Childhood Memories

Dick Rimmington

it's one of these evenings on which i'm mindlessly browsing the web and end up in the most random places with no idea how i got there.
so today i ended up on the topic of childhood memories and from what i have read it seems that most people do not have any memories at all from before the age of 3, that most people only have 2-3 memories from before age 7 and for some the earliest one is before the age of 10 :eek:

now i know without a doubt that my earliest memory is from before the age of 3 and i have a ton of memories from before age 7 so i was really surprised to read that and am wondering about how accurate it is.

so for curiosity sake, whats the earliest you can remember and how many memories from below age 7 have you got?

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Most childhood memories are constructed memories built from stories heard, photos, etc. rather than actual remembering of events.

branie2

Most of my early occur around from the age of 3

Dick Rimmington

i agree that its very easy to confuse imagination with memories, its a tricky one, the lines get blurred easily.
there are some 'memories' which i would not be 100% sure are genuine but then there are just as many that i can vividly remember right down to how i felt and what my thought process was.

SafeSurfer

White dog poo

branie2

my most vivid early memory is getting a cowboy suit and hat and rifle for Christmas when I was three

andekwarhola

Always surprised - and a little sceptical - when people claim they have clear, genuine memories from as early as 3-4 years old.

Pac1Man

I have a memory as a 1 year old. It's more of an image now rather than a moving event.

Mrcaramelchoc

Id say about 5 or 6.i can remember things that happened at school.

Pherekydes

My earliest memory with a definite date is of Kennedy's visit in June '63, so I'm going with yrs.

Dick Rimmington

andekwarhola wrote: »

Always surprised - and a little sceptical - when people claim they have clear, genuine memories from as early as 3-4 years old.

its totally different for me, i just presume people have memories starting at 3-4 years old

i can remember moving house at 4 years old, the first time i met our cat, a specific day at the flea market picking out a toy i still own, getting caught cheating in a game in first year of kindergarten and loads more.

i know i will be over it tomorrow but tonight im very intrigued by it

Four Phucs Ache

I remember rubbing the static off the telly with my face.Deffo 3

diomed

I can remember details from my first day at school age 4 and 2 months. One of the boys fought everyone and his mother had to come and bring him home (I remember his surname).
And I can remember stuff before that.

Allinall

Born in '62 and can clearly remember my aunt bringing me up Nelson's Pillar.

There was a blackboard at the bottom with 3d entrance.

I could see the dome on Rathmines church.

My aunt was knackered by the time we got to the top, but she lived to the ripe age of 97.

I should have been more grateful as a three year old.

I remember my mum singing a song to me while I sat on the potty and all the praise I got for doing the biz, and my father applauding me as if I'd just split the atom, at being told how fabulous I was at the potty stuff.

I remember sitting on the counter in my grandmothers scullery waiting to sit in the big Belfast sink for a bath, so I must have been pretty small then too.

I very clearly remember my dad throwing me into the air and that moment of terrifying thrill when I was out of hold.

I'd hate to think none of these are really true and just constructed from fragments of information, they feel so dear and real to me.

looksee

I have one memory that seems very clear, but it is probably reconstructed - my mother insisted that it was. I was having some sort of radiation treatment on my face as a baby, under 1, and my mother was sitting on a chair with me on her lap (this was late 1940s so not as improbable as it sounds). It was a biggish tiled room with just a piece of equipment in the middle of it and us on the chair a little distance away - which is the best clue that it was reconstructed as surely the machine would have been closer?

A more definite memory was being in an old fashioned rattly kind of pushchair/buggy and feeling the vibration of the road through the handle when I leaned against it. My sister is 2 years younger than me and she was not there, so I can't have been much more than 18 months.

368100

My earliest memory is of being at home with my mam and my auntie visiting. My little sister was in a cot as a baby and this was before i started school so I must have been 3. It's really just a flash of memory but still fairly vivid.

Even more vivid is my first day at school, went when I was 4. Can remember getting ready that morning, leaving the house and going into the classroom, playing with lego and who I was playing with.

thesandeman

I can remember quite a few things that happened to me when very young. We moved house when I was four and all the memories are from the old house so I must have been only 2-3.
I can vividly remember crawling up the side of my cot to look at my mother hanging clothes outside and landing head first on a stone floor. Must have less than two then.
Funnily enough all the things I remember were bad or dangerous.

ChikiChiki

A member of a certain group putting his hand over our garden wall and stealing my blue tractor right on front of me when i was about 3/4. Devastated is not the word.Thats the one thats stick with me!

thesandeman

ChikiChiki wrote: »

A member of a certain group putting his hand over our garden wall and stealing my blue tractor right on front of me when i was about 3/4. Devastated is not the word.Thats the one thats stick with me!

Was it Bono?

IvyTheTerrible

My earliest memory, I can't have been more than two. I was getting on a bus with my mum and I remember thinking how high the steps were. We used to get a bus from our estate to the town centre, but we moved out the country around my second birthday and never used a bus after that.

JupiterKid

Being spoon fed by my parents, probably about age 2. I remember being told "here comes the airplane."

Our family pet, a golden retriever dog, arriving in a crate at Heuston Station when I was 3. I remember her yelping and clawing at the mesh and I was in a buggy still then.

I have good, distinct, clear memories from about the age of 4/5. Like playschool, before kindergarten, and the song "Video Killed The Radio Star" which was in the charts when I was 4. Also my mum playing ABBA songs on the tape in the car. This would have been around 1979/1980.

My first time at McDonalds when I was about 4.

erica74

One of my earliest memories is being 3 or 4 and sitting on the top deck of a Dublin bus and looking out the window at my sister getting on the bus, holding hands with my dad, when all of a sudden she dropped her ice cream cone, it fell splat onto the path. I remember her face turning from pure joy to heartbreak, we didn't get much as children so that ice cream cone was precious. She came up the stairs, still roaring crying and a few minutes later my dad suddenly appeared with a new ice cream cone for her. That felt like the happiest we had ever been. I remember us sitting up the front of the bus, looking out, eating our cones, sticky hands from the ice cream melting, it was a sunny day, and everytime the bus came to a stop, we'd slide off our seats a bit and start laughing. And my dad looked so happy.
I remember looking through the little round window thing that you could see the bus driver through - anyone else remember that?
We moved to another county when I was 5 so that was when I was 3 or 4.

I have other less pleasant memories from that age but I don't want to post them.

Dick Rimmington

JupiterKid wrote: »

Being spoon fed by my parents, probably about age 2. I remember being told "here comes the airplane."

funny, my first one is of being spoon fed too, sitting in a high chair.
i remember thinking of how incredibly full i was and of how i couldnt eat anymore but felt too guilty not to take another spoonfull as each was 'for' a family member.
you know, "one more for [insert loved ones name here] " and so on :rolleyes:

Mutant z

I can remember falling of a chair when i was about 4 landing awkwardly and fracturing my arm it wasnt a pleasant experience for a young child to go through.

Agricola

Apart from the usual first day of school memory, my earliest is probably aged 4, my granddad holding me upside by the ankles.

RayM

I was 2½ when my sister was born, and have a very clear memory of my dad lifting me up, so I could look at her through a window in the old maternity unit at Loughlinstown Hospital. I can remember a lot of things that would have happened earlier than that, but only vaguely.

I can remember being pushed around in a buggy. On gravelly surfaces, the vibrations would make my ears itch and I'd start crying and drop my soother. I was 28 years old.

Barry Badrinath

My earliest memory is sitting on the beach and a wave hitting and toppling me. Looking back, it felt like I was in a washing machine and going to die.

Im sure it was less dramatic than that but thats my earliest memory.

The Aul Switcharoo

Getting a bin thrown at me in the housing estate where we lived until just after my 4th birthday. We moved out into culchieville when I was 4 so obviously before then. Can still remember it coming at me.

mark_jmc

2 years 11 months, when my brother was born . 'He' gave me a present of Lego

NickNickleby

At some time, I was recalling to my mother about getting our telly installed in our first house. It was actually a half a house, and the door into our part opened around into a large alcove. It was in this alcove that the telly was installed on a big high table. Only one part of that is inaccurate, apparently the table was a TV table, which was small. My mother then told me that it was a momentous day because it was our first telly, and it was also my 2nd birthday that day. When I told her the details she was shocked at how accurate my recollections were. I can still vaguely remember it, but I can no longer 'picture' it in my mind with the detail I could years ago. I'm 62 now. Just remembered, the telly was moved to a separate part of the room subsequently, because I can remember sitting in a different part of the room watching Andy Pandy with my mam and brother and sister, and I wasn't yet in school. Oh, and Torchy, and Bill and Ben (weeeeeeed!"). And the puppet family on a farm -Dobbin was the horse.

Capt'n Midnight

This is uncanny, exactly how I remember it.

Remember when you were six? You and your brother snuck into an empty building through a basement window. You were going to play doctor. He showed you his, but when it got to be your turn you chickened and ran; you remember that? You ever tell anybody that? Your mother, Tyrell, anybody? Remember the spider that lived outside your window? Orange body, green legs. Watched her build a web all summer, then one day there's a big egg in it. The egg hatched... ...and a hundred baby spiders came out... and they ate her.