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> You might think you remember taking a trip to Disneyland when you were 18 months old, or that time you had chickenpox when you were 2—but you almost certainly
by tivert 3y ago
> You might think you remember taking a trip to Disneyland when you were 18 months old, or that time you had chickenpox when you were 2—but you almost certainly don’t. However real they may seem, your earliest treasured memories were probably implanted by seeing photos or hearing your parents’ stories about waiting in line for the spinning teacups. Recalling those manufactured memories again and again consolidated them in your brain, making them as vivid as your last summer vacation.
But not always. I have a handful of memories from before I was 2 and a half, and they're real. I know because they're mainly of mundane stuff that would be unremarkable to adults but would have been much more significant to a small child (e.g. apartment maintenance man coming to fix an appliance). No one would tell a kid stories of that stuff.
I also know they're from before 2.5 because that's when we moved from an apartment to a house, and they were clearly from a different home. I think that's probably why I remember them today: they were obviously very early, so I valued them even as a very young child an rehearsed them. A few of them got distorted and mixed with stuff from a little later (e.g one of being outside my old apartment, being shown something my parents confirmed was there, but the setting was transmogrified with features of an apartment I was regularly driven by as a 3+ year old).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- doctorpangloss 3y ago> mundane stuff that would be unremarkable to adults but would have been much more significant to a small child (e.g. apartment maintenance man coming to fix an appliance). No one would tell a kid stories of that stuff. While I believe you, I rehearse stories with my 2 year old about mundane things that happened yesterday, last week, last month to him a few times a day. That said I am pretty confident the article is correct both from my personal experience and what I’ve read as a layperson regarding child development. There’s a lot of research about biographical stories being a very American cultural phenomenon. My parents never did this with me, and I have maybe 1/10th-1/100th of the memories of childhood compare to an average American with no immigrant parents.
- tivert 3y ago> While I believe you, I rehearse stories with my 2 year old about mundane things that happened yesterday, last week, last month to him a few times a day. Not my memory. The one I'm specifically referring too is a visual memory of a very specific cleanup activity I don't think my parents even saw or would talk about. It's certainly not something they would have talked about later.
- catlikesshrimp 3y agoI have memories from when I was 3. They are blurry and scarce of details, but I know they are mine and untainted because nobody else remembered those episodes. They could confirm details they hadn't thought of until then. The same happens with more recent memories of what happened 10 or even 20 years later: not everybody remembers when I recall a shared experience, but some do. So, at least I know my brain isn't fabricating tales. What I can't understand is that most of those memories aren't traumatic. Not even of important events e.g. asking my very young mother how to tell apart left sock from right sock ;(