[mildavw]

I understood "infant amnesia" but wondered how far back my kids could remember when they were little. As soon as they could start to communicate with words (around 12 months?) I asked both kids about being born, and being in mommy's belly. They both gave descriptions I'd call accurate! "Wimming" my son said, meaning swimming inside of mommy's belly. And my daughter said "coooold!" when I ask if she remembered coming out of mommy's belly.

I remember thinking "Holy shit, they remember it all."

[deanCommie]

Kids from age 1-4 also have an incredibly vivid imagination for fantasy, and can't tell apart the difference between reality and imagined scenarios sometimes.

The prototypical scenario in which this is relevant is the whole "there is a monster in my closet". Sure, they just imagined it. But the visual feels just as real as if they had actually seen it.

It's easy to dismiss this as an adult, but modern parental advice is to treat these flights of fancy very earnestly, and engage it on it's own rules ("I went inside the closet and I chased the monster away" is a much better strategy than "There's no monster in your closet") [this isn't advice for you, I'm sure you don't need it, but any non-parent reading that may find it interesting]

My 2 year olds frequently tells me and my wife stories that we know are factually inaccurate. (Like something that happened on a walk with one of us so we know for sure it didn't happen)

The best leading theories about infant amnesia is that language IS what causes it. Memories are indexed by different keys until language is developed. Once language comes in, it becomes the only key function for accessing memories, and the ones mapped before language just become unsearchable.

I hope I'm wrong. It would be super cool if your kids actually remembered these things for real. But I doubt it.

[unsafecast]

> The best leading theories about infant amnesia is that language IS what causes it. Memories are indexed by different keys until language is developed. Once language comes in, it becomes the only key function for accessing memories, and the ones mapped before language just become unsearchable.

That actually makes a ton of sense. Also a bit eerie to think that my brain holds information that I just can't search for. I wonder if certain triggers could cause that information to surface, since even though our memories are searched through language, maybe there are other 'pathways' that can reach those spots. Kinda like memory that's not mapped in any pages, it's physically there but you can't normally address it.

[deanCommie]

It happens all the time!

Think about all the time you couldn't remember an actor's name, or some detail about a party. But then as soon as someone tells you, or starts telling a story from the party, it all comes flooding back.

[unsafecast]

That's a good point. I wonder what kind of triggers could bring those really old memories back, as simple things like seeing objects/faces from back then don't work.

[throwaway05126]

I learned how to walk when I was around 10-11 months old. I still remember showing it to visiting relatives, and is my first memory that I can date.

I can date other memories relatively accurately because they are from an apartment where I only lived until I was 2 years old. They probably don't go as far much farther back than my first memory. I remember playing with a car, looking out the window, meeting my neighbour who I never saw again after we moved etc.

Some may call them false memories, but I don't see any reason why we should not be able to keep memories alive if we think about them from time to time? It's not like there's a big "reset" on your birthday that deletes all information from your brain. I have always reflected on the past from an early age, and I think the memories were kept alive by this and moved into the more mature part of the brain as time went on. At least that is my theory.

Maybe most people don't remember their first years because they don't reflect on them from an early age, and the memories are destroyed as the brain changes and evolves? Like a LRU cache :-)

[perlgeek]

I don't know about that far back, but when my older daughter was about 18 months old, she had autobiographic memories going back to maybe 9-12month of age.

When she was 3 years old, she still remembered them. Forget everything about them at age 7.

[mod]

It would be cool to have that on video to show them eventually.

If they're young enough, I'd do that!