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    Childhood memories

    How persistent - and how reliable - are these, really? At what stage do they become "concrete" in our minds as memories that will persist into adulthood?

    It's fascinated, me, this, since my own children have been growing up.

    I have some very concrete memories of things that happened to me when I was 5 or 6 years old, but talking to my parents in the years since (I'm now 37), it's apparent that they were, if at all remembered by my Mum or Dad, fairly trivial incidents in their lives. Like the time I woke up at about 9.30pm one Christmas Eve (having gone to sleep at about 8.00) and wandered downstairs in tears (thinking it was already morning) declaring that Santa hadn't been, only to be reassured that it wasn't even morning yet. And there was another time when I remember getting really upset that I wasn't going to be allowed to go the cinema with my Mum and Dad and Grandparents to see a film in the evening (but would be left to be babysat with my Uncle), as (as I can kind of see why now, in retrospect) they were going to see "Jaws", which must have come out in the UK in 1977, when I was 4 or 5.

    I can remember what were clearly traumatic events when I was 5, or 6, like they were yesterday, yet I doubt my parents give then a second thought unless prompted. Now I'm the one causing what might be tragic moments of enormous grief to my own girls, because I haven't let one of them finish an ice cream or whatever before going to bed, or something.

    I wonder if, in thirty years' time, they'll still remember the time I didn't let them stay up to watch the end of Ant and Bloody Dec, or something like that?

    #2
    Childhood memories

    I have loads of pretty clear memories. The earliest is from when I was nine months old. Evidently I was rather please that I could stand. My baby bed was situated in a corner, with a window sill on one side, a a book shelf on the head-end. I was pulling out books, and my mother gently chided me. So I teased her, pretending I was taking off books. My mother was laughing and I was laughing and sunshine came streaming through the window, and my mother got her camera and took photos.

    The memory of all that is still very clear, but I'm sure they are reinforced by the photos which I still have.

    The next earliest memory is before I was 2, playing in my great-uncle's garden with his neighbour's son. There are no photos, and I don't know when exactly it was. But it was ht, so it must have been summer. My great-uncle died in April 1968, a couple of weeks after my second birthday. So I guess I must have been younger a year and a half. It's my only memory of the great-uncle.

    My son also remembers loads of things from when he was very small. Many of the memories are certainly jogged by the many photos we took. Some I remember as well, others he describes with clarity even though there were no photos or videos. For example, he remembers being bathed on top of a commode and his mother engaging in some baby talk. He would have been younger than a year at the time.

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      #3
      Childhood memories

      I can remember a holiday I took with my parents to Spain, and stayed in a house in which the kitchen was upstairs and the bedrooms downstairs (that's the reason I remember it). I was six months old at the time - I always assumed I'd been about 2 or 3 at least until I told my mum about it one day and she expressed surprise I could remember it.

      I have some dim memories of life in Gloucester, and we moved away just before I turned 3, but I can't remember either of my younger brothers being born (which is just as well because if it's traumatic incidents you want, one of them died aged 4 days) - both of whom were born before we left Gloucester.

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        #4
        Childhood memories

        Is it possible to be "reminded of childhood memories", as Guns 'n Roses would have us believe, or is that redundant?

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