What is your earliest Memory?

[LoisPrice]

I'll go first

my earliest memory is being in a cot with my cousin in the room, they moved out when I was around 12 months old. I can briefly remember the cot end with all the animal characters. My next memory at 23 months was the moon landing, my parents got me out of bed to watch, saying it was history in the making and they wanted me to see it - I can remember (whether it happened is anther matter entirely)

whats yours?

Sitting in the doorway of my grans kitchen and not wanting to go with my dad, who had come to pick me up. He was wearing a white skinny tie. 1983. I was very little.

My earliest memories are about nursery- picking flowers to put on the dinner table, polishing the wooden slide, going on the rocking horse!
I have no recollection of the 1st 2 years of my life or moving 12, 000 miles when my parents decided to move to the UK.

Having nice dress on and licking lolly pop in the front of a mirror and thinking how pretty I am. I was 3.

My earliest memory is being at my grandparents house (sleeping over) and the landline rang, and my granddad absolutely bolted it downstairs, answered it, and looked at me and said 'you've got a baby sister '
Then my grandma cried all over me
I was nearly 3
Can't remember a time when my sister wasn't a part of my life

Looking at a baby bouncer which was hung in the door way. Aged 2

Really hurting myself at age 5 off a bike I remember having stitches and it was awful and then my teacher Mrs Wilcox let me sit on the floor and cuddle her Labrador all day doing my work when I went back to school because I was brave. I sat under her desk with the dog.

Going to see my dad come back from The Falklands on the SS Canberra. I was 5. I went with my mum, my siblings and my grandparents. I had a new dress it was white with black polkadots. I remember waving a union Jack and the crowd was singing and cheering. We only got to see him briefly before following his coach back to the barracks. As we drove down the A38 back to Plymouth the roads and Bridges were filled with people waving flags.

It's one of two. Brace yourselves.....

My Mum used to work evenings when I was very little, so it was just me and my Dad. There was a park near where we lived and one summer evening we went there, and I pooed my pants. I had to walk home, not far, but I remember the feeling of the poo moving side to side as I walked. I can even remember that I was wearing a pair of rust coloured towelling shorts (early 80's fashion obvs). I think I was 2 years old.

I can also remember that I was at my Nan's house dozing on the sofa during Charles and Diana's wedding. I was definitely 2 years old then.

Moving to America for 3 years. I don’t remember much about the actual move but we’d not been there long before my mum got pregnant!

I’d been desperate to be a big sister but it had just never happened (my mum struggled to conceive after me). I wanted it to be a boy and he was!

Feeling ill in a white space and then waking, seeing my Dad sleeping on the sofa and feeling safe.

i was 2.5 and had pneumonia. It was the 60s and we didn't yet have central heating so I was downstairs in the warm. The white space was the American Cemetery chapel in Cambridge.

If I was scared in the night as a child, I always called 'Dad'. I suspect that went straight back this.

Mine is about aged 3 when my mother came home from hospital with a baby- my sister.

(Sorry meant to write separately)

I remember my grandparents cat and trying to touch it's tail - wisely it scarpered. It was called Poppy and died before I was 2. There's no photos associated with that memory.
The other early memories I have are mostly based round photos so unreliable.

Sometimes I look at things and remember how things felt - getting my fingers stuck in a crocheted blanket, sitting on cool grass. Food and smells spark other memories, I can almost still taste my grandma's fish curry and I've not had it for nearly 40 years.

I can remember being in my cot feeling bored and i suppose it would have been frustration for being stuck there , playing with a doll on the windowsill next to the cot , whilst unbeknown to me my mom was giving birth to my sibling in the next room.
I was 2 and a half .

I remember running along a verandah at the back of the house and crashing into a deckchair at one end. I was inconsolable and I think it must have been the first time I’d hurt myself enough to draw blood. We worked out I must have been about 20 months at the time.

It's just a brief flash of being in a location: sitting in my cot which had a thin woollen orange blanket draped over the top, presumably to keep the light out, but in this memory, the sunshine is flooding through the blanket, making the light in the cot a warm peachy glow. I'm happy and content. My DM has placed that memory at approximately 18 months old.

I have a slightly later memory which is similarly lovely. I'm standing on the family kitchen table, just wearing a nappy, held at the waist by someone, surrounded by my parents and older siblings, all of whom are focused on me, laughing encouragingly. I'm reaching toward a ceiling light: I'm looking around at my family, saying "Lamp, lamp!", a new word. I'm pleased with myself and enjoying being the centre of attention.

The part of your brain that creates long-term, retrievable memories isn’t even developed until 2 at the very earliest. A baby has no use for it. Any 'memories' from before that are false - likely you've been told the story of whatever it was and recreated it in your mind. You may totally believe it's an actual memory, but it's not.

Sleeping in the back of the Hillman estate on our way to Cornwall at 18mths old

I can remember being in a pushchair and that we were going to visit my grandmother. I was born in 82 and my great uncles son passed away in 84. I remember being at his house and seeing a small table in the corner that had card with crosses on, arranged on it. I can remember being in preschool and squabbling with another girl over a rocking horse and colouring a picture of a kite. I can remember wetting myself at my aunts when I was potty training, I just have no idea which one is the earliest.

Research shows that memories are created even below 12 months in age, but as adults we generally can’t access them and researchers are unsure why. It is possible for a very small number of people to have memories from before the age of two, however it is more likely they are false memories, made from stories people have told us.

I have few early memories that I am certain have been shaped by stories I’ve been told but there is one that definitely could not have been.

Being at playschool as it was called then. Climbing up the slide, painting, playing with play -doh. Very vivid clear memories. I must have been two or three.

Sitting in my high chair with my bear beside me feeding him jelly while my mum was dealing with the baker man at the door

Running thru tall grass in sand dunes and the red jumper I was wearing at the time… it was a holiday when I was 2yrs and 5 months old.

My Mum telling me to go to sleep and that this was HER time now and saying that she’d been with me all day while I screamed and tried unsuccessfully to climb up and out of the bars of my 1970s pink kitschy lamb decaled cot. She got angry and switched the light off and I remember the fear and how I screeched in terror in the dark before she put the light back on, picked me up, rocked me and said sorry. No idea how old I would have been but clearly young enough to not be able to climb out of the cot on my own.

And my Nan feeding me with a teaspoon and encouraging me to eat as she picked a bowl with flowers on the bottom and would give a glimpse of the pattern every time she ran the spoon across it. Telling me if I ate it all up I would see all of the pattern on the bottom of the bowl. It was a brownish flower design, fifties style.

My earliest memories are from when I was 2 - picking our puppy at Battersea and going to afternoon playgroup at Miss Lemons .

I remember sitting in a high chair, I was def higher up and a blonde haired boy flicking me in the face with a rag/piece of cloth. I cried and a lady came in but it wasn’t my mum.

I told it to my mum when I was in my teens and she told me that for a while the lady across the road childminded me but my mum gave up her job in the end because I was always upset when she picked me up. The lady had a blonde haired son.