Trauma, I was told that after being circumcised I couldn’t even speak coherently for more than a year, my mind has blocked out that period.
My first memory was swimming ahead of the others to an egg. After that it gets sorta hazy.
These people are on the par with how many angels dance on the head of a pin. Anyone that thinks babies don’t recognize their Moms & Dads within a few days is out of the loop. This convoluted analysis of types of memory based on guesswork is not advancing science.
I remember everything from the age two.
Would you really *want* to remember how it felt to fill your diaper? Wouldn’t you rather be like Joe Biden?
I can’t remember what I had for breakfast
I think mostly we do not remember because as a baby our memories are bland compared to what comes later. Eat, burp, poop, is pretty much our life until we are about eight months old. Nothing really interesting happens and we tend to remember interesting. Even our current memories are things that are interesting.
Once we start sitting up, standing and walking more interesting things happen and by about age three or four we are out and interacting with the world.
I remember my first two years, in pretty good detail.
One of my daughters has eidetic memory. People learn not to argue with her about past events at which she was present. At a family reunion when she was nine two aunts were discussing something that happened eight and a half years before but disagreed on just who was present. My daughter, Dharma, heard them and told them who she had seen there then. An uncle who had been listening agreed. Dharma did not know what had been said not having language yet but she recognized an event when she was 5 months old and could place the adults that she had seen. I have witnessed many repetitions of her ability to recall. She claims to remember being born. I have to accept that.
My earliest memories date to age 3.
I was drinking a lot back then.
I was 5 years old when Kennedy was killed. I remember none of the events of that time.
But I do have many memories of where I lived and other things that were important to 3-5 year olds.
FWIW
We moved out of our first house at my age of 2.5, so everything I remember in that house was from being a baby or toddler. I remember my crib, my mobile, my high chair, the old 1950s Buick, the TV, war on B&W TV every single night, and the entire house.
Can’t remember yesterday, though.
Look at it this way you were in this nice warm world floating around, fully fed, and suddenly it is gone!
I’ve never seen a birth where the newly born was happy.
It is tough on Moms and their offspring. I’m referring to mammals only.
Welcome to your new life!
Because your focus is upon:
- source of security
- source of love
- source of food and information that leads to survival
And then, there is a sibbling who tests the strength of materials by hitting you in the head, and you forget everything except how to cry.
Clearly ‘why’ this occurs is because locking memories simply isn’t needed or necessary for the infant at that stage to reach sexual maturity and be able to fend for itself in order to reproduce. The mechanics of it is just filler to keep molecular biologists occupied.
PS.
I do remember when I discovered that food comes from the refrigerator.
I finally figured out, how to open the refrigerator door.
I was looking up and saw the large wooden salad bowl, poorly balanced on top of the refrigerator door and . . .
The bowl quickly returning to earth, with my head in the way.
I remember when I was sitting of the floor when my dad walk in, stopped in the doorway, and started crying. Much later on I asked my mother what that was about. She said he had just seen his mother die. I was eight months old.
And I can recall before them, but certainly not a consistent chain.
That is what my theory has always been.