How YOUNG is you very First memory

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I have the most amazing recall going back as far as infancy, sights, smells, bits of conversation...One memory in particular that makes me smile is the day I decided to potty train myself -- I was in my bedroom, must've been early morning, and I was standing by my door, which was closed, and said to myself, "This is ridiculous," and ripped off my diaper. That was that.

Things get fuzzy when I try to remember my teenage years, though. Weird.

I remember when they were potty training me, what a waste since I knew what was what about that, I became livid that my mother would insist on going in with me, but I couldn't go in with my dad. I did not get the entire girls can't be with boys at certain times. I figured since I liked him so much better than her that he should be the one who went in with me. She was not amused.


Hamster, I remember exact clothing they wore. Do you remember that? I definitely remember smells from the time I was in a crib. What I find amazing is that I can think of those things and it will be like I am touching those items or smelling those smells again.

My first memory I can think of was when I was in preschool and looking out the window and seeing my mom drive away. I was about 3 or 4. It could be my first memory, but I don't know for sure.

I don't remember clothing other than my own, but I do remember hairstyles. My mother had an enormous beehive.

Speaking of smells, one of the most vivid scent-memories for me is splashing in my baby pool, and wiping a drop of water from my nose onto my shoulder...The smell of sun on my skin was wonderful.

My earliest memories start at four. I can't recall which comes first - there was one from ballet class, one (two? I want to say one is later, but my mom says the event happened in preschool...I could have sworn it was kindegarden. I'm getting off topic) from preschool, and a few from wandering out in the forest (we used to live in the woods...it was beautiful) - but they're all very vivid.

I remember laying in my crib, I had woken up very early in the morning and I wanted my mom. So I called for her and I remember seeing her enter the room smiling with her arms outstretched to pick me up. Beautiful memory.

I remember being fascinated by the freckles on my arms and staring at two in particular that I still have, they are just faded. My arm/wrist was all chunky with baby fat in this memory.

I remember the Christmas I got sick, and threw up all over my mom while she tried to get me to taste a candy cane. I barely had any hair, so I must have been itty bitty.

I remember going outside with my mom, I must have been about 1 1/2, and she taught me how to blow the feathery seeds off of dandelions. I will never forget that, it was one of my happiest days.

I remember being at the beach with another little red-headed girl about my age. Again, I must have been about 1 1/2.

So many more...

I went through the same thing when I would try to take a bath with my dad. I just didn't understand.

I was a year and a half, I remember Eric Clapton's Layla and that I didn't like it when I listened to it.

About a year and a half to two years old.

I clearly remember being in my pram and finding it too enclosing, I wanted to sit up and see where I was but I couldn't sit up. I also remember a religious emblem (called a miraculous medal) on the hood of the pram that I would reach for and play with (there are no pictures of this and no other way I could know this, I told my mother and she confirmed that I remembered to the age of 1.5 to 2 years). I also remember the texture of the fabric lining of the hood.

Most people’s earliest memories are about 3 to 4 years but people on the spectrum often have memories going back as far as one. I think it is because we are visual thinkers and our memories are in pictures. NT's think in pictures before the age of 3 to 4, but as their language develops, they forget their earliest visual memories and only remember later narrative language based memories.

I have several from an early age, but let me give you some background on my family first.

My mom is from Lewiston, Maine. She dated and later married my dad, who was in the Navy at the time, being stationed at Brunswick Naval Air Station, in Brunswick, Maine. --He is from South Carolina.

I was born 1 month prematurely in Columbia, South Carolina. We spent two years there before we moved to Lewiston, Maine. My parents separated in 1972, and I went to live with my dad in Brewer, Maine.

I remember being in my crib in South Carolina quite a few times. Also, at the time, my dad and mom rented a house across the street from a duck pond. One morning, I woke up earlier than my parents and managed to get out of the house. I was caught by a neighbor going down the embankment to the duckpond and they came and got me. --I found out later that the pond was infested with water moccassins.

Another incident, I remember waking up erlier than my parents, and I got out of my crib and went into the bathroom. I climbed up onto the toilet, and from there to the rim of the sink. I had access to the medicine cabinet, and found a big bottle of aspirin that I managed to eat quite a bit of, and then I found a couple of razor blades from my dad's razor.--I cut my fingers on them. My dad found me, and he used a septic stick on my fingers. I cried because the septic stick hurt worse than getting cut by the razorblades.

Later that day, I had an upset stomach from the aspirin. when we were visiting my grandmother, and I got sick at the table, and she managed to find out that I had gotten into the medicine cabinet. I vaguely remember being taken to the hospital. My memory of the events that followed at the hospital are nonexistant, however, I was told later that I had my stomach pumped.

I was between the ages of 1 and 2 when all of this happened.

I wondered about this myself, and my earlier memories ARE almost all visual. Still, I hate to admit it but I think a lot in english. YEECH! I think that started around 6 or 7 though. I think it had something to do with school. Prior to that, all my thoughts were like abstract or fluent thoughts I have now. ALSO, if I read a foreign language, oddly enough, I think in the same way I did as a YOUNG kid.(I CAN think in other languages, but still read without thinking in any) But reading english, or doing math, it is usually english. 8-(

Still, a LOT of mental therapy and memory methods NTs use center around imagery.

Don't you think there must be more to it?

BTW I think almost everyone remembers almost everything. It seems like the human brain stores everything almost like a computer. With a computer often used stuff may be cached and indexed. Cached and indexed stuff comes up instantaneously. Cached stuff that isn't indexed takes longer. Indexed stuff that isn't cached takes a bit longer. Stuff that is not indexed or cached takes FAR longer, but is always there. And every now and then, somebody may happen to find it.

Steve

I conquer!...

I think I actually remmeber the times I 'forgot' ... it's like I transitioned into a differnt swap file!

From the time I was born to the time I started to walk - I had an entirely indexable set... then I created a new swap file
To the time I first started to talk..
Then to the time I learnt the social language of the environment I live in (English was my second language)
Then when I has to Learn Advance motor skills (sports)
Then when I went to highschool and started learning 'alot'
And again finally when I started drugs, ,I had forgotten everything,, and the map file to the swap files became corupted. (my fat needed a new MBR, I couldn't boot to the OS on the file server -on the odd occasion, while 'high' I was able to take out the hardrive and mount it under my new OS which didn't need to boot the serve, ineffect giiving me total control over accessing the info!)

After being off the drugs, I fugered out how to restore the info on the server and move it over to another OS,,, sadly the way I was storing info on my Fat32 parition and retrieveing it, was different to the Journalling System I had become accustomed to in my teens, and my drug induced states.

Now all the info is on the same partition,,, but I have mvoed it over to a database, and the relationships, and keys are so nested, that it can take too many instructions in order to access deep rooted data. ... I'm am slowly trying to switch over to Mysql, which happens to able to handle more conurrent connections, it's only problem is that it doens't recognise some of the data types which I had natively stored under the Redmond system... so now I can acces the data faster, it's just that some of it is incomprehendable,, without a utility that I haven't had the time to make yet.

Around two. Was in my crib. Sitting up. Watching how dust motes float in the beam of light shining from the carousel lamp on my dresser.

As a young adult, I confirmed this memory with my mother by asking when I stopped sleeping in a crib and describing the crib and the layout of the room. We moved from that house on my fourth birthday.

Have many memories from age three and forward.

DD

I think people on the spectrum might have earlier memories for some reason, although I don't know why. I remember my Developmental Psychology professor saying "If people claim to have memories before the age of 3 or 4, they might think they do but they don't." While part of me wants to believe her, I can't help but wonder if she's wrong. I have memories from around the time I was 2 ( at least think I do), and I've seen anecdotal evidence elsewhere for other people having "baby memories." I have learned, however, that memory is much more unreliable than once thought. People can believe 100% in a memory of something that never happened.

Nonetheless, here are my "earliest memories." They are from the house we were in until I was 2, so I would have been a baby. I am fascinated by these memories because of how ghostly they feel, as if they come from another world:

-I am sitting in a high chair eating ravioli. My chair is facing the bathroom, and my mom is in it with the door open. She is holding a metal device up to one of her eyes, and I am wondering what it is. (Later I find out it's an eyelash curler).

-My mom and I have arrived home in her car. I am staring at the pink insulation puffing out of the garage walls. My mom sings "Home again home again, jiggety jig!"

-It's the 4th of July and I'm sitting outside with mom and dad. We have spread a blue blanket out on the grass of Washburn Campus, where the Go 4th! fireworks display happens each year. The old radio that so fascinates me is with us and turned on. After a while, colorful explosions begin in the sky. I am enthralled and overjoyed until I experience searing pain in my eyeball. I begin to scream and cry, and my parents rapidly pack up and begin carrying me home. They explain hurriedly to curious people that "she got a cinder in her eye". The pain won't stop and I'm crying, and I wish people would stop gawking at me. (My parents have confirmed that this memory happened when I was 2).

-I am in the YWCA nursery, playing with a toy that's like a house only on a circular platform. There are four "rooms" separated by plastic wedges. It's nighttime and dark in the room I'm in, and I like it that way. My mom comes to pick me up, and I ride home in her red two-door Mazda. The song "These Dreams" by Heart is playing on the radio. I am staring at the full moon and thinking about how it resembles a baby's head.

-I am sitting in the living room next to the coffee table. Adults I don't know are talking to my parents, and they address me in the "talking to a little kid" voice. They ask "Are you moving?" I gawk up at them, but don't say anything. I don't think they expect me to respond.

I also heard the theory about memories before 3-4 but I know they aren't true and it's because of the very thing you said, I lived in the same house until I was two and then we moved. I remember many details of that house although they aren't in pictures and were never spoken about. In my twenties I finally asked and found out they were accurate. I also remember moving into the new house when I was two. I remembered the floor in the living room being completely gone and seeing the boards in the subfloor and the wires running through them. I tried to walk across it. I also remember them putting in insulation upstairs and touching that pink stuff that looked like cotton candy to me. It made me itch something terrible and they had to wash it off and put Calamine lotion on it. (I remember every detail about that bottle.) I remember them putting up the wallboard, putting on the tape in the corners and plastering over that and the nails, then sanding it down. I remember them painting it afterward. I remember that my one uncle was there to help my father and he gave my brother this bike that you could fold all up. Those were other memories I asked about in my twenties that were completely accurate.

I also remembered a porch that was on that house when we moved in and torn down a week later. I had one just like it built for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. We have no picture of it and they were amazed that I had it built from memory since I was only two at that time and it was only there for a week.


I could reel off many more. I always thought maybe it was because I had older brothers, but I guess I misinterpreted the reason. My brothers remember none of it and three of them are older than I am.

I just found an article on infancy and memories that was published Feb. 16, 2007. Apparently new research contradicts the belief that infants cannot form memories!

Here is the link:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/02/1 ... index.html