What’s Your Earliest Memory?

[RabbitsRock]

I have a memory like an elephant, although DM thinks that some of my memories are from seeing old photos rather than actually remembering. My earliest memory is from a holiday in Wales when I was around 18 months old & I can picture myself lying in bed in our little cottage with the sun streaming in from a high window behind me.

i remember eating weetabix and syrup, i was under 5 i know that, and there are no photographs,
there was also a dog came through the hedge which was quite frightening.

Very similar. My earliest memory is of being in bed/cot looking at the curtains blowing in the wind. I must have been young because I had no speech then to describe what I saw.

I swear I can remember walking onto the ward to see my mum when she'd had my DB. I'd have been around 26 months old.

I remember digging in a sandpit with a spoon. It was a hot day. My feet were in the hole and I watched with interest as hundred of ants began to swarm up my legs. Then I was suddenly swooped into the air.

DM was amazed I remember this. I was about 16/17 months old. She saw the ants and picked me up really quickly!

I remember being lost on a crowded beach in Spain, aged about 20 months old. I can still recall the panic of looking around and realising I'd wandered away from my family and could no longer see them.

Going into the bathroom of our house in Singapore when I was 5 and seeing a HUGE spider. Our amah came running, discovered the louvred window glass had been removed, shouted to my parents, turned out we had been burgled. Our bedrooms had wrought iron tracery on the window, hence them coming through the bathroom window. Of course the only bit I actually remember is the spider!

Also in Singapore at age 5. Coming back from a fathers and children island picnic by boat and getting stuck on a mud bank coming back into harbour. Getting on the wrong bus for a school trip and the bus breaking down. Ants in my lunch box at school. A visit to my father's ship (HMS Tiger) and picking up a birthday cake made by the ship's cooks for my sister. Hers was chocolate, mine was FRUIT!!!!! For a 5-year-old! Being passed a birthday gift through the chain link fence between our houses by a neighbour. Going to the local shop for carnation milk for my baby sister and flavoured UHT milk for my other sister and me.

Quite a lot of memories from when I was 5 in Singapore!

Standing on the front lawn at our house, watching our old car being towed away. When I told me mum this, she worked out I must have been about 18 months. Apparently the car had been on its last legs for ages, and it had finally given up the ghost for good.

I have a couple of very vivid memories from a house that we moved out of when I was 2.5 years old.

One was having nightmares about the 1970s patterned pedal bin(!) that had a lion's face on it.

The other was watching my dad paint the gable end of the house on a really tall ladder and worrying he'd fall off.

I also remember that he used a wheelbarrow to move some of our possessions to our new house which was just down the road.

I remember lying in a pram or pushchair and being stung by a wasp. I also remember wearing a little summer dress with a pinafore. I have a half memory of seeing it years later and it was for a baby or small toddler. For some reason it was called a ‘garden frock’. Remember my little brother as a baby, in his cot - I’m 2 years older. I don’t know which of these is the earliest but I was probably 2 to 2 1/2 years.

also under 5 on the beach,
eating watermelon
another time seeing snakes on the beach in the water, both in south africa

Lying in my pram with my sisters poking their heads in and Mum telling them off!!!

I can remember the noise my feet made on the tarmac in Hanover on holiday at 18 months old.
Also going in to my grandpa's bedroom for a snuggle early in the morning. Must have been about 2.

I recall lying in my cotbed in the sunshine and watching my DM and aunt making my parents bed through the bars of the cot. No idea how old I was when I got moved out into my own bedroom but must have been 2 or 2.5

My earliest memory that I can accurately date is my younger sister coming home from hospital, so I was almost three. My parents got me and my older sister a present from the baby. I may have earlier memories who knows, but this one I know for sure.
I moved at age six to America so have English memories then the trip (we took a ship) and then our various houses while there which help give me approximate ages to memories.

i do remember the moon landings 20 July 1969.
so i was not yet 4
i remember the front page of the newspaper about the moon landings << no TV in south africa>>
i remember a christmas when i got crayons and a book and i coloured in a picture in the book and was told off!

My mum sitting at the kitchen table praying. We aren't religious so I didn't know what she was doing sitting with eyes shut and hands clasped. I remember asking and registering the new word, "praying".

Impossible to remember before 3. False memories.

notanothernana how do you know?

Childhood amnesia. It’s very unusual to have real memories before the age of 3.

I can remember my groin being really sore from nappy rash, and the feeling of the elastic on those rubber pants digging into it. No idea how old I was but I was obviously still in nappies so maybe 2 years old?

Waving goodbye to my sister as she was picked up for preschool.
She left preschool when I was 20months.

I have a memory of being got out of bed to watch TV in the middle of the night.

I think it was the first moon walk, that was about 4.00am July 21st 1969 (UK time and date), I would have been 2 and 9 months.

I asked my dad recently if it was that but he can't remember it happening.

I can't think of any other reason to get a couple of small children (my brother would have been 4 1/2) up in the middle of the night to watch TV.

My next memory in that house I remember is watching the news sitting on my mum's knee with her explaining Edward Daily was a brave man and that the white hanky meant he was signalling the soldiers. This was, of course, Bloody Sunday.

I think I must have seen something that was frightening me so she tried to explain it to me.

After that we were discouraged from watching the news.

I have other memories of that house but no way to say exactly when they happened.

One of two; I don't know which one was earlier. Both will have been around 1.5/2 years of age.

One is just a vague image of lying in a crib, surrounded by other cribs in a large room. Could have been a nursery, could have been in hospital.

The other is much more vivid. Lying in a room in hospital, possibly for diagnostics, possibly for an operation. Those awful greenish tiles that were all the rage back then. I was crying my eyes out looking at a figue by the door. I believe it may have been a parent leaving the room.

I know what age the latter one was, because I know when and how long I spent time in hospital as an infant. Definitely well before age 3.

No it's not impossible.

It's very difficult to describe memories before we have SPEECH, but not impossible.

Another memory that just came to me is that I remember being in a big bright noisy room and I was naked and hanging upside down by my feet and someone saying "it's a girl".