I can’t remember my children

[EmpressOfTheSofa]

Ok sounds dramatic. But I’ve just had a FB memory of my youngest doing something cute as a toddler. And watching it feels
to me like watching my own cute baby but has no relevance to the pre teen I see now.

We have a great bond, no worries there. But I can’t reconcile pictures/videos of him then to now. It’s like separate identities. The same for my much older adult DC.

Is this weird? I can see pictures of my younger siblings and join that together with the adults they are now but with my kids I seem to have a strange disconnect between who they were as infants and who they are as older children. I’m finding it quite disturbing. It’s like ‘remember that toddler we used to know’ and ‘look at this funny child laughing at his own farts’. Love them both but seem like completely different entities.

Anyone else or am I losing it?

You are not alone. Believe me, by the time that they are in their 40s, you will have known each one as at least four different people, each beloved, each separate and distinct from the others. I am nearing 70 now, and so hope to live long enough to know each of my two sons as FIVE distinct people! But...each "person" tends to "live" longer than the previous one did!

We were having a tough time with our teen, and I explained that to me as his parent he's like a Matryoshka Doll

That's exactly what it's like, isn't it? All the previous stages of the child are wrapped up inside the present larger one but you can't see them anymore. I wish I could have every single one at the same time though 😢

It's almost like a grieving feeling that you'll never see those little ones again. It makes me so sad I can't think about it😭

My Mum was over a few weeks ago to help me with my newborn baby. She kept making comments like " my babies nursed much faster than him" or " my babies always had homemade toys" etc. A few days in she paused and said "I keeping saying my babies but I guess I mean you!"

There was clearly a disconnect between her baby and the 41 year old woman sitting in front of her. Some day this will probably be me with DS🙂

@Mamanyt My Dad (85) said to me yesterday, “ You’re so mature and on top of things now, Hambone, you weren’t like that in your 20’s”. He seemed quite surprised.

Er, no, Dad, I’m 48, I hope I’ve grown up abit in 20-plus years, it would be worrying if I hadn’t. 🤣

I do this. I miss the toddler and cant quite requite that with the older child I have. I see flashes of the baby and toddler in her but to me she's a completely different person. I've always struggled with change so I put it down to that. My mind must make it easier to put ageing into boxes because it's too easily unnoticed when you're day in day out. It's only when you stop and think "Oh bloody hell, look at you" that it hits you.

I think of them as different versions of the same person - not a different person completely, because his facial expressions and gestures are the same - but a different version which doesn't exist anymore.

Oh yes, that's a good analogy. I used to say to my DC (when they were 'between stages' and finding things a bit hard) that they were like snakes who were shedding a skin, in order to reveal the colours of the next beautiful skin underneath. So the original skins are all still there, but the next skin adds to the previous one.

I actually find it quite hard now that they are adults, though they do still need me. My oldest rang me a couple of days ago to ask me for advice about something, and said that I was the only person who could properly advise him because I'm still the person who knows him best.

I totally get this OP. I avoid looking back too much at old photos and videos now. We used to have our Google home screensaver scrolling through all of our photos, but the constant images popping up on there every time I made a cup of tea was too much. I was feeling nostalgic all the time and it was really unsettling. Much better since I stopped that, but I still miss toddler DC quite a bit.

For me (and probably not others) babies and toddlers seem more like pets and once children are past that they are more like people. It's hard to remember a general blanket of cuteness from way back, but easier to identify all of the personality traits later.

I think we assume that "having a baby" is meaningful. But the baby stage is so fleeting that you might as well discount it.

😂you legend !

I feel very much the same as so many people on here, and nostalgic for the past in some ways, but not missing the tantrums and tricky times! For many years I kept journals, writing about our day-to-day family life, and browsing back through those along with photographs, brings vivid memories. My children are now 33, 30 and 27, and are wonderful young people. Our son has a little boy of his own who looks just like his dad at the same age - except for his hair which he has from his Dutch mum, fair rather than dark.
Try keeping a journal to remind you of your children's childhoods in later years! Print photos and write details on the back of where, when and who!

This is totally my experience too @EmpressOfTheSofa I even say to my DS “I miss little DS, I’d love to have a cuddle with him” and my DS says quizzically “er, I’m right here”. We do still have lots of hugs, but I miss the snotty, needy, loud, incredibly affectionate child that he was.

Tbh, I think this feeling is pretty normal. I even feel like this with myself sometimes -- looking back at memories from when I was 9 years old and thinking "wow I can't even believe that was me". My DD is only 3.5 years old and I still look back at pictures and videos of her when she was a baby first learning how to giggle, babble, crawl, talk, walk, eat, etc and it feels like a completely different little human than the version of her now. It's just because they have grown so much as has your relationship with them.

I could have written this post.
I was just thinking about it the other day.

I am very close with my 4 children, aged between 32 and 22yrs old. I know that they are people that I love deeply. I know that they are my children. But linking these amazing adults, to my amazing babies, toddlers and even teens is something I struggle with.
Clearly they are them.... but they are kinda . . . .different people.

Makes no sense.

I feel this way too. 🥲

I remember being surprised that my DCs were teenagers. I remember their early years clearly, and first few years of school, but then I turned around and they were growing up! I do feel I lost a few years and have to think very hard about what they were like.

I remember fondly my small child. I was dismayed by the teenager's attitude, but she was only horrible at home and flipped to being wonderful while outside the home. People didn't believe me. She was loving and kind in her 20s and I was so proud of her having the skills to be able to grow. But now in her early thirties her personality is very selfish. I think she is suffering from some problems she doesn't recognise but I can't mention this or I'd lose her altogether.
All these are facets of the same person who I love dearly, but she is an adult now and I accept her own decisions although they have the ability to shred me to ribbons.
Yes the original question was can we recognise that toddler. Yes I recognise her but now she's an adult in her own right.
This is what mothers are for. To enable them to follow their own path, whatever that may be.

Totally get it OP.But I also feel I should remember much more from toddler/preschool days. I do have some vivid memories though.

I totally get this.

I had a really weird moment of grief a few months back when I realised that we won’t ever go back to that time when they were little. Don’t get me wrong, if you’d asked me if I thought I could, I’d have thought you were bananas, obviously. But there was some part of me that wanted to or something, I can’t quite place it.

The other thing for me is that not only have they changed a lot but so have I. The children they were and the adult I was feel far away from who we all are now.

I remember so many things about the infant and toddler years with my oldest but almost nothing about the next ones. It bothers me too sometimes.

I'm the opposite. I have to mentally remind myself that I'm not looking at my adorable little horror who was the spitting image of Boo when I took her to see Monsters Inc when it first came out.

And then the little bugger (who is several inches taller than me, btw) puts her Puss in Boots eyes on me and completely messes with my mind and emotions and I'm straight back looking at the little ratbag again.

I totally get it.

I was saying only the other day how it seems that one day I was holding a little boys hand, walking him to school, tucking him in at night, now he's a strapping great teenager who scowls at me, smells a bit and eats all my food. I love him dearly but it's different.

I can't remember how I felt when I was holding that little boys hand, it's so strange, it makes me sad.

I'm the same. I think it's because of the continuous evolving and changing as they grow up. In contrast, I can remember vivid snapshots in time of my nieces because I wasn't seeing them every day.
I said to my DC the other day that I'd love to have another cuddle with those squidgy babies. DS towers over me now!

I didn't have a smart phone when DS was little (I don't even have one now!), which makes me a bit sad as I don't have lots of videos or audio even. I wish I could remember how he sounded before he suddenly turned into a gruff voiced teen in the past year! We do have photos and little bits of film as we had a camera and later DH had smart phones.

Weird though, how tech is changing our relationship to memory. Academics think invention and more universal take up of writing did something similar - oral tradition of storing memory and learning lessened as now humans didn't have to store knowledge so much in their heads. Never mind invention of internet. I do wonder if that's why I can't function without a list of to do's. My memory is not trained in storing the 6 things I need to get done, or a least its a bit random in remembering. Like at 3 am.

The few books of photos I have from me and my sister in the 70s I really treasure and know by heart. I lost my dad very young, and I can't really remember his voice and wish I had some recordings to listen back to. That would mean the world.

I do remember mum being younger and it's frustrating that she's got slower at thinking and doing, and is less emotionally independent (she has a coercive partner). There's a sense of grief there, for the person she once was even though her climbing ladders to decorate era is now just a memory.

I think parents think their children are always the same but they evolve the same way we do. My mother died when I was 25. Should she come back now when I am 48, I know she wouldn't recognize me. Not because she would have been absent for 20+ years but because I am a totally different person. Living in a different country, speaking a new language, behaving culturally different, am more independent, self-assured, strong. I'd like to believe your kids grew up in the same manner and the cute toddler you see, laughing cheerfully at some stupid prank, is still there but they work and behave differently because they are adults, with different responsibilities and connecting to the world on a different level. I believe there is no disconnect here, it is just the version of yourself, we all continuously reinvent ourselves because we are continuously learning, adapting, moulding into something fitting for the new time, for the future. Thank god we don't stay the same all the time.