What is your earliest memory and how old were you?

[mollipops]

Have been thinking on this for a while, after a friend told me she clearly remembers her 4th birthday party, and another said she remembers her 6th birthday since her dad kept teasing her saying "You're sick?" every time she said she was six.

My earliest memory is a sound - mum shuffling down the long lino passage from her bedroom to the kitchen in the mornings, her slippers sliding along inch by inch. She was paralysed in a car accident - doctors had told her she wouldn't walk again but she proved them wrong! Mum tells me I would have been about 2 at the time. My first birthday party I remember I think I was about 4 too (combined with my brother's birthday party - see Xmas due date thread!).

It made me realise that my children may well remember things that happen, and that we do together, good or bad, from around the ages they are now...which made me aware that I should try to make them positive wherever possible!

Mines, I'm relieved too. I have so many before the age of 3 that I couldn't begin to start writing them. Always thought I was the only one, as apart from DH (

I recall walking with my mum and baby bro, holding onto the shiny pram handle. We were walking under a bridge over the railway near our house. I was 2 when DB was born. Also vague memories of the garden of that house which we left when I was 4. I clearly recall my grandparents' flat, with a big, black, old-fashioned range-type cooker. Also being in bed there with gastric flu, clutching the china 'guzunder' with pink roses at the bottom. Nanna died when I was 4 and my only clear memory is of going with her to the bakers each day for her to buy me a roll.

My ds1 remembers falling downstairs when he was 18mths, the colours of the front doors of several of the houses we'd lived in and what he had for tea the day ds2 was born, when he was 4.5yrs.

And should add that ds1 also remembers falling over and splitting open his head at the Mat Ward when ds2 was 1 day old, and needing lots of stitches. The nurse fed him Newbury Fruits to keep him quiet and when he sat up he vomited them into her lap. I also remember the day only too well!

My third birthday, at a nursery run by nuns, my mum and sister had come to celebrate with me, but shortly after the cake the nun decided they should sneak out so that I wouldn't be disrupted (or some other silly excuse). I remember running after them and crying because they had gone without me. There are pictures of me with my coat on and a sullen face in the hallway of the nursery so it may not be a real memory, but I can still feel quite strongly the sense of abandonment I felt.

At abput the same age I remember, with the nursery we were supposed to sing at a church and the nun telling me to shut up because I could not sing in tune....and a few more all related to the nursery (most them bad memories)
Now, that's an interesting thought, can't quite pinpoint the earliest happy memory I have, I guess sad things stick to you most.

My earliest memory is of, sitting in the car with my Dad.He was pealing an orange, with a pen knife, in such a way that the skin stayed whole, but came open in 5 sections(like a flower shape).
I then used it as a hat for my doll.
I must have been about 2.5, my Mum tells me he worked away and only came home on weekends, until I was 3.5.I can remember him bringing me presents every week when he came back.
Oddly, I have no memories of him not being there, only of when he was home.Something, my Dad took great pleasure in when I told him.

Not an earliest memory, but although I can't remember the Beatles, I CAN remember saying about Paul McCartney and Wings on their first appearance on Top of the Pops that "they're not as good as the old band was".

I can also remember loving watching the original drummer in the Stones (can't remember his name) go absolutely mad while he was playing on TOTP.

Also, who can remember Valerie Singleton and Peter Purves on Blue Peter?! ..... showing my age here!

I was bitten in the face by a dog when I was 4 - we were on holiday in Scotland (and the dog was a Scottie!) having tea in a hotel, and what I actually remember of it is being driven in a Morris Minor by a man from the hotel to a local doctor's to get the bite stitched, and him having a dog (a Westie) in the back of his car which I tried to climb over the front seat to get to - my mother was furious, she had thought being bitten might have put me off dogs!

Another time I ate some iron tablets, thinking they were Smarties, and spent most of the night throwing up into an enamel po.

We definitely mostly seem to remember traumatic things - Mollipops, if you make all your kids' experiences happy, they won't remember much!

JanZ, wasn't Charlie Watts always the Stones' drummer then?

(You missed out John Noakes BTW! I remember them!)

My 1st memory is of being in my cot, picking foam from the mattress & stuffing it into the crevices of my activity center which was attached to the bars. I wasn't a naughty child, honest! (I hope there aren't any mattresses around like that now!)

Bears - how strange, my first memeory is of being in a cot and ripping wallpaper off the wall!

Oh good I'm glad I wasn't the only mischievous cot inmate.

I'm so envious of all your memories. I was born in Zambia, and didn't come back to UK until I was 3, then moved again when I was 4.5 - I have no memories at all until our last move.

We recently moved, and my boys are 3 and 5 - I talk to them often about our old house, and friends, and show them photographs. I know I will always look back on those halcyon days when the boys were babies and toddlers, and I would like them to remember them too.

I think whoever said that the things we most remember are the bad things was right; so maybe you just had a happier early childhood than some of us, KMG?

There are photos of things that happened & I know that I used to remember the events, and the photos just served as reminders. Particularly me playing on swings when I must have been about 2yo. I have lost the memory, now, though; used to have it, but memory gone at 35yo & I can just look at the photos & know I used to actually remember that, too.

Earliest real memory is Christmas, probably 27 months, in the mountains where it was cold (snow?) outside, my parents gave me a little 'stove' and I could make my own little chocolate cakes; which was great, except that my big brothers kept stealing the cakes before I could get them out of the oven! I also got a battery-powered pull-along toy
dog that barked one Christmas, presumably same year (this would be 1969). No photos, so these have to be real memories.

My mom tells me that that holiday I also annoyingly refused to wear nappies, which was a real pain in the cold & snow to undo all my clothes. I don't remember that part :-)

Mention of Zambia reminds me that DH has very early memories of his childhod in S Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He moved there with his family when he was 18mths and got measles when their boat arrived in S Africa. He remembers being in an isolation hospital and his dad peering through the glass window at him, which was all the contact permited for two weeks.

He also remembers sneaking down to the railway siding with his older brother, and swapping all the destination plates on the freight carriages, little horrors! And his sister being born, when he was 3, in Bulawayo. He sadly also recalls going to bed on the day that his brother was killed (back in the UK) and seeing J's dressing gown lying on his bed and thinking he would never wear it again.

It does indeed seem that generally the less pleasant things in life such as loss and separation are the ones we remember most. You'd have thought our brains would be better programmed, wouldn't you, unless it was some sort of instinct from way back when to remind us to keep out of trouble??

My earliest memory is of standing by my baby brother's pram. He was about to have a nap in his pram outside (we lived in Africa) and I was worried that it was going to rain. I am 15 monts older than him so I was probably about 2?

Remember really clearly aged about 3 years old helping my mum sort out the laundry listening to Aretha Franklin 'Say a little prayer.' To this day it's still one of my favourite songs and reminds me of my extremely happy childhood.

Sitting on the back seat (red vinyl!!) of my dad's white Viva and asking my sister Karin: "Ka -Ka will you do up my cardi?" I think I was about 2.

Biting the same sister through 2 layers of clothing and making her bleed!! I must have been about 3.

Oh yes, and the news reports of the Vietnam war - probably about 3-4 years old.