My earliest clear memory is that of my 4th birthday, from the moment I woke up to a couple of hours later. I remember my mom telling me to get dressed up so we can go to the daycare and after to school, which I started to do and then thought “what’s school? what’s daycare?” (these I asked) “why are you my mom?” (this one I didn’t for some reason). After being fully dressed, we got into the car and drove to the daycare, I was guided to a room that’s next to the kitchen and told to wait. A couple of minutes later, I notice a light coming from the hallway connecting to the kitchen (“what’s that? why is it coming closer?”), then the nanny, her husband and my mom come out with a cake. I then immediately asked why there was a cake, I was told it’s my birthday, and then I asked what’s a birthday.
So yeah I think kids ask a lot of questions the moment or around when they start to be self-aware.
Kids start asking why when they become self-aware.
I wouldn’t say it’s when they’re self aware. Kids can recognize themselves in a mirror at around 1 year old. They start asking why when they realize other people know things they do not, a concept usually called “theory of mind”.
Some kids ask “why” because they understand the question and want to know more, but that isn’t the only reason.
Asking “why” tends to result in people talking to you. Ever hear a kid ask “why” over and over again without caring about the answer? They may have been asking the question because it provides them with attention. It’s a single word that nearly guarantees an adult will talk to you, and sometimes that’s all a kid really wants.
Just look at the kinds of things babies do, and ask yourself: “Is this the kind of stuff you want to remember as an adult?” Remembering my teenage years is embarrassing enough as it is.
Somehow I think my baby years were probably less embarrassing than my teenage years.
I remember sitting in diapers on the bottom step up a staircase in my mother’s friend’s house. My twin is on the floor, covered with puppies. I hear a sound at the top of the stairs. I turn and look up and see someone in the upstairs darkness. It stands for a moment before going back into the darkness. A door is shut.
And then? You can’t leave us hanging like this
And then nothing, that’s all the memory. I know who the person on the stairs was, if that’s what you mean? It was my mother’s friend’s son from her first marriage. He didn’t want to deal with little children.
2.5 years and I recall going to the hospital to see my sister in maternity ward nursery display and asking which one was her. My dad pointed her out among the babies there but I recall not being sure of which one he meant. I also recall, from the following weeks, my parents treatment of her umbilical cord snippet with rubbing alcohol and asking what they were doing.
After that, my next coherent memory is around the toilet training stage but I don’t know the exact age. I recall feeling the urge to go poop then trying to get to the bathroom but not making it. So I pooped on the floor, then picked it up with a diaper, disposed of it, and with pride told my mom what I had just accomplished.
Why? Because the sky’s so high. You’ll marry in June/July.
I read some random theory on the Internet years ago that said we may well have memories from earlier, but because of how much the brain changes during development they could basically be encoded in a different file format than what the brain at a later stage of development knows how to decode. No idea where I came across that, or if it was supported by any science or was just a shower thought, but interesting to think about.
I remember reading something just the other day that said we form memories in the womb… I’ll be back imma find a source.
Edit: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/recall-in-utero/
https://neurosciencenews.com/fetus-memory-learning-2211/
My guess is that we form memories from around 30 weeks but I don’t think we actually recall that information. Perhaps like how you learned how to walk but you don’t actually remember how you learned. But you obviously remembered how to do it since, ya know, you can walk. Plus we don’t really understand that other people have their own point of view until around 3 so that might have something to do with your initial point. Someone else on this post commented a great video by VSauce about that which I highly recommend.
Oh, I didn’t mean to intend that we don’t have memories from before that, since we very clearly do since we know who our parents/family are, the language we speak, etc. I meant that we can’t actively recollect those memories, given a few exceptions.
My earliest memory is from when I was about 2 years old and I was driving in the backseat. Nothing too exciting or noteworthy really.
my earliest memory is from 2 days ago
My earliest memories were breast feeding, I wasn’t yet walking, and based on all the things happening around me the people, the birthday cake, etc, my mother and grandmother both confirmed I was only 2 months old. It was my great grandmother’s birthday, that was in August 1981. I still have photographic memories of my entire childhood, phone numbers, cars, people, news on the TV, everything. But that’s just me.
Do you have photographic memory of stuff today? idk how to phrase the question lol
