Do you have vivid memories before the age of 4? NT & AS
I am a Male who is informally/self diagnosed as Aspergers/ ASD Level 1.
I was actually surprised to learn that most people don't have vivid memories as young children. My earliest verifiable memory was at age 3 but I have many memories I suspect were from even earlier. One for example, was sitting in a park feeling a drug-like state of ecstasy. Everything was beautiful and colourful and it was one of those days that makes you glad to be alive. I later found out this park existed (we moved before I turned 1) and I would have been between 6-9 months old when we lived near this park in those warm summer like conditions.
I do vividly remember the frustration of being talked down to as a very young child and that I was far more intelligent than I was able to verbally express. Sounds familiar to my life right now.
Campin_Cat
Veteran
Joined: 6 May 2014
Age: 63
Gender: Female
Posts: 25,953
Location: Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.
AS, ASD or NT : AS
SEX : Female
AGE OF FIRST MEMORIES : Before age 2.
And only if you so wish, Current age: 53 (gonna be 54, in less than a month)
I said "Before 2", because I don't remember precisely----I only know that I can hear, in my mind, my mother saying we had to wait to get the oil tank filled (our house had oil heat); when I was 2 we lived in a different place.
We couldn't afford a TV, when I was little----but, somehow we got ahold of a loaner, I guess----and I can see, in my mind's eye, walking in front of the TV when JFK got shot, and remember being fussed-at for it. (I was 2.)
The other vivid, early memory I have, is of a time when my aunt and I went shopping (I was in my stroller----so, I'm thinking, 2), and we stopped at a counter, and the saleslady was showing my aunt something, and I was craning my neck from down-below, trying to see what she was showing her. Years later, my aunt recounted the story, and said I was trying to get attention, and that bummed-me-out. I told them that I could remember EXACTLY what happened (that I wanted to SEE)----but, of course, nobody believed me / believed that anyone could remember, that vividly, that-far-back.
_________________
White female; age 59; diagnosed Aspie.
I use caps for emphasis----I'm NOT angry or shouting. I use caps like others use italics, underline, or bold.
"What we know is a drop; what we don't know, is an ocean." (Sir Isaac Newton)
Age 5 for me - Miss NT.
_________________
Me grumpy?
I'm happiness challenged.
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 83 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 153 of 200 You are very likely neurotypical
Darn, I flunked.
Last edited by nurseangela on 07 Oct 2015, 3:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Male
I can remember back to age 6 months. My earliest memory is of my mother and sister taking me for a walk in a stroller in our neighborhood. We moved from that location before I was one year old. That was over 40 years ago.
Wow, that's a hard one to beat.
I can. Ya'll prepare to not believe me. No one ever does.
I'm NT, 38, Female.
It was within the first week or two I guess, because I was born on my aunt's bed upstairs and that's where I was, on my baby blanket, fiddling with my belly button cord, which was dried up but still attached (gross). My mom and aunt were speaking to each other in the doorway, but I didn't understand them. They were just making noises. I felt content.
I have memories I can prove when I was 1 1/2-2. In one of them I had on pinchy white mary jane type shoes that I tried to tolerate but I hated them. Years later I saw a picture of myself with the shoes on. In the other memory we were in a brown VW beetle parked in front of the house, my mom was smoking pot and telling me and my brother not to tell HER mom. I asked her about it when I was a teenager and she confirmed that she had the car, which she'd never told me about but refused to own up to the pot. Right. She sold the car when I was 2 and hadn't mentioned it since.
You might find this interesting:
Overgrowth, Pruning and Infantile Amnesia
And:
Study Finds That Brains With Autism Fail to Trim Synapses as They Develop
After taking one of those Asperger's diagnostic tests and it mentioned a fixation on "flowing water", I remembered that when I was 3 or 4, I would get up in the middle of the night, run a bath and stick my toes in the faucet. I asked my mom and she remembered it well because I would lock the door and it scared her.
Again for interest, If after the age of 4 , what age could you remember?
AS, ASD or NT :
SEX :
AGE OF FIRST MEMORIES :
And only if you so wish, Current age:
update: I also added ASD at the request.. So please tick AS or ASD , whichever you prefer
Likely-AS (no official diagnosis), female, earliest memories <1 year
I have MANY memories before age 4. So many, I can't mention them all. There are too many. Here's a quick line-up about how far back it goes for me:
Pre-schools: I recall my pre-k 4 class quite vividly. I remember all of my friends, even found one of them in high school years later, because I recognized her name and face. Pre-K 3 I remember too. I went to a different school then. I remember how one day they taught us how to make apple sauce (more like we watched) and let us eat it! I remember the yard and the sandbox, and the boy who kept kicking my castles down, so I framed him for biting me. I remember before I was in pre-k 3... when I was just in day-care at my mom's workplace. I remember the nice ladies who let me keep one of the stuffed animals that we had on the big carpet in the play area, and I remember being embarrassed the day my mom sent me there in my nightgown because she had too much to do that morning; I remember being afraid of using the toilet there, because it was too loud when I flushed it. I remember wetting my pants because it was hard for me to hold all day long.
Before I was in day-care: I remember my mom washing me in the sink. I remember being surprised when my feet could touch the other side one day.
I remember potty training (though I really wish I didn't ). I remember being so proud when my mom let me take diapers out of my drawer and put my little mermaid underwear there instead.
I remember SO MANY high-chairs: Some that stood, some that clamped onto tables at restaurants, some that I outgrew and remember watching my little cousin sit in later.
I remember trying to get around our living room by holding onto the furniture, grabbing hand-over-hand, armpits just barely at the top of the flattened couch cushions.
I remember not knowing what people were saying. I remember being confused as they would pick me up in the middle of my doing something or give me things or take things away.
I remember lying on my back, surrounded by soft and black. I remember going through the garage of my parents' house like this, looking at what I now know were boats strapped to the ceiling, listening to something squeaking >eee-rrr... eeee-rrr<, and the sounds of my parents' hushed soothing voices.
...that last one my parents never could explain. "We never took you through the garage wrapped in black, what are you talking about?" they'd say. It wasn't until I was about 20 years old that my grandmother explained it to me. She said "Oh, you mean the old navy-blue velvet pram with the squeaky wheel? Yes, that was a hand-me-down from your aunt's kids. You would stop fussing when they put you in it. I think the squeak was interesting to you.... but they got rid of that before you were 9 months. The wheel fell off."
So there you have it, a sampling of a much greater early life story. I have more memories... like those, not stories someone would tell, just mundane moments, finding things behind the couch, watching Dad struggle to wash the dog we had who passed away when I was 2. These kinds of things.
I TOTALLY remember things from before the age of 4!! everyone thinks I'm crazy when I say this, but I remember being totally non-verbal (basically until the age of just past 3yrs). I remember being INTENSELY confused and the sensory overload being super painful. I mostly remember being a young autistic and being in pain and afraid most of the time. My parents thought I had brain damage possibly, so, luckily, for awhile (while I was still "baby cute" that is ages 0-4.5 ) they tolerated the "quirks" very well. For example the home was VERY quiet. In fact, I remember noises being this extremely jarring experience. I also remember being very dismayed and upset at people staring and laughing at me (even as a toddler) when I would obviously stim. I remember being confused. often... very often.
Or in awe of something (usually an object or some underlying law of physics- like the falling of object I thought was the bees knees back in the day XD).
ASD, female, youngest memory: 18 months.
According to my mother I was this age, but I didn't know how old I was. I described the memory and the setting, people, furniture, and the events that took place and she told me I was exactly 18months. It was extremely visual, like HDef. and I remember sounds, sights (very very very visual), tons of little details, everything seemed to dazzle me. It was like a dizzying array of details- simply a cornucopia of visual minutia just "waiting" to be observed!
I seem to have a ton of snippets/memories from 2-3 and 4+ (too many if you ask me...)
NowhereWoman
Velociraptor
Joined: 1 Jul 2009
Age: 56
Gender: Female
Posts: 499
Location: Los Angeles, CA
F, ASD, Yes.
I have several. One that is really sweet to me was confirmed later by my mother. I was less than two years old. The memory was of slanted lines going upward and a line across them, and over them off on a sort of slant, hanging from the ceiling was a mobile with blue and green transparent fish. I was absolutely mesmerized by those fish. I stared and stared at them.
My mom said I was out of a crib once I turned two and that the slants and the angle sound like the slats of the crib. She recalled the mobile very clearly. I didn't have the mobile in my room any more once I didn't have my crib as it had been put up there due to the fact that I was in the crib and she wanted me to have something to look at (the usual reason for putting a mobile above the crib).
I even remembered where the placement of the mobile was - not directly above the crib but just somewhat off to the side, going more toward the center of the ceiling while my crib was nearer to the wall.
We don't have any pictures of the mobile or even of my room that time. People didn't take as many pictures then as they do now. Pictures cost money to develop and they took two weeks to get back from the Fotomat or the drugstore. My dad had a darkroom but even then it was a whole complicated process with chemicals and special lighting, plus the chemicals were somewhat costly (IIRC from things he said) and had to be specialty mail-ordered so he didn't do it often. Just for very special times, holidays, etc. So it's an actual memory, not something I saw in a picture and just hadn't remembered seeing. I also don't remember anyone telling me about it, that would seem quite random, "Remember when you were 18 months old and you had a fish mobile on your ceiling?"
I have other ones, some not as nice, but some quite nice. I remember the awful goldenrod-colored kitchen appliances in the home we moved out of when I was 3.5 and I remember my fourth birthday, staring in the mirror because I just couldn't believe I was four years old, that sounded so grown-up to my ears. I also recall some random toys from being three or so, such as my Wacky Apple Christmas present, when I was 3.5. I was scared of it. And I remember throwing up in the bathtub because I got water in my mouth when my mother or father (can't remember which) was pouring water over my head to rinse my hair. My sister remembers that clearly, she leapt out of the tub because I had thrown up in it. She knows she was 5 so I must have been somewhere around 3.5-ish. And I also have a memory of an Advent set we lost when we moved, which was actually flat and had circles to move three 3-D clay (or wood?) Wise Men along the numbers through a painted "desert" with painted palm trees until Day 24, where there was a painted Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
ETA: Oh! I just remembered one more, but I may have already been four. Not clear on this. I should ask my sister. (She remembers the Moon Landing!! Yes, we're old, LOL!) It was of being at my grandparents' house...Grandpa was in his usual cushion-y chair and he was watching some play about King Henry VIII on TV. There was a scene where Ann Boleyn was beheaded and they actually showed the head fall off her neck, forward, tumbling down her front. It made an impression, obviously! I don't think Grandpa expected that or he wouldn't have had us watch it.
And I remember the 60s records my father used to play, the sound that came through the speakers (huff, huff, harumph) when he blew on the needle to get rid of dust, and the Beach Boys coming through..."giddy-up, giddy-up, 4-0-9..." and Daddy laughing with Mom about how it was too bad that if you didn't like a record, you couldn't just smash it any more like you really wanted to. (They liked the Beach Boys, though.)
I am finding the results quit fascinating thus far... There are other reasons why i added the poll, but do not yet wish to divulge this in case it may have influence on people decisions... However there had been one comment close to the mark... it was something i noticed within myself, and had an intuitive feeling as well as a possibility of a certain pattern... However, it is still way too early to tell at this stage... I hope more people do take the poll . I do have to emphasis that there will be a margin of error, for a few reasons, but mainly due to false memories, for instance, a family member bringing up an early childhood memory that at the time you may not recollect, but create an image to fit said comment.. Even though the individual might firmly believe the even t actually happened in their mind.. The way around this as was in my case was to bring up such early memories with family members to see if such events did happen, and wasn't a construction of a false interpretation.. I found that my early memories, are as vivid today as if it had happened minutes ago are very strong, and i too not only remember the imagery, but how i was feeling at said time, aswell as what i was thinking.. Apparently many individuals memories are a little more black and white, whereas mine are vivid colors... This has been proven in long/short term memory cases within the courts when people have given evidence of say a car been broken into thinking the car color was red and will swear that it was when in fact it was green.... I am babbling on a little now.. but so far my hunch seems to be something that might be worth looking into a little further! I just cant talk about it yet as i want the results to be as true to form as they can be and not have any possible influences that may change peoples vote or outcome