When Do Childhood Memories Fade?

How much do you remember about being a child? Probably not too much. Childhood memories can be a bit spotty. But at what age is your brain able to maintain memories so that you can recollect them later in life? Anthony tackles this question as he takes a look at some recent research on a phenomena known as childhood amnesia.

Read More:
Psychologists document the age our earliest memories fade
"Although infants use their memories to learn new information, few adults can remember events in their lives that happened prior to the age of three."

The Onset of Childhood Amnesia in Childhood: A Prospective Investigation of the Course and Determinants of Forgetting of Early-Life Events
"The present research was an examination of the onset of childhood amnesia and how it relates to maternal narrative style, an important determinant of autobiographical memory development."

Wayne State University Teams Up With MIT To Discover How Brain Mechanisms for Memory Retrieval Differ Between Children and Adults
"Neuroscientists from Wayne State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are taking a deeper look into how the brain mechanisms for memory retrieval differ between adults and children."

The Development of Neural Correlates for Memory Formation
"A growing body of literature considers the development of episodic memory systems in the brain; the majority are neuroimaging studies conducted during memory encoding in order to explore developmental trajectories in memory formation."

Recall of Childhood Memories
"The types of childhood memories that an adult recalls may be linked to personality."

Better Understanding of Memory Retrieval Between Children and Adults
"Neuroscientists are taking a deeper look into how the brain mechanisms for memory retrieval differ between adults and children."

Watch More:
Why Can't We Remember Being Babies?
TestTube Wild Card
Are Memories Reliable?

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[NickRoman]

I remember when I was like 4 or 5 and first learned to think words silently in my mind. I remember thinking how cool it was that suddenly I had that ability. I seem to recall that I knew that other people could do that. Before that, if I wanted to make words, I had to speak them.

[SunSchrody]

My earliest memory is crawling in the garden with the family cat at the time. The flowers looked gigantic. :)

[Orsbore]

I remember looking at a letter and thinking that I'd one day know what all those squiggly lines meant.

[floojit]

My earliest memory, I was 3 or 4, was that of my parents. We were walking along this trail lined by tall pines and came across a puddle that stretched the width of the path. My mother had new tennis shoes so my dad picked her up in his arms and ran across the water, splashing it everywhere. I can still hear them laughing :")

[shygirl]

I can barley remember anything about my childhood, even my teenage years are a blur 😞

[NatureLady]

The greatest memory I have of all was when I was 4 years old and we lived on protected land. It was very hot around the lake and the mud was thick getting to the water. I swam almost to the middle and I could hear and feel thunder.
I looked around and saw horses tumbling down the paths and sinking into the mud same as I did. 3 brown horses swam out to me. I could see their nostrils get real big and spray water. :) I started to cry not because I was afraid but because swimming with them was so beautiful.
I was so tiny and they were so massive. Their eyes were huge and they were wondering who I was. I could hear my mom yelling and my dad laughing telling my mom everything was fine and it was.

[Univerzion]

I had a dream when I was 3 and in my room, uncontrollably coughing until my mom comes in and yells something. Suddenly everything goes dark and I wake up with most of my family standing around me. A nurse comes in, takes a breathing mask and covers my face. She tells me to just breathe, so I do, but I dislike the taste of the oxygen and throw up. They end up changing my sheets and putting me back into bed.

I hadn't realize this was probably my first memory, and I never told anyone this "dream". I realized it was real when I was 14 and my mom was talking to an old babysitter I had.

What had happened was I kept telling her I didn't feel good, her boyfriend at the time told her to ignore it, because I was probably looking for attention. I stopped breathing one night and had to be rushed to the hospital. Doctors told her she was lucky. If she had gotten there later, they wouldn't be able to do anything, I would've been dead. I was only getting 10% of air into my lungs.

So my first memory is basically me almost fucking dying...

[mjc]

The majority of the things I remember from childhood are of bad things that happened to me and from reading some of the other comments it seems that trauma is an important factor in how well you remember past events.

[crastybowersox]

I had a memory from infancy that I was able to retain for quite a while and it has been through the telling it to people that has helped me to remember it even as the memory tends to get fuzzier through the years. And the reason that I know it's a real memory is that we have baby pictures of the event. My mom had laid me in my crib and as I saw her walk out the door of the room, it was my wish to go with her and so I got on my belly and scooted backwards in an attempt to get out of the crib, except the bars prevented my escape and all I was able to do was stick my legs out between the bars, which then evidently, my folks took pictures of. I think the more you revisit a memory, the better you retain it.

[Icewind]

I can recall mere snapshots when I was 2. 

However, several years ago, I had a dream. I was young and walking around a house that I was personally unfamiliar with.  I walked outside and even to the neighbor's garage.  I could see a lot of detail in this dream.

Telling my parents details about this dream, it turns out it perfectly reflected a house that I lived in when I first started walking.  They would walk me to the neighbor's to play with their similarly aged baby - in their garage.

[BinkieMcFartnuggets]

All I remember is a priest and I was crying a lot.

[andycalhoun]

I'm 39 years old and I can clearly remember multiple memories from when I was about 1 year and a month old and up.

[NessNan]

I'm 19 and I have memories from my first birthday. I remember the texture and pattern of the chair I was sitting in, the yellow and grainy texture of the sit'n'spin, I remember the texture and noise of each toy and all of the bright colours and how I interacted with each one.

[HiiroRocker]

I have a couple early memories.

The first thing I'm able to recall is from before I was adopted, so I couldn't have been more than two at the time. I was sitting on a floor, and I distinctly remember that floor being blue and red. It might have been a blanket, or a rug, but it was on the ground and it was blue and red, regardless. I was doing a wooden Jigsaw puzzle. One of those ones for toddlers that didn't have the pieces connect to each other, but merely had you put the pieces into slots, for the purpose of teaching you how to identify shapes. My birth mother and her mom were arguing over whether or not she would be allowed to keep me. At the time, I clearly didn't know English, but it's almost as if my mind "recorded" their conversation for later use, when I would be able to "translate" it.

My second memory is a bit hazier, but still relatively straightforward. My adoptive mother was dressing me for church, and I noticed out of the corner of my eye that a toy wooden train was visible just past the door frame. I said "that's my train, " and my mom told me without looking at it that it couldn't be my train because I had left it in another room. Once she finished dressing me, she turned and saw the train, and then admitted that I had been right, it was my train, after all.

I don't have any other memories from early childhood. Pretty much all of my other memories are from late Elementary school and onward, without missing large gaps.

[ShawnRavenfire]

I remember sometime when I was a teenager talking about remember seeing a tornado when I was five, but today, I have no memory at all of ever seeing a tornado.  So that memory must have faded sometime between my teens and now.  It's a weird feeling to remember having remembered something that I can't remember now.

[JoshiaSeam]

I am 19 this year. I can still remember events that happened when I was a toddler, from 2-3 years. Memories from the 1st year of infanthood are totally lost. From 2-3 years the memories are patchy, but rather vivid. There were few events that were significant, I could remember being patted to sleep every night in a hammock attached by a spring supported by the ceiling (maybe frequency helps to reinforce memories). I could remember the favorite toy that I used to play with. I still can remember the time where one of my relatives were babysitting me for a period of time, and during that period I went to a supermarket for the first time. I don't remember any birthday parties that had happened during that period, as the first time I remember seeing a birthday cake was when I was 5. A picture storybook that had amused me greatly then was an illustrated story of chicken licken. I had been reading books, guided by my mother since I was around 3. By 4, I remember my mother was aggressively making me read plenty of books, both fictional and non-fictional, and in English and Mandarin. The book that had stuck me was a children's book on astronomy, I don't remember the title, but what had made me fascinated were the pictures of stars and galaxy. From then on, I became obsessed about science. I wanted to learn more about science and I was introduced to a science magazine for children called the young scientist. Most of my knowledge of science during the period came from there. I started playing the piano around 4, and I had learnt lessons at a music school called Christofori (I had forgotten teacher's name as of now), where I had lessons until the age of 9 where I changed music schools. I seem to be able to remember more memories when I was 4-5 than I was 2-3. I remember travelling to Gold Coast, Australia, for a week long vacation when I was 5 and the events that I remembered were a farm stay (where I tried to milk a cow but failed, and I rode a horse guided by a person to go around in a small circle), and a trip to the theme parks dreamworld and movie world. I still remember how the flat I lived from the day I was born to age 5 looked liked. I remember going to a nursery school around the area when I was 2-3 and was "promoted" to a government sponsored kindergarten school when I was 4. When I was 6, I shifted homes, and I was enrolled into a different kindergarten, it was a kindergarten run by a Presbyterian church, its name was Galilee Kindergarten. There were much more excursions compared to the previous government sponsored kindergarten. I particularly like the IT class where I got to play educational computer games. The computer at Galilee kindergarten was an Apple and I could remember being fascinated at how different the mouse looks from the mouse I had for the windows I had at home (I was still using windows 98 during that point of time, that computer lasted me for a very long time). I became relatively proficient at using the computer. I could remember performing on stage for the graduation performance for the kindergarten where I was performing an Indian-esque dance with a group of students. I remembered forgetting the moves on stage. There are other memories that I still have during the years 2-6, from 7 to my current age every significant event is pretty clear but in episodic forms. I remember the events primarily by sight, the sounds, smell, textile sensations are unclear or forgotten. I am aware that memories can be distorted over time. To my knowledge, the memories I still have are extremely vivid and I think are rather accurate. 

[chaunceyroberts]

I just had a conversation with my mom about when I was young about me breaking my teeth in a bathtub and to my and my mothers surprise I was about 1 year old.... how could I remember that?

[KebradesBois]

It's an isolated one, but I remember it because of the joy of my parents that almost frightened me, I found the key of the hollyday house they were looking for and wich was under a piece of furniture, I was 18 months old.

Surely they're reaction impressed me so much that the memory was more deeply imprinted and as I kept recalling it, it lasted. It's very vague and blurry, I mostly remember their reaction, the color of the walls and my hand with the key.

It surely lasted that long because when I asked my mother what exactly happened back then and tried to describe the details I remembered, she knew what I was talking about, then she told me the whole story that help memorizing it for life.

[solodark]

Everything before age 3? I can't remember anything before age 13, but I'm only 15.

[DanX.]

I remember sitting in a room that had wooden walls, playing with plastic toys when I was like 2 and then my mom came up to me... Nothing beyond that point...It's like I'm awake... remember a thing... go to sleep...wake up few years later, repeat until I'm like 7...