First memories

I remember being in my pushchair and wanting to sit up straight and my Dad insisting I lie down. I must have been less than 3. And around 4 years old I walked in my sleep after a nightmare. I wonder how far back the mind can go?

My first memory is from age 2-3.

I lived in Singapore from age 1 to 3. I have a very vivid memory of watching a bullock being chased down the street in front of our bungalow by a crowd of very angry local people who were all yelling and waving things at it.

I always thought it must have been a scene from a film I saw at some stage, or a dream, until I found photos of me, age 2, standing at the garden gate. The gate was a metal scroll work gate and I immediately recognised the gate from my memory. Apparently I spent a lot of time at the gate watching the comings and goings down the street.

I can remember playing in the snow in the garden, I could only have been 21 months. I was wearing a pale blue siren suit with swan's down round the hood. My father's friend was there with his dog, exactly like Lassie.
I can also remember wearing a leather harness and being fastened into the pram. The harness was white and had two or three little bells on so I jingled when I jiggled.
Just odd isolated incidents.

One of my first memories comes a little later than other posters. I was four and a half, peeping over the side of a crib and seeing my baby brother. I’d gone to stay with Grandparents in Paignton, obviously whilst Mum was in hospital having him, came home and there he was, completely adored him and still do!

There appears to be two threads on this topic.

I have two vivid memories from my early childhood. One was when I woke up in the middle of the night and looked through the bars of my cot and saw my mum dad in bed as the moon was very bright coming through the windows. My mum told me later that I was moved to my own room from their bedroom when I was about 2.

The other memory is being in a pushchair when it was very wet. I leaned over and saw a piece of soggy paper on the pavement and I stretched out and picked it up (no pushchair straps in those days.) It was a brown ten shilling note! It went home with me and was put in a small pot in the kitchen for "pocket money". I think I was about 2 1/2 or 3 then.

First para -"with a very bright moon". I thought I had checked it, honest!

Ten shillings was a lot of money in 1959/60!

I know exactly how old I was for my first memory. It was the day my brother was born at home and I was sent next door for breakfast. I clearly remember thinking it was odd because you did not visit other people for breakfast. Later in the day I came home to see my new brother.

watermeadow My mother doesn't remember a lot of the things I remember about my childhood. And I don't remember some of the things she talks about. I think we remember things that impact us, not necessarily what happens to others. You may well have had more important things on your mind when those events occurred.

I have vivid memory of sitting in what my mother called '' a buffer chair''.I was packed in the doorway of my grandmother's kitchen and could see my mother and grandmother moving about in front of me. I even remember the alphabet bricks painted not the tray of the chair.
I related this to my mother many years later. She couldn't believe it, but verified the exact situation.She said I must have been just over a year old then.I was the first child of five, and my brother and sisters were not even born then.My first sister was born a few weeks after my second birthday.

I was about 18 months old and I was woken up by my grandfather putting a toy dog onto my bed. Last time I saw that poor dog he was minus one ear and most of his fur was worn away. 75 years later I think he's still packed away in a box in the garage.

My next memory is when I was 2 or 3 and was chased by a bantam cockerel. It seem the size of an Andean Condor to me!

My first memories : I was in my pram, very uncomfortable as the reins were too tight when my sister came along and smacked my face ! Probably nearing 2 years. ! One Christmas at about 4 years poking Dads eye so much so he had to go to the eye hospital ! And a nicer one at about 4 years seeing Perry Como on tv singing Magic Moments (14 inch black and white tv). All in the early 1950s.

I have a clear picture of a pair of hands which seem to come from a long way back. I kid myself it was the midwife who delivered me.

But I definitely have lots of memories from before 4 years old because they involve the house, the neighbours and neighbourhood we moved out of when I was 4. My sister was 2 and has no ,memories of that house at all, not even of the earlier das in the new house. Thank heavens for photos.

My first memory I think I was about 3 and standing in my grandparents backyard. I’m holding a little child’s suitcase as every year they took me to see my grandmas sister who lived in the North East. This involved a long journey on a steam train. Very exciting times.
The other memory I have is of when my little brother was born.He was a home birth and I was nearly 4. I recall standing at the bottom of the stairs again with my grandma not realising what was happening really until we went up to see them both after he was delivered. Funnily enough I don’t remember where my dad was / probably gone to work!

I actually have a memory from
When I was about 9 months old. I was sitting up in my large praam on my aunties 3rd floor balcony watching the children playing on the street below. I know I was 9 months as it was when I was staying there on holiday - other memories was when I was about 3 years and had chickenpox

I remember running up the front door because someone was knocking on it. The knob and lock were well above my head. Mam opened the door and a man was there with a big box.

I asked my mam about it when I was older. She said I was about 18 months old when that happened. She remembers it because there had been a massive argument between her and my dad about it. They were very poor and she'd been saving a bit each week for months because she knew she'd have to buy a bed for me. One day, without her knowledge, Dad had opened the door to a salesman who sold encyclopedias and has fallen (in her opinion) for the line. He used the money to pay for a set as (in his opinion) education was the most important thing for a poor child to have. So I spent the next couple of years continuing to share my sister's bed but, as we grew older, we really loved the encyclopedias so in a way both my parents were right. The daft thing is that even after mam got me a bed, me and my sister would still often sleep together especially in winter when the ice formed on the inside of the windows lol.

I remember standing up in my pram. I suppose I was about two, or even three. I was the youngest child, and my mother liked to have the pram to put shopping on the tray underneath, even though I was really too old for it.

I must have been quite young when I watched Andy Pandy for the first time - we were staying with my grandparents, we didn't have a tv. I remember being upset when it finished and Auntie Rose (my godmother) who was watching with me said Andy would be back next week. It must have been a Tuesday because Auntie Rose came every Tuesday afternoon to see my grandparents. It was always tea-cakes (probably Rington's) with a cup of tea when she came.

I think vivid memories are the strongest, possibly - for obvious evolutionary reasons - those involving sheer survival.

My own first coherent memory comes from a bombing in WW2. I could not have been more than two. I recall the moment the sound of the flying bomb stopped, being carried downstairs at speed, the night in the shelter wrapped in my mother's blue fake fur coat, the man sat opposite twinkling at me - and coming out into shocking brilliant sunlight in the morning because half the narrow, normally dark, street was gone.

It breaks my heart to imagine the first ineradicable memories of contemporary children in warzones everywhere that are far more personal and cruel than that.

I have memories from the age of two, but only of extraordinary events. From four or thereabouts I can recall more, and remember ordinary things.

I believe it is quite common that neither children nor adults remember things from times when they were unhappy. We do all tend to forgot those, surely?

Probably from when I was about 2/3. I have very clear memories at 4 years.

I distinctly remember sitting on my mother's lap in the sidecar to my father's motorbike. When I mentioned it to mum, after dad had died, she blanched. The only time I was in the sidecar was when she was heavily pregnant (with me), and dad got rid of the bike before I was born.