What is your earlest memory as a child and how old were you?

so maybe im not nuts after all. my twin brother thinks i am after i told him.

i would have been 1-1.5 years old. I remember sitting in an orange baby walker with wheels on it sliding across the pine timber flooring in the formal dining room at my parents house where they still live,

 

The earliest memory for me is probably when I was almost three. My paternal grandparents had this huge house, and I would go over there every so often to visit. They had a room with toys in it just for me (I'm still the only grandchild), and within that room there was one of those Little Tikes ride on cars — it was blue with red trim, black wheels and a black steering wheel. I would spend hours riding it through their kitchen. The reason being for the kitchen was 1.) it wasn't carpeted like the rest of the house, and 2.) they had a foyer-type room where the pantry was, which connected to the bedroom hallways and the main kitchen. I'd go around in circles until I was dizzy.

To be young again...

 

I was in the back of the family station wagon, waiting at the hospital for my mom to bring out my little brother. I was three. I think I remember liking my overalls when I was 2, but the hospital was the first clear memory.

I miss those overalls

 

I've got some memory of sitting in a pram, noticing that mother was halting her shopping trip to have a chat on the pavement with some woman. At the time, I didn't think "Shopping trip", I was just in the world, not knowing what was going on, and not being a bit bothered about that fact. I was about four then. These days, I am different: I have matured and my baseline state is of not knowing what's going on, and being a bit bothered about that fact.

 

I learned in my class last night that when we recall our earliest memories, they can be altered to what we have experienced in future moments of time. When I think back to those scary hammers and screw drivers with faces, they seem so real and I can see them in my mind so clearly. But it is the way I recalled the memory that makes them so real.

Repression is pretty intense; when the memory comes back in bits and pieces.
Then possibly reliving the whole experience at once and not understanding what you are actually reliving.

 

talking to the wallpaper that promised neatly spaced dwellings in between the spray of verdant clumps. - age 1ish?
age two-dark room - one window - lots of dust particles lit while hugging a dog.
age three - too many to list but i loved the old linoleum black & white patterns
and dad taking me along every time to rescue my cat Ruffy from the air force base cat-catchers.
--- merged: Nov 13, 2012 at 9:27 PM ---
love this thread.

 

It is virtually certain that MANY early childhood memories are not actual memories of the event itself, but memories manufactured from descriptions of the event by adults heard later in life. I have a few memories that seem to be from when I was younger than 6, but when examined turned out to have some very anachronistic details that made it obvious I had made them up at a later time.

I "remember" the trip to visit some relatives at about 4 years of age, but in a car that wasn't around until I was 7, and with a pet dog that we didn't have at the time. But dammit, I DO remember that vividly; unfortunately it just never happened that way. I always assumed that this was true of other people's early childhood memories, and it took a lot of convincing by my professors that this was not the case, that most people DO remember things before 6. Then we went into the reasons why I can't and the general consensus is I'm damaged. Quelle surprise!!!

 

It was January 28, 1986 and I was 2 years, 24 days old. I was with my friend Douglas in the playroom at his house and we were playing with our Space Shuttle toys. Mine had an orange tank and his had a white one; I didn't know why they were different colors then, but I do now.

Our mothers were in the TV room at their house and called us in to watch with them. There was a Space Shuttle launch on TV and we were excited about it.

We watched the shuttle launch, then something happened. I didn't know what happened but everyone suddenly got quiet. My mom and Douglas' mom were trying not to say anything but we could tell by looking at them that something was wrong. The man on TV didn't say much, but he didn't sound happy anymore. They tried to distract us and moved us out of the room. I was too young to understand what I saw.

 

Sheesh. I was pregnant with my first daughter when that happened.
I don't believe that any people were born in 1984. It's impossible.

 

That would be called a Flashbulb memory, pretty interesting with that type of memory, more detailed and pretty much unforgettable.

Flashbulb memory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I was three or so. We lived on the 3rd or 4th floor of an apartment building in Providence, RI. There was a playground outside behind the building. My mother had brought me down there and for some reason, had left me there. I remember looking around for her and not seeing her, heading for the entrance to our building. I didn't remember what floor we lived in so I knocked on the door at the top of each landing. I remember I was crying and no one who answered the door seemed to know who I was. Instead of helping me find my mother, the residents of the apartments on the 1st two floors simply closed the door. At some point my mother headed back down the stairs and found me, or maybe the person on the third floor helped me find her. I don't remember. She doesn't remember the incident but assures me that back then she probably thought I'd be safe on my own for a few minutes.

 

The wallpaper (blue with orange goldfish on) in my first bedroom. I don't know how old I was I just remember what it looked like, but I moved out when I was 2 1/2.

 

Age 4. Alone with my mom in our red Mini Cooper driving on a gravel highway to Maple Lake. (I began talking in short sentences per reports from my parents, at age 7 months and per their reports, 'never shut up'. They kept track of the exact dates because they coincided with the area of our subdivision being finished in 1960--and my mother wrote this stuff down in my baby memories book.)

She put me out of the car at the side of the road in the 10-15 ft. clearing that abutted thick forest and drove off down the road out of sight--because she was sick of listening to me.
What I remember for sure is a feeling. I was really mad. Fuming. And I hoped that an OPP-man (a highway patrolman) would drive up and pick me up and get her in trouble for being so mean.
She reports that she returned in 20 minutes and retrieved me.

The details were filled in by my parents as for example, though I can picture the gravel road, the clearing and the forest, I'd not have been able to say where we were going. The strongest aspect of this incident was that I recall being so angry with her for tossing me out at the side the road in a remote, scary place--I think it may have been the first time I felt that way towards her and that is a strange feeling for a very young child--it so conflicts with the deep love one has.

I did this exercise in grad school and age 4 is the earliest that I can remember anything.

 

I remember seeing my baby sister for the first time through the glass of the hospital nursery. I was a little over two years old. I remember they let me and my mother go into the nursery, and she held me up over the bassinet so I could kiss her on the forehead. I also remember my mother had an IV in her arm and I can vividly recall the smell of the iodine and medical tape.

 

That's exactly what I was told by a coworker who specializes in research on memory when I asked him if it was more likely a real or false memory.

 

Hmmm.... Probably the earliest memory I have, I'm sitting on my mom's lap, next to my dad, at the table, during our Passover seder. I remember the singing, and feeling really happy and safe. The memory itself is...not vague, but...faded, blurry around the edges. Like it's been Instagrammed in my head. And it's disjointed, like seeing several still frames, with a slightly unclear and asynchronous soundtrack behind them. I think I must have been four, though I could've been three.

I have pretty early but much more vivid memory of being five, almost six, and being taken to the movies to see "Star Wars," which blew my freaking mindhole.

 

The Kennedy assassination interrupting my cartoons. I was 3.

 

I remember sitting in a highchair eating with a spoon in my left hand.
I could have been two at the time. Either my grandmother or great-grandmother saw me eating with my left hand and came and took the spoon out of my hand and placed it in my right. (heaven forbid we let a right minded child grow up in a left minded world)
Years later I was chopping wood for my grandfather, as he was watching me, he said "Monte Boy are you right or left handed?". I replied right, he then said "then why do you chop wood left handed ".
I can still see the kitchen, but not details, my grandmother, but not which one,and more, but no fine details.

 

My first memory (not exactly sure of the age, but in the 2 or 3 year realm) is of me playing with an indoor wooden structure with lots of spaces that little kids climb on/crawl through, in my Kindergarten back in Germany. I specifically remember me crawling through one of the lower spaces and, while doing so, looking up at the ladder (right above my head) to the upper level. No idea, if there were any thoughts floating around. My entire memory is that single cut and is maybe 5-7 seconds long.

The next chronological memory I can come up with is from when I just started to learn bicycling. I remember two scenes. Think I was 4 or 5 years old at the time.

In the first my father was teaching me how to handle the bike and just taught me how to brake. He then let me roll down a slighlty downhill-built parking lot near our old place. As I rolled down, I got super excited about the wind, but as I got to the mid-point of the lot I started to think "Maybe I should slow down", but my mind blanked on the brakes. So I rolled down, screaming that I forgot how to brake, my father started running after me, and I broke my amazing 10 mph speed by rolling into the backend of a parked car.

Second scene is me biking at a nearby playground a couple weeks later. I was being stupid, so I made very tight circles in shallow sand as quickly as I could. I fell once... light shearing of my right kneecap and right elbow's skin. Got up and went back to making circles. Fell again... some blood protruded now from those two areas. Brushed it off and went back at it. Fell again. This time the skin on both places came right off and I was bleeding a lot more.

So my mother carried me back to our place while I was crying like a bitch, and bandaged me up. I bragged of my wounds to other kindergarteners the next day.

All in all, I was an extremely active kid in my early years and injured myself an innumerable amount of times. Amazingly, I've never broken a bone.