I was two years old and there I was in a sterile and completely alien environment. My mother was not allowed to spend the night with me. So I was left alone without my family for the first time in my life. I was going to have surgery to repair a hernia, a thing I was born with.
That’s my first memory, even if the details are a little fuzzy.
After that point in time I can remember with increasing accuracy where we lived, neighborhood kids and experiences with my family. I remember the night that my sister was born when I was 3, standing up in the back seat of the car as dad drove to the hospital. (Actually there was no back seat, just an empty area were the seat should have been…long story!) Just snapshots in the earliest days, but there they are written in my brain all the same.
Anything before that hospital experience is “remembered” only via the recollections of my parents and other adults. The tumble down the stairs I had is documented by the small dent on the top of my head, but I don’t remember the fall. The period we lived in the midst of a shipyard is recorded in photos, but I really don’t recall any of that experience.
It seems that in our childhood we drop a lot of memories. Most people can’t remember anything that happened to them earlier than 2-3 years of age. We suffered childhood amnesia.
Link
By the time children are two years old, they are able to answer questions about recent events although they often need careful prompting to retrieve memories. Over the next four or five years, children become better at recalling and describing important events in their lives. By the age of seven or eight, most children have well-developed autobiographical memories with the same rate of normal forgetting seen in adults.
When questioned about earlier memories however, children are rarely able to recall memories of events that happened earlier than age three or four and these early memories become even harder to access as they grow older. Despite decades of research, understanding why this childhood amnesia happens remains a mystery.
Once we hit about eleven, what’s there from early childhood is more or less baked in the cake for the rest of our lives. Our little minds are like sieves. As we develop we are able to lock down our memories better.
In the study by Bauer and Larkina, seven-year-old children needed considerable prompting to describe events that happened to them while older children and adults provide richer, more verbally complete, narratives with little need for extra prompting. Since narrative retelling allows us to "rehearse" important memories and retain them longer, memories that are not rehearsed become inaccessible over time and can be quickly forgotten as a result.
As children grow and mature, autobiographical memory matures as well. By the age of eleven, autobiographical memory shows the same level of development seen in adults. Prior to that time however, forgetting appears to be much faster than in adults which may be due to memories failing to consolidate which makes them more vulnerable to memory loss. As Bauer and Larkina point out in concluding their study, "Accelerated forgetting throughout childhood results in an ever-shrinking pool of memories from early in life. The resulting distribution of memories reveals childhood amnesia in the making."
I left the hospital with a 2-3 inch zippered incision. It’s gone now, but it persisted for decades as a little souvenir. Could that have reinforced that experience? Could the dreams and nightmares I had of the ordeal created a slightly different reality than what actually occurred? I can remember the anesthetic mask being placed over my face. I can still see the tank.
What are your earliest memories?
Netroots Nation 2018
RSVPS
1. Neeta Lind, organizer (kosmail her to connect)
2. Bill in Portland Maine
3. Common Sense Mainer
4. Meteor Blades
5. vicki
6. markm667
7. belinda ridgewood
8. paradise50
9. smileycreek
10. side pocket
11. Mrs. side pocket
12. annrose
13. Spedwybabs
14. ericlewis0
15. shanikka
16. Crashing Vor
17. cv lurking gf
18. brillig
19. mik,
20. K1 (aka thatkid)
21. K2
22. loggersbrat
23. Richard Cranium
24. Jeff Singer
25. BeninSC
26. KathyinSC
27. mommyof3
28. Chris Reeves
29. DrLori
30. Will Johnson
31. Carolyn Fiddler
32. Irna Landrum
33. Drew Linzer
34. Jen Hayden
35. peregrine kate
36. Michael Langenmayr
37. Paul Hogarth
38. Rachel Colyer
39. Wagatwe Wanjuki
40. Kelly Macias
41. ramara
42. Will Rockafellow
43. Jessica Sutherland
44. Rory Morris
45. Laura Clawson
46. Arjun Jaikumar
47. Rachel Sinderbrand
48. Wes Williamson
49. Kimm Lett
50. Huiying Chan
51. Joan McCarter
52. Candelaria Vargas
53. Stephen Wolf
54. Gabe Ortiz
55. Steven Howard
56. Jonaya Leek
57. Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza
58. chigh
59. chigh2
60. Mark E. Anderson
61. Marian Piekarczyk
62. gmats
63. Vic Uzumeri aka grapes
64. Joanne Savard
65. DrLori
66. texasmom
67. texasdad
68. Mike Johnson
69. Maya Gold
70. Jon Sitzman
71. watercarrier4diogenes
72. Wee Mama
73. Tall Papa
74. David Nir
75. Kaili Joy Gray
76. Daniel Donner
77.
MAYBEES :
|