Do you remember much of your childhood?

[Spencer2]

I only ask because… I really don’t!

I didn’t have a bad upbringing, in fact I do just remember it being lovely and I was so content. We weren’t well off but we could afford an annual holiday abroad and I just loved being at home playing and watching films. I loved feeling content, warm and in my safe place which was always my childhood home. Of course I remember random things and events as we do…. But I mean a handful at most. I really don’t remember much of me and my brother growing up in our home, I don’t remember much of the yearly holidays abroad. It’s really sad and these are years without any memories I will never be able to look back on or play back in my head.

I’m just curious to know.. am I the only one? I struggle to be honest to remember much from my teen years either, although I do remember a lot more than childhood years.

For the record.. i’m 27.

I have children now and sometimes I look at them and I think ‘I hope you remember this moment’ or ‘I hope you don’t forget all of this’.

My Dad loved taking photographs on holidays during the 70s. We have box fulls of pictures but I just wish he had turned the camera round and photographed us and not some random view! The few he has of us bring back many long forgotten memories.

SillySausage81 · Yesterday 09:45

I have lots of very clear memories, starting from when I was around 2 and a half. Between 2.5 and 4 the memories are more like flashes...

I have something similar, we went to Florida just after I turned 3 and I can remember loads of bits, but not in a continuous narrative. I remember crying on the plane, because my ears hurt and asking my mam if the clouds were mountains.

My earliest memory is my eldest sister pushing me into a river, when I was 18 months old and my dad belting her and shouting that my wellies had sunk...

Yes. It was mostly horrific.

I barely remember anything, the odd bit, even my teenage years is a bit of A haze.

I think I remember some tidbits even from before I turned 5 (like my father helping me complete a sticker album), and got some better-preserved memories of events that occurred between my 7-11 years of age (random birthdays, playing on the streets with "the gang", my first day at school, and so on...). But yeah, I do remember feeling comfy and secure at the house I grew up in, a feeling I wasn't able to replicate since...

I am 50's and I can remember my childhood clearly- but memories of me in my late teens/early twenties do not seem to be mine. I was such a different person who made terrible decisions, and I can watch Hobo existing then in my mind, but not relate to that person as me.
My third DC, now a young adult, remembers far less about her childhood than her two elder siblings.

I remember a lot. Spent time and money trying to forget it but have come to accept it is woven into the fabric of my being.

The worst bits are just a fragment, whereas the parts which were almost bearable are deeply etched on my mind.

It is the fragments which haunt me. I know where they come from but my memory won't given them up in full.

Because even at 50, I am too scared to experience my childhood.

I remember huge amounts from my childhood and teenage years, some good, some not so good. What I find alarming is that I remember very little about my children’s early years (they’re 19 and 21 now). It all seems vague and overlaid with a constant flavour of mild panic. I was also dog tired and sleep deprived a lot of the time, so maybe you don’t ‘make memories’ as well when you’re tired.

I remember everything am 44 . Some interesting teachers names, head teachers.I had a lovely childhood with my grandparents and with my mum as a single mom. Beautiful memories until my mom remarried. The step dad was awful ruined our lives led to my mother's death!!!!I will never do this to my children.

I don't remember much about ds2 as a baby ( he is 26 now )
I can remember a bit about junior school.
It is all a bit patchy though

I don't remember a lot from my childhood either. Like yourself, it was happy and content but my Mum will often say "do you remember such and such" ... no. I'm 48. But I also say to my kids, do you remember when we went to X ... no and they're only early 20's. It does make you wonder whether you should have bothered doing all the fun stuff, but then does it matter if particular instances can't be remembered, the overall feeling of happiness is surely what matters.

I'm in my late 70s and I can remember absolutely loads of things. I'm amazed people can't remember their childhoods, my recollections are very clear from walking to school on my own at the age of 6, friends at primary school. Then my teenage years at senior school and starting work at 15 in London. They are really clear memories as well. I remember an old tin bath hanging outside onthe wall of our grandparents house. I can see the little scullery and my grandad mending our shoes.
Going on a steam train with my other grandmother, to spend 2 weeks with my cousins who lived in Suffolk, sticking my head out of the windows and getting smuts all over my face and getting a telling off. I'd be really sad that I couldn't remember these lovely little snippets from my childhood.

@Theoldcuriosityshop

I remember an old tin bath hanging outside on the wall of our grandparents house. I can see the little scullery

Snap, except the tin bath was my parents'. It came with the ground floor flat in Norwood Road, Herne Hill, which they rented until I was 5 when they bought that and also the maisonette upstairs where the landlady lived, and moved upstairs where there was a proper bath with a scary very old Ewart geyser. They rented the downstairs flat to a Salvation Army family who were all in the band. They came from Derby, like my dad. The son, Alec, about 14, told the 5 year old me that when he looked into the mouthpiece of his bugle he could see Derby. He refused to let me look!

After they moved, a couple with a teenage daughter moved in. One day, when I was 6, I was reading the magistrates court reports page in that week's South London Press (I was precocious). I looked up and asked my dad what 'soliciting' was. He said 'Why do you want to know that?' I replied, 'Because Mrs XXXX has been fined for it at Camberwell Magistrates Court'. The reports included convicted peoples' addresses, and ours had caught my eye. Then I found on the same page that Mr XXXX had been fined for being drunk and disorderly at the same court.

Dad was already annoyed that someone had scratched 'I love Elvis' on the wall by the front door, and suspected the daughter. I think the fact that they had given up paying the rent was what led him to give them notice.

When I visited London 40 years later, I went to see if it was still there, but i was painted over.

One day I went into the kitchen and there was my dad, shirt off, lying face down on the kitchen table, and my mum was ironing his back through sheets of brown paper. 'It's for his backache' she explained.

I remember loads. I sometimes wonder how accurate my memories are but a while ago I got to visit my old primary school for the first time since I left (I'm in my late 40s) and it was exactly as I remembered, even some really minor details like the view from each window and the handrails on the stairs. I replay my memories a lot.

I remember loads and it wasn't great.