridiculous, and probably is - it's a bit spooky!

I had encephalitus in 1995 - in my recovery I found I had a fantastic memory (long term) as regards my childhood but really struggled with short term memory!! It was really bad...I had psychometric analysis for months and cleaned out every cupboard and storage space in the house time after time just to remember what was there!!

I also ended up with an OCD regarding my daily routine..I had to start keeping a diary as my Hubby would come home from work and I couldn't remember what I had done during the day!!
That became a REAL habit to overcome...but that is another story!!

:rolleyes:

I have scenes in my head form being 3 or 4 years old.

I remember my mum laying a coal fire, and that would have been before I was 5 as we had a gas fire installed when I was that age. I also remember my father working away form home, which he did briefy when I was 3 or 4.

I also vaguely remember my grandfather, who died when I was 4 or 5, and remember him being laid out when he died in the bedroom that eventually became my parent's room.

Joe

I can also remember when I used to live at my other grandmother's with my parents at Shiregreen (I would have been no more than four), being chased by a goat in the field at the back of the house and I recall my grandma used to look after me while mum worked and she used to take me to a shop called GILLOTTS and buy me sweets and a toy. Can anybody confirm a shop called GILLOTTS at Shiregreen (over 47 years ago!)??

I have only one memory like this - being in a navy blue pram, outside the corner shop near our house. Then being wheeled through the park to the village nearby.
My earliest memory.

My next earliest memory would be years later.

Strange.

Yeah, I have a very good photographic memory and can remeber events dating back to 1992ish - I would have been 4. And modern scenes - 1999 to date, I can remeber very quickly.

I can remember being in dad's Metro in 1993, christmas' going back to 1995, and all sorts of things.

:D

Originally posted by amhudson119
Yeah, I have a very good photographic memory and can remeber events dating back to 1992ish - I would have been 4. And modern scenes - 1999 to date, I can remeber very quickly.

I can remember being in dad's Metro in 1993, christmas' going back to 1995, and all sorts of things.

:D

I'm glad I'm not the only one - it gives me a very weird feeling - i sometimes think i must be imagining it, but the surroundings are so vivid in my mind.

I can remember being pushed around Chapeltown in a pram but god knows how old I was. I think I remember thinking how great it was that my mum was pushing me round and everyone else had to walk :D Ahh, HAPPY DAYS lol. If I ask her to push me round now - I wonder what she'd say???

Yep. I remember telling my mum about looking up at some big light windows and it being rather fuzzy. She replied that she used to put me in a baby bouncer in front of the living room windows. I remember the net curtains blowing in the breeze. Fuzzy cos of a baby's eyesight i guess. We left that place when i was six months old.
I reckon i also remember my birth. Thats another story though. Don't reckon i ever got over it!

Originally posted by ferret
I reckon i also remember my birth. Thats another story though. Don't reckon i ever got over it!

That is possibly the most traumatising thing that I can imagine!!!

I thought it was weird to have really early memories, until I met my partner who has memories from when she was six months old.

I have many memories from before I was five. Such as being in a blue baby carrier on my dads back, whilst we were walking through the woods along a wide track. I was pulling his hair to get his attention because something was wrong.

Although it may be rare, some people just seem to have very good long term memories.

It doesn't sound at all weird to me teeb. My first memory is of being in my pram & getting very frustrated at not being able to sit up. I was reaching out for the line of white & blue lambs I had stretched across the pram. I remember too somehow 'knowing' that eventually I'd be big enough to manage it.

Years later I was discussing childhood memories with my mum & I mentioned the lambs. She said I did have a string of them on the pram but they were removed by the time my sister was born (I was 20 months by that point).

Months later, when I was helping her tidy her (very cluttered) loft I found one of the white lambs - I recognised it instantly.

People have come up with explanations as to why I might *think* I remember all that & they might be right but the memory of the frustration of not being able to sit up & the calm feeling of knowing that one day I'd manage it is too real for me to think it's something I've inadvertently 'created'. Recognising one of the lambs from the pram makes me feel sure it's a 'real' memory.

Wow. I often think I can remember really early incidents from my childhood but then realise that it's more likely that I've seen a photograph since and only think I can remember it.

:(

I remember being about 3 or 4 and playing in the garden. One day, I got paraniod when playing at the bottom of the garden and legged it up to the house, thinking Spiderman was chasing me. Freak boy!

There's a concept called infantile amnesia. In brief, it suggests that we can't have memories from before the age of 2 because the neural connections in our brains change so much in the early years that the memories simply don't exist. We have more neurons in our brain when we're born than at any time in our lives. It's thought that so many of these neurons die in the first few years (through neuronal pruning) tht any memories formed in the early years are obliterated by the process.

Of course, there are exceptions, but the memory of a photograph is the most likely explanation for really early memories.

I have a theory about earliest memories after a long conversation with my mum about mine and my siblings earliest memories.

They all seem to be attached to a traumatic experience. Mine was of the pictures on the wall in a flat we moved out of when I was 2, but after much discussion we figured out why I remembered them.

I remembered them on the wrong wall.

I was a devil to get to sleep as a baby, and my dad used to drive me round the neighbourhood in the van to get me to sleep. I was being carried up the stairs over his shoulder and he believed I was a sleep. I opened my eyes and wasn't where I expected to be - but saw the pictures.

Perhaps this is why Draggletail remembers his pram ride to the park? Was he expecting to be taken home?

And Twiglet remembers a house that the family never returned to after moving out - very traumatic for a toddler

I wonder why Joe remembers his mum laying the fire? Perahaps the damp coal spat and made him jump?

And teeb being chased by a goat?

None of the memories I've read on this thread are actually happy ones ;)

One explanation is the idea that memory works on 'recall'. Traumatic events are the ones that are most difficult to understand and resolve for ourselves, hence the repeated 'recall' that would fix an event in the mind

Originally posted by Herbaliser
Of course, there are exceptions, but the memory of a photograph is the most likely explanation for really early memories.
My brother's earliest memory is of a taxi ride to hospital with my gran. He was going to see my/his mum and my/his new brother. He had never been in a taxi before, and there are no photos of this event ;)

Originally posted by Strix
and there are no photos of this event ;)

..that still exist... ;)

Originally posted by Strix


None of the memories I've read on this thread are actually happy ones ;)

One explanation is the idea that memory works on 'recall'. Traumatic events are the ones that are most difficult to understand and resolve for ourselves, hence the repeated 'recall' that would fix an event in the mind

You speak much sense :)

The more traumatic the memory, the stronger the neural connections, the more chance the memory has of surviving post-natal pruning? Or something like that!

Originally posted by ferret
I reckon i also remember my birth. Thats another story though. Don't reckon i ever got over it!

I do too, but I didn't want to go so far and admit this as people will think I'm looney. It;s refreshing to know that I'm not the only one though.

As for photographs, there have never been any photographs at either addresses.

my childhood was a real happy one and i have no bad memories (apart from being chased by the goat!!).

Originally posted by Herbaliser
..that still exist... ;)
None were ever taken :suspect:

Everybody was a bit too preoccupied with getting to the hospital to be taking snaps

Originally posted by teeb
my childhood was a real happy one and i have no bad memories

My theory isn't 'bad memories', but 'traumatic experiences'.

It took a very long and detailed conversation with my mum for me to unravel the mystery of those pictures being my first memory. I had dissassociated them from the memory of waking up 'lost' in my dad's arms many years before, and it was only when I mentioned the location of them, she was able to point out they had never hung there.

It wasn't a 'bad memory', but an incident that gave a very small child a moment of insecurity - enough to stick in the memory ;)

Originally posted by Strix
My theory isn't 'bad memories', but 'traumatic experiences'.

It took a very long and detailed conversation with my mum for me to unravel the mystery of those pictures being my first memory. I had dissassociated them from the memory of waking up 'lost' in my dad's arms many years before, and it was only when I mentioned the location of them, she was able to point out they had never hung there.

It wasn't a 'bad memory', but an incident that gave a very small child a moment of insecurity - enough to stick in the memory ;)

I can remember lots of bad experiences as a kid. I lived in Scotland at the age of two and I can remember the dog in the next flat popping my green and yellow ball, and the electricity going off whilst the babysitter was looking after us. :( My earliest recollection was me laying in my pram and looking up at my older brother who was sitting in the pram with me. He was probably squashing my legs. :D

Originally posted by Strix
None were ever taken... :suspect:



...that you know of...:D

with age your short term memory decreases and your long term memory inproves.
it is commonplace for oaps to remember childhood events that are crystal clear although for most of their lives they could not have repeated the memory if they had tried.

short term memory loss & long term memory improvement at a young age can also allegedly be an early indicator to Alzheimers.

Originally posted by willman
with age your short term memory decreases and your long term memory inproves.


Isn't it more that LTM doesn't deteriorate as much as STM rather than actually improving with age?

I know I can remember from before I was 3 because I remember things that happened before the War and I was 3 when the War started.
Eating bananas sitting in a high chair and going the Fair and eating pink cottonwool which I found out years later was candyfloss. Going to see Father Christmas at a local store.

All theses things (including bananas) were stopped for yrs both during the War and after it.
hazel

This is fascinating stuff, though I'm sure child psychologists can explain it. It seems most of us, myself included, have vivid memories about particular events from the first five years of our childhood yet recall little or nothing of other moments from the same period of our lives.

The furthest back in time, the most vivid, yet strangely, the least important thing I remember is my dad bathing me in a large white-pot kitchen sink; the type standard in 1950s council houses. I can have been no more than three or four-years-old. My dad was singing as he washed me. He sang Sonny Boy by Al Jolsen. I often wonder why I have retained this my earliest memory and yet have no recall of other more traumatic events from later childhood. Like when I was five and pulled a hot chip pan from the cooker hob onto myself or when I was four and kidnapped and buried under rubble by a much older kid from up the 'block'. These later things I know because I have been told them, not because I remember them. Sadly, my relationship with my father became emotionally distant as I grew. I felt that I disappointed him constantly and perhaps that is the reaon I hold on to any intimate memory of him that I can. So, maybe what at first glance seems to be a trivial memory is perhaps the most consequential of all.

Great thread. Thanks.

Originally posted by spartacus
Sadly, my relationship with my father became emotionally distant as I grew. I felt that I disappointed him constantly and perhaps that is the reaon I hold on to any intimate memory of him that I can. So, maybe what at first glance seems to be a trivial memory is perhaps the most consequential of all.

Great point. :)

Originally posted by Herbaliser
...that you know of...:D
Given that I am around fifteen years older than my brothers - I do know

Originally posted by Strix
Given that I am around fifteen years older than my brothers - I do know

Someone could've been hiding in the bushes...

*sheepishly releases clutch on straws*

i know that there are no photos that I have seen of the scene i can vividly remember - my parents are now dead and i have all the photographs. I have just had a thought though - i have an aunt still living, from my father's side - i am going to draw a sketch and I am going to visit my aunt and ask if she has any photos, and if so, compare. If she hasn't got any photos, she will be able to tell me if my sketch is right. - WATCH THIS SPACE!

Originally posted by Herbaliser
Someone could've been hiding in the bushes...

*sheepishly releases clutch on straws*

:shocked: Was it you?!! :shocked: ;)

Originally posted by teeb
I have many memories of around the ages of three and four but to have memories of being a baby in a pram seems ridiculous, and probably is - it's a bit spooky!

I don't think it's riduculous or spooky. I have memories of somehow managing to climb up the rails of my cot, teetering on the edge then falling onto my Mum and dads bed which was directly at the side of the cot. I have no other really early memories.

I can recall being held in the arms of a man with a brown beard and glasses at my grandparents. I mentioned this to my mother and grandmother when we were chatting about our earliest memories they said the only person it could have been was the family doctor and it could only have been when I was 11 months old. I still have this vivid impression and can even "feel" the pressure of the way I was being held. Neither of them added any more information to the conversation so I dont even know why this doctor was holding me. Thinking back on my childhood I was a very timid child and terrified of an older cousin with his beard. So it was probably the beard which impacted on me.

I can remember been in the pub last night
Thats a first for me

Interested to read all the memories people have from an age when they were in prams. I have a pram memory where I am sitting in my pram outside a cake shop near to Holme Lane corner in Hillsborough (Styan's?) Am not really sure how I know this, but I am certain it was my gandmother who had taken me there. The clearest memory of this is that she had bought some teacakes which were in a paper bag in the top of the pram and I started picking the currants out of them - don't remember her being especially cross about it, but she must have stopped me doing it.

Going even further back in time, has anyone heard of something called inherited memory? I am sure I have an example of this, as for years I've travelled through Ashbourne (in Derbyshire) on a fairly regular basis, sometimes stopping there, and have always felt very at home there - much as I do in Sheffield, in fact. However, the difference was that I had no connection with Ashbourne at all and my husband used to think my liking for it was a bit strange - as he said, quite a nice town but nothing special. Then I got interested in family history and discovered that my great great grandfather had moved to Sheffield from Derbyshire, as had several of his brothers, but they had been born and grown up on a farm near Ashbourne, so it would have been their local town. So had I inherited memories of Ashbourne from my ancestors? I have read in family history magazines that stories like this are fairly common. My husband, incidentally, seems to have a great attachment to Worcestershire, for no reason that we know, so I really should get started on his family history and see if I can find a connection

Originally posted by Strix


One explanation is the idea that memory works on 'recall'. Traumatic events are the ones that are most difficult to understand and resolve for ourselves, hence the repeated 'recall' that would fix an event in the mind

I agree, one of my earliest memories is from when I was about 2 and a half and we had gone to the fair at Southsea for the first time, I remember being so entranced by the ferris wheel and the roller coaster against a bright blue sky that I fell over the kerb. I bit my tongue really badly and cut my chin, after that can remember having to drink through a straw the next day.

Am sure that this is a real memory but maybe I just remember being told about it:confused:

For anyone who is intrigued by the idea of childhood memories and their accuracy you may like a film that has been out recently on dvd and is called Final Cut, it stars Robin Williams, is quite dark at some points but since watching, it has been stuck in my head.

I have lots of very early memories (but yesterday is a bit of a blurr)...

The ealiest memory that I can actually date, is when my brother was born at home. I was 18 months old, I remember just a snapshot of my paternal grandmother coming into the bedroom I shared with my older sister and told us we had a baby brother. My sister got hold of my hand and we went to go to my mothers room. It was a strange house layout so we had to go down one step and then turn and up another ... my sister was ahead of me (but holding my hand) and I stumbled and my gran told my sister to be careful.. We walked into my mothers room and she was in bed. I don't remember seeing my brother.

I've got lots of other memories before the age of three.

I believe our memory is like a gian filing cabinet, everything is there somewhere - just a matter of finding them.

I cant remember anything before I was 4, after an accident involving a wardrobe. I choose to forget quite a lot of my past or at least surpress it.

Joel