Why We Can’t Remember Our Earliest Years

www.psychologytoday.com ^ | April 11, 2022 | Vanessa LoBue Ph.D.

[Larry Lucido]

Your first marathon!

[combat_boots]

It was the trauma that set me off. I nearly lost both folks from a car crash. Didn’t know what turned out to be my mother when she came home.

[mairdie]

I don’t know how old I was but mine is a crib memory, too. We were in Texas and my crib was in a hallway. I had been given a doll, unfortunately with a china head, and I discovered that if I threw it out of the crib, someone would pick it up and give it back to me. I found it quite entertaining and repeated it many times. The doll with the cracked head is still in our attic.

[decal]

From the brilliant Steven Wright:

“When I was a baby, I kept a diary. Recently, I was rereading it. It said: Day One: Still tired from the move. Day Two: Everybody talks to me like I’m an idiot.”

[CDR Kerchner]

Barack Obama changed his earliest “memories” to suit his current political agenda.

Read this licensed private investigators report into Obama’s questionable background, which likely concerned #MichelleObama who says she checked Obama’s background out when she first met him, since Obama was using a stolen SSN: https://cdrkerchner.wordpress.com/2025/07/31/barack-obama-and-the-rosetta-stone-by-susan-daniels-licensed-private-investigator/

#DonaldTrump #DanBongino #FBI #KashPatel #DOJ #PamBondi #JesseWatters #SusanDaniels

[linMcHlp]

Reply 44

[BradyLS]

Classic!

[Tellurian]

Well, I don’t remember quite that far back, but I do remember a dream I had many times up until I was 5 or 6. It was a dream without vision or sound - it was of being squeezed through a tunnel, where the sides of the tunnel applied a wondrous rolling pressure against me. I enjoyed that dream and would sometimes go to sleep hoping to have the dream again.

I’ve long supposed those dreams had their genesis in personal memory of a momentous experience, which was apparently a good memory for me. By extension I would assume it’s a good experience for most people (on the inside!).

[fidelis]

Another vote for trauma, when they circumcised me my mind went blank, finally after 3 or 4 years I finally started remembering little things.

All I know about being circumsized when I was a newborn baby is that I couldn't walk for about two years!

[fidelis]

"People with hyperthymesia, as it’s often called, can remember almost every little thing that happened to them over the course of their lives. They can remember back to things that happened to them in the crib, and can often recall in great detail every single event they've experienced, no matter how minor, from the point when they were 10 or 11 years old. They can remember that the U.S. invaded Iraq on a Wednesday in March 2003. They can probably remember what they had for breakfast that day, too, and whether or not they felt tired. Here are nine things you might not know about the rare condition:

Mental Floss: 9 Facts About People Who Remember Everything About Their Lives

[Fiji Hill]

My earliest memory that I can date was when I was 688 days old. Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) was beginning his hunt for Russian spies in our military intelligence services. Hound Dog was the #1 song on the rhythm and blues charts, and No Help Wanted was charging up the country-western charts.

[irishjuggler]

I can remember bits of a trip to Hawaii, when I was 1 year, 10 months old. My parents expressed skepticism of that and alleged that what I remember were *photos* of the trip. Au contraire, what I remember are things for which there no photos... such as being forced to take a nap while my sister got to go down to the restaurant for a milkshake.

[Nachoman]

I didn’t have anything worth remembering until I started college.

[Jonty30]

I think we remember what is important to us and baby memories just aren’t that important.

[Fiji Hill]

"People with hyperthymesia, as it’s often called, can remember almost every little thing that happened to them over the course of their lives. They can remember back to things that happened to them in the crib, and can often recall in great detail every single event they've experienced, no matter how minor, from the point when they were 10 or 11 years old. They can remember that the U.S. invaded Iraq on a Wednesday in March 2003. They can probably remember what they had for breakfast that day, too, and whether or not they felt tired. Here are nine things you might not know about the rare condition:

This wasn't a little thing, but I recall it quite vividly. On the afternoon of March 5, 1957, we had to evacuate our home in West Whittier, Calif. when a road grader cleaning out a drainage ditch across the street ruptured a pipeline carrying methane gas under high pressure. Everyone on the block had to evacuate, as a spark could have blown us all to kingdom come.

We went to a neighbor's house and then my uncle showed up and took us safely out of the area. We had hamburgers for dinner at Nixon's Drive-in Restaurant in Whittier and then returned to find that the leak had been patched.

[metmom]

My mom remembered her baby brother having died shortly after birth (at home in those days) and the undertaker taking him out in a suitcase.

It left a vivid impression on her when she was told the baby was in the suitcase.

[Rocco DiPippo]

I vividly remember that when I was two years old I was swilling Jameson, driving a Maserati and dating super models on a regular basis. The craziest memory was hosting a party on my private jet with Keith Richards and Sam Kinison. Halfway through the flight to Capri I grabbed the controls and did a loop, then a barrel roll, then a Mach 4 vertical dive before pulling out ten feet above the Amazon rainforest. Good times!

[fidelis]

That’s pretty vivid. How old were you at the time?

[fidelis]

I have lots of memories of when I was about 2 or 3, mostly little dribs and drabs of things, short vignettes of things, mostly traumatic in some way. I was born in San Diego and for a time we lived in a house in a rural era east of there called Otay. This was around 1960, I guess. We lived across the street from a big tomato farm and I remember an army of huge green tomato hornworms covering the road and getting squished by cars and big trucks. I also remember climbing to the top of a neighbors rabbit pens and falling through the chicken wire roof and crying all the way home with a bloody nose. I can still picture the drops of blood falling on the dusty road. About that same time, my older sister started kindergarten and I snuck on the bus after her so they had to turn around and take me back home. Must’ve been around 3 then. And earlier than that, visiting my grandma where there was lots of fresh tortillas and tamales being made and people making a big fuss over me. Lots of other little things too.

[wardaddy]

I can recall some from age 1-2