I was dismayed when listening to a podcast: The Guardian Science Weekly: where do our early childhood memories go? with Nick Turk-Browne, a professor of psychology at Yale University, to learn that in his professional opinion, we are not able to recall episodic memories before the age of around 4 or 5 years. 

Episodic memories are a type of long-term memory that involve personal experiences and specific events, whereas Semantic memories are memories of facts and information. Now, I’m not going to argue with a Yale professor, but I’ve always had some episodic memories my whole life that haven’t changed, so maybe I am completely wrong and my perception of my past life is flawed. This inability to remember our formative years even has a name – childhood amnesia.

Psychologists say that the human brain can be easily convinced of certain things, and false memories can easily be formed through family photographs, stories told by relatives and favourite objects. It easy to believe yours are the exception to the rule, so I’ll have to conclude that they are right and I am wrong. They are the experts here after all. 

There is a glimmer of hope however. In a study published in the journal Child Development in 2011, Carole Peterson, a child psychologist and professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, found that emotional memories in children ages 4 to 13 were more likely to persist. And another 2021 study by Carole Peterson, suggested that some people can actually remember things from when they were as young as 2.5 years old. These memories are not just false memories, but real childhood memories.

My own earliest memories

In my case, some of my memories are simply banal events, but even so, they are linked to strong emotions I was feeling at the time. My earliest memories before the age of 5:

• Being spoon-fed baby food. It tastes horrible, but they keep scraping it up off my chin and spooning it back into my mouth. I think I’m in the kitchen of an old street house (it must have been my uncles). 
• I’m being pushed in a pram/pushchair by Mam and her friend coming out of our house. The sun is in my eyes and I’m squinting and squirming to get away from it. I can hear them talking and they aren’t noticing my discomfort. 
• Playing in my red bubble car at the corner of our road. They were laying new kerb stones. Theresa got hurt. I think a brick dropped on her foot or knee. 
• Playing with a tin Dalek toy, also a spinning top. I’m in our back garden, playing on the pavement. The Dalek wasn’t mine but I really wanted one. It was so cool.
• Being left in my pushchair under the stairs while Mam went up and got changed. I can see my brothers and sister playing with a new game in the kitchen and I’m crying to get out and be with them. 
• Pre-school: Being laid on the sofa at my Nan’s house and having a coat laid over me to go to sleep. I can hear the clock ticking. 
• Watching Watch With Mother at Nan’s house and sitting on a small Formica table eating a jam turnover. I would have been around 4 then. 
• First day at school: I only remember going through the classroom door. Nan or Grandad, (I think Grandad,) took me. I was crying and didn’t want to go in. Then I saw something in the room that interested me so I went in.

Here’s the thing: my son has an incredible episodic memory too. He’s always been able to remember early things that happened to him very accurately, so maybe it’s genetic. In addition, I think memory improves with time, concentration and effort. However, I do have to accept that maybe everything I’ve believed about past memories is wrong. That’s what the evidence says anyway. 

What are the implications of childhood amnesia? 

People talk of their heritage, their ancestors, their pride at their roots, but in actual fact, none of us actually know where we come from, because we aren’t physically capable of it. And because our personalities form in our first few years, we do not know how and why we are the way we are. Are you a product of nurture or nature? Genetic predisposition or just learned behaviour? You’ll never know for sure. You can trace your ancestry, get a DNA test, or study your family tree, but you‘ll never know why you are so sensitive to certain things, why you fear the things you fear, why you love the things you love, or hate the things you hate. Our natural childhood amnesia robs all of us of the most important earliest memories that have moulded and shaped who we are today. You probably don’t remember the first toys you were given, the first days out, the first birthdays, the first family meals, the first parties, or the first celebrations and the love you were showered with – or not. You probably don’t remember the emotional upsets, incidents and traumas that have given you lifelong fears and phobias. You won’t remember the bottle feeding, or the food you were given, learning your letters and numbers, colours, shapes and names of things. You won’t remember the intense nurturing you received, whether you were spoiled and pampered, or simply neglected. You won’t remember the sleepless nights and the complete exhaustion of parenthood. You won’t remember how much love and attention you got. 

Reading the signs

Just because we can’t remember them, it doesn’t mean our missing years haven’t left their mark. You can look for signs in the present that might inform what happened in your forgotten, missing years. It’s a good bet that if you have a loving, stable home now, you had it in the past, and vice versa. A fractured, broken childhood leaves its marks in the present. For example, I know I didn’t receive much nurturing in my baby years because I was told this by my own mother, and I have lifelong symptoms of emotional neglect: depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. My siblings are older than I am. My older sister has told me many things about my childhood that has helped me piece together missing information, (though I’ve never shared my earliest memories with her and they would mean little to her anyway). I guess it doesn’t make much difference in the long run whether you remember your earliest years or not. We are who we are and we can’t change it. However, I do think that knowing where we come from, and understanding our past, provide us with the information we need to influence our future, and that is a very powerful thing indeed. Perhaps it’s time to ask the people who raised you what they remember about your missing years. Maybe they can give you some much-needed solace, or just put the final piece in your jigsaw puzzle of memory that has eluded you all these years. 

Sources:

Hurting Memories and Beneficial Forgetting Michael Linden 2013

Infantile Amnesia Across the Years: A 2-Year Follow-up of Children’s Earliest Memories Carole Peterson, Kelly L. Warren, Megan M. Short First published: 11 May 2011

The Guardian Science Weekly: where do our early childhood memories go? Nick Turk-Browne 

What is your earliest memory? It depends by Carole Peterson 2021

Your Very First Childhood Memory May Be Completely False, Rebecca Beamer 2022