Culture & Children of Divorce: Early Memory

[Cloudpatrol]

Was reading this article on certain cultures and children from divorced households: having better access to early childhood memories.

Italians, Maori, and Kids of Divorce Have Earliest Memory -- Science of Us

What age does your first memory go back to?


If you feel like sharing, please do!


{My first memories are from 3.

I am not sure which was THE very first, but one I remember: my parent's rushing into my room in the middle of the night.

They thought there was something wrong with me. But, I was actually just really excited. The moon was exceptionally bright and had shone through my curtains, waking me up. I had opened the window and was singing to the moon...which woke my parent's.}

[FemMecha]

One early memory for me:
I was sitting in a high chair crying and people were trying to console me, but I kept crying.

My aunt baked a bunny shaped cake for Easter and served me up a piece. Then someone teased and said, "oh no, you aren't going to eat the bunny are you?" I cried and couldn't eat the cake.

haha - all crying memories.

[SearchingforPeace]

I always had a really good memory, for certain things. One of my earliest memory during my childhood was playing in a forest in the mountains in the fall with my family. I later saw a picture from that and learned I was 1 and a half years old.

I have lots of other memories from early childhood, some good, some bad, some indifferent. But that is the oldest one.

[Obfuscate]

the article mentions a couple of factors that are believed to be linked, so i will try to cover those points first... my parents divorced when i was ten... my parents (perhaps more so my mother) had friends that in many ways resembled extended family and i think could be thought of as "extended family"... my mom read to me a lot as a child, and liked to talk to me about things that had happened in my past (and her own)... i have no real idea how many (longish) books she read to me then, but i believe it must have been close to fifty... we spent time looking at photo albums and discussing the events in the pictures...

my first memory predates my third birthday, though by how much i am not sure... when i was four i was convinced that it was from when i was one... anyhow, in the memory i am coloring with crayons in a highchair and my mother is doing something in the sink... the earliest memory i can confirm the date of is my third birthday... my parents brought out a cake and i blew on it... i recall a wide variety of details and events from about three and a half foreward... a funny is my mom complaining at me that everytime ashley visited me, she had to teach me not to eat dog food all over again.... she had the same complaint about ashley's visits making me forget not to pick my nose at an earlier date (i know it was earlier, because when she talk about the dog food, she mentioned that she was glad that at least i was done with my nose)...

my mom likes this song, and i thought it would be fun to include...

[ZNP-TBA]

Maybe I was three. probably sometime in 1985

I remember visiting my god parents while my dad and godfather made music in the garage. At the same time good food smell was always cooking thanks to my mom and godmother and my god-brother and best friend would cause trouble while you could hear the faint sound of Star Search in the background on the TV.

[ᴅeparted]

My parents divorced when I was 3. My earliest memory is being pushed around in a stroller. I think I was 2? It's just a short snippit/clip of a memory.

[Falcarius]

Falcarius first proper memory was when he was about about 2 years old, he was resting in his cot and his family cat Zebedee came in and was playing around the room and it died of a heart attack.

Falcarius remembers most weeks around that time, if not most days, his parents would take him for a walk along the river and through the nature park where the gas works used to be, a clay capped grass field come dumping ground at the time, which is now a woodland and grassy area. Around this time he accidentally fell off an embankment and had to go to hospital as he badly sprained his ankle.

For a change they would sometimes would go for a walk to the next village; past the old pumping house and over the old reservoir lakes and railway lines and on along the raised pathway through flood plains called the Devil's Backbone. Or as Matthew Arnold put it in the the Scholar Gipsy:

And once, in winter, on the causeway chill
Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go,
Have I not pass'd thee on the wooden bridge,
Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow,
Thy face tow'rd Hinksey and its wintry ridge?

[Yuurei]

My earliest memory was at age three. I know this because I couldn't tell if I asked if it was a dream so I asked my grandparents.

[21%]

I was one-ish or two. My older cousins built a "house" out of dry branches in their garden. Someone took me out to see it. I remember that I was utterly confused. I didn't know what it was and didn't know what it was supposed to mean.

(No divorce)

[Cloudpatrol]

Thank you so much for your replies. I am SO enjoying them.


I was a bit surprised at how young so many of you were


I looked it up and our group, thus far, remember things at an earlier stage than the average population...

Advances in Child Development and Behavior - Google Books

Kids' earliest memories might be earlier than they think | Cornell Chronicle

The culture of memory