How many childhood memories do you have?

[HourlyTime]

A friend asked me if I had school dinners or took a packed lunch when I was a kid - I couldn't remember.

Either Primary or secondary school, I have zero memories of eating, I couldn't tell you - I can't remember any friends I had, or outside school what I did in the summer holidays or weekends.

I realised I have very, very few childhood memories at all.

Is that normal/common?

I'm so sorry to hear that. People who had trauma in their childhood will often only remember strong feelings like this, it can make recalling exactly what happened to them very difficult and painful.

Some people can disassociate completely and only remember faint feelings that something was "wrong" or "off".

I don't mind at all - I remember almost nothing about my father, who I last saw aged 13. I don't think I liked him. I felt nothing when I heard he had died.

My mother was in and out of my life; we have little contact now, she has complex mental health issues.

Writing it out like that - perhaps there's reason I don't remember much! I know objectively my childhood wasn't wonderful but I've never considered it particularly bad. Hard, perhaps. Very lonely.

I think I shouldn't dwell on this too much!

I remember loads from my childhood!
I have visual memories of being dropped off at nursery, I also remember quite a bit from year 1 and more from 2. My more regular memories come from the age 8 I think.

I'm glad you've asked this question as I've been recently wondering about it myself as my menories are either blanks or very very vague. I wondered if this was perhaps due to selective memory or deleting what was actually a pretty difficult childhood.
Watching my own children growing up has made me wonder what they'll remember..
Interesting to hear it could be a form of amnesia.

I remember loads. Maybe it’s an age thing?

I remember loads from my childhood from the age of 1. My first childhood house that we moved out of when I was 16 months old, my cot, my childminders and the other children there, playgroup and nursery, my parents friends and their children, my friends, my friends home phone numbers, every holiday we went on, school dinners and packed lunches, activities, school trips, every car we had including the make, model and number plates, most of my friends parents cars. I can replay a lot of it in my head as if the memories were videos. I have ASD, I do wonder if there’s a link.

I won't ask you any more questions, sorry about that.

It sounds like you are thriving now, if you want to leave the past where it is, then that's where it will stay!

I wish you a very happy future x

I don't remember much, and what I do I think it's actually from photos and talking to family about the past. I have a friend I went to school with who has an incredible memory and if I'm thinking about a teacher or friend from school I'll call her and ask, she remembers everything.
Can you see pictures in your mind OP?
I can't and I wonder if that's something to do with it.

I remember far too much... I wish there was some way to forget - is there such a word as "un-remember" - my entire life up till I was in my 20's.

I have very few memories, DH has loads which I find weird as he’s 5 years older than me so his memories are further away than mine!

I barely remember anything, he remembers teachers names, full names of friends and lots of little details. Blows my mind really!

My memory is hideous. I'm only 40 but have NO memories of my primary school years bar one single memory of my Reception teacher tucking me up in the tiny wooden bed in the home corner and giving me a cuddle because I was so poorly. I vividly recall feeling so safe and loved. Oh, and the taste of the chocolate custard at lunch! I can't name any childhood neighbours, friends, teachers, anything like that, and can barely remember what my childhood home looked like.

My family don't reminice about the past, or talk about childhood memories, or look at old photos, which I think plays a huge part. My MIL was telling me a funny story about DH and SIL playing as children and said "I'm sure your Mum has lots of stories like this about you!" and I just remember thinking, well if she does I've never heard them. I couldn't tell you a single game my brother and I used to play, or how we spent our time, or what we enjoyed doing. No memories of holidays, or days out.

Its not just down to that though. I often struggle to recall very basic words, so must have a spectacularly awful memory in general.

Like a PP I have many detailed memories of my childhood but my short term memory is terrible. My DH can't understand how I can point out someone in the street to him that I haven't seen since age 6 or 7 and tell him detailed memories about them, yet I can't remember where I left my keys or hairbrush. My explanation is that all my memory is taken up with long-term memories and there's no room left for anything short-term.

I remember from age 2.5 . 60 years ago. I do think I remember the more dramatic moments.

I remember loads. I remember classes, projects, winning prizes, teachers, playing and fighting with my siblings, friends. Even kindly neighbours.
Doing handstands and clapping games in the playground. Reading tonnes of books and I can still picture the little library I used to go to.

I remember loads from very early childhood, my memories don’t necessarily match my Mums, although most of it was very happy & comfortable different things stick. When people talk of making memories I think it is usually for the parent a child’s view is very different.

I remember lots! From about 3 onwards. Very vividly however can’t remember what I did last week 😹

I remember so much, right from standing in my cot, crying wanting my mum, being in my pram, I remember nursery, what we did there, the teachers, talking to them, primary school, just so much. My sister doesn't remember anything at all.

I think it sounds like you had a tough childhood, and the child you were protected yourself from the pain of it by shutting yourself off from it, effectively.

Be kind to yourself, and thankful to the child to were that you don't have bad memories stuck in your head.

How are you with more recent memories?

I can remember lots of snippets from my childhood, but my memory is bad now. I can't remember what my kids were like when they were young. I desperately wish I'd taken more videos, as when I see them I can see how lovely they were when they were little, but other than a very few snippets, I can't conjure the little versions of them up in my memory.

I have very clear memories of childhood places, names and routines. My earliest identifiable memory comes from when I was no older than 2, which I only discovered because I described a home my aunt's family had moved out of by then. My DH, by contrast, barely remembers houses he's owned as an adult, or the names of old neighbours, never mind classmates from the 1970s.
I probably could tell you what I had for tea last Tuesday as well. Mind you, there's very little useful material being stored in my brain.

Don't remember a thing I don't hardly remember even my younger adult years particularly either. My brain just doesn't seem to store memories

I remember loads of stuff. I can remember being desperate to start school at age 3 and my auntie bringing me a bag back from Spain and telling me that was what all the little Spanish children took to school. I loved it so much and filled it with drawings and felt pens. I absolutely HATED school when I started and bawled my eyes out when I had to go back after the Christmas holidays. I remember going home for lunch because I lived so close to my school. And eating Oxtail soup every single day for months because I was obsessed with it. I remember all my teachers. The smell of the wooden floor in the assembly hall. Changing into my gutties for PE and pretending to be a tree. Sometimes I feel as if I remember everything. Of course that can’t be true, but there are so many stories and experiences swirling around in there that they don’t always feel like memories, but rather thoughts about stuff that could just as easily have happened yesterday or a hundred years ago. They’re just there. DP and I reminisce about our childhoods all the time. I had a fairly good childhood, but I was an anxious child with a tendency to overthink and I found life hard. I still do!

I'm 63. I can remember wearing nappies and those awful plastic pants they put on kids in the 60's. I can remember my childhood very vividly. I sometimes wish I didn't.

I remember loads. My earliest memory is being sung to by a woman who worked on a cargo ship that took 36 passengers along with butter and bacon from Copenhagen to Hull. She came to settle me while my parents went to dinner. My bed was a sofa turned to the wall so I didn't fall out with the movement of the sea. On the same voyage, I had my third birthday and remember being lifted up onto the bar by my dad to look at my birthday cake. When I was at infant school, I was washing my hands one day wishing my mother would die. (We never got on.)

I remember very little from before I went to school (age 5y2m - I do remember that I was quite miffed I didn't get to go to school on my 5th birthday...a Friday. Quite possibly the last day of term. The summer term).

There was the first sight of my brother, which would have been 6 weeks before my 5th birthday. Six months later missing his entire christening and half of the party because I tripped on an unexpected step up into the posh seating area in church and couldn't put my hands out because I was wearing a poncho and hit my head on the corner of the chair. Auntie Jean (the vicar's wife) took me to hospital and I remember lying on the bed knowing I was about to be put to sleep so that they could stitch the wound. I had what they called "butterfly stitches" between my eyebrows.

I think my earliest memory is of what I think of as a nightmare even though objectively it's not particularly nightmarish. (I've had scary dreams since but this is the only one I think of as My Nightmare...) I was running across a bridge into a forest, which in my head has a sort of arched entry. Oddly, my memory of it has me looking at myself running... Recently I've begun to wonder whether this was influenced by my brain scan, which was early enough that I don't actually remember it at all.

I remember getting my first doll, the Christmas I was 3y6m. It was in my glamourous aunt's flat and the doll was so lovely (she really does have a very sweet little face).

I remember my youngest aunt's wedding, when sis was about 1ish so I would have been 4. We all had new dresses for it and one of my sisters was one of the bridesmaids.

About a year after that I remember a photo being taken. It was of me playing the recorder standing by the chair in which little sis was sitting reading a book. I remember thinking this was Absolutely Hilarious because sis couldn't read and I couldn't play the recorder. The photo still makes me smile.

I remember less now than I used to. And when we went back to Cumbria for a holiday I realised that some of my memories (in this instance from when I was 21) were inaccurate...

I remember quite a lot.

I remember my primary school and even my reception teacher's name. That was 50 years ago. I remember the name of my best friend in primary school at the age of 5/6.

I remember riding my bike in the park behind our house.l at ages 4 to 6. I remember going to Brownies as a kid at the same age.

I recall eating school dinners. We walked from the school to the dining hall in a different building down the road.

I remember odd occasions before I was 4 years old. I don't remember every day life, just certain things of significance...like getting hit in a car accident as a kid and the ambulance taking me to the hospital.