early memory essay

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First memories of oneself can be easily confused with fabricated memories made by looking at old pictures, movies, and hearing stories related to one’s personal history. This is the case for me: I have seen so many home movies, heard so many stories about myself, and seen so many pictures about my early childhood, I do not know for certain what my first memory is in actuality. Since I cannot pinpoint my first memory exactly, I will unfold a series of memories that were the earliest in my childhood.

Another sharp early memory of mine was when I examined my body. I was curious, as most children are, about the texture and form of the body we are given at birth. From an early age, I had four operations: two open heart surgeries, and two hernia surgeries. I would feel my scars, which scale up my chest and travel near my groin as if they were landscapes, burned into my skin until age would fade them away. Besides scars, I would relish over the smallest of particulars about my eyes, which have hazel lines shooting out from the pupils. I would examine my life state through my eyes: I could see how I was on the whole through them. My hands were also a point of curiosity for me: my left hand is significantly smaller than my right hand because of surgeries. Comparing them was and still is a bit of a fetish of mine.

I learned to ride a bicycle quite early, though I do not remember the exact age. My father was a professional cyclist at one point, and he wanted his son to be keen in the sport as well. But I remember my first attempt to ride a bicycle without training wheels ending disastrously and humorously. Out on the main street next to our house, where there were almost no cars driving around back then due to less population, I started out okay on a small child-bike. My balance was fine from the start, but then I got overexcited and lost my balance, eventually smashing into our mailbox. Though my dad was concerned about my safety at first, after he saw that nothing serious had happened to me, he laughed without hesitation and was poking fun at me. I did not feel discouraged—in fact, I was laughing along after a few seconds.

I have many more scattered memories that could count as first memories, even though they are mixed in with my impressions from watching home movies, seeing pictures, and hearing stories about my childhood. We may not know our first memory for certain, but once we try to dig it up, the world we lived in as a child begins to pour through the lens of visual thought, bringing back the atmosphere of this time into the present moment, like an incense smoke that softly curls around our present senses.

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Earliest Memories Start at Age Two and a Half, Study Finds

Joni Sweet is an experienced writer who specializes in health, wellness, travel, and finance.

Nick Blackmer is a librarian, fact-checker, and researcher with more than 20 years’ experience in consumer-oriented health and wellness content. He keeps a DSM-5 on hand just in case.

Key Takeaways

• New research shows that our earliest memories may begin at age 2.5, about a year sooner than previously thought.
• How far back you can remember depends on a long line-up of factors, including your culture, gender, family, and the way in which you’re asked to recall memories.
• You may be able to remember further back when asked repeatedly over time what your earliest memory is.

How far back can you remember? The answer might be even earlier than you think, according to new research.

In a study recently published in the journal Memory , researchers found that people could recall things that happened to them from as far back at age 2.5 years old on average—about a year earlier than previously estimated.

The research also suggests that there’s actually a “pool of potential memories” that people can pull from, rather than a fixed beginning, and you may be able to recall even older memories when interviewed repeatedly about them.

Here’s what the latest research says about how far back our memory actually goes and why it matters for the narrative of your life.

For this study, researcher Carole Peterson, PhD , professor in the department of psychology at Memorial University of Newfoundland, reviewed previous research on childhood amnesia and analyzed data collected in her laboratory over the last two decades to better understand early memories .

The data showed that people’s earliest memories can often be traced back to age 2.5. Scientists previously believed that a person’s memory clock started at around 3.5 years old.  

David Copeland, PhD

It might be difficult to pinpoint the one true ‘earliest memory’ for anyone.

“This article explored the idea of infantile amnesia—this is an idea that researchers have considered for years and it states that people do not remember much (or anything) from their first 2 to 3 years of life,” explains David Copeland, PhD , associate professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “This line of research is suggesting that we might have memories a little bit earlier than that.”

The research also found that just how far back any one individual’s memory goes depends on a variety of factors, such as: 

• nationality
• home environment (urban vs. rural)
• how your parent recalls their memories
• intelligence
• birth order
• the size of your family

Cassandra Fallon, LMFT

This study will lend validation to people that even from a young age, children do see and are impacted by their environment, the people in them, and events around them.

“This study will lend validation to people that even from a young age, children do see and are impacted by their environment, the people in them, and events around them,” says Cassandra Fallon, LMFT , a therapist at Thriveworks.

Fallon continues, “The fact that recalling memories is a challenge and that this study gives permission for this to be acceptable is helpful for validating that we may not ever know some details, like dates and times, but that it does not take away from the fact that we experienced or felt what we did and that it impacts us.”

Another important factor in how far you can remember is how you’re asked to recall your earliest memory, the study found. Your earliest memory may not be permanently fixed. Instead, extensive interviews and multiple follow-ups over the span of months or years could help you pull even earlier recollections from your memory bank in some cases.

“This aligns with what I observe in my clinic. I advise my patients to create timelines of their life, and this helps them access early memories,” says Leela Magavi, MD , psychiatrist and regional medical director at  Community Psychiatry  in Newport Beach, California. “They are often surprised by how much they can remember once they complete this activity.”

The research concluded there’s fluidity in retrieving early experiences and that one’s earliest memory may actually be malleable.

“In other words, it might be difficult to pinpoint the one true ‘earliest memory’ for anyone,” adds Copeland.

Why Early Memories Matter

Regardless of how far back they go, your earliest memories may provide therapeutic opportunities.

“Early memories often align with individuals’ core values, fears, hopes, and dreams. Learning about early memories can allow individuals to nurture their inner child and heal from the stressful or traumatic situations they have endured throughout their life,” says Dr. Magavi. “It can also help them gain clarity and embrace what matters the most to them.”

Leela Magavi, MD

Early memories often align with individuals’ core values, fears, hopes, and dreams. Learning about early memories can allow individuals to nurture their inner child and heal from the stressful or traumatic situations they have endured throughout their life.

Early memories—even those that have been reconstructed from external sources beyond what’s in our minds—can also play an important role in constructing the overall narrative of your life, says Copeland.

“For example, whether someone truly remembers the experience of falling off of a tricycle at age 3 or they learn about it from family members’ stories or from seeing pictures, it might not matter—as long as the event actually happened, it can be a part of one’s life narrative,” he says. “Someone might use it as a theme in their life of overcoming difficulties ever since they were young.”

Overall, these early memories help us to better understand ourselves, which can help us lead more fulfilling lives.

“The better we know ourselves, both attributes and challenges, the better we are able to make changes or maintain awareness for consistency. It is a powerful thing to know our strengths to continue using them and to know our weaknesses so that we can grow and learn to become a better become better version of ourselves,” says Fallon.

She adds: “This improves self-confidence, eases anxiety, reduces depression, and builds our grit, determination, and resiliency to handle anything life throws at us.”

What This Means For You

Your earliest memories can teach you a lot about yourself. Just how far back you can recall depends on a variety of factors, but new research shows that our memory bank may start at age 2.5 on average.

Repeatedly being interviewed about your earliest memories may allow you to remember things that happened at an even younger age. But experts say the age at which your earliest memory occurred doesn’t matter quite as much as putting that information into the context of your life and finding ways to grow from it. These memories, when placed into our overall narratives, provide opportunities to heal from trauma and handle the obstacles of life. 

Peterson C. What is your earliest memory? It depends .  Memory . 2021;29(6):811-822. doi:10.1080/09658211.2021.1918174

By Joni Sweet Joni Sweet is an experienced writer who specializes in health, wellness, travel, and finance.

What do your earliest childhood memories say about you?

Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology, Macquarie University

Lecturer Clinical Psychology, University of Wollongong

Lecturer in Early Childhood, Macquarie University

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Penny Van Bergen has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Amy Bird has received funding from the Health Research Council (New Zealand).

Rebecca Andrews does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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We experience thousands of events across childhood, and yet as adults we recall only a handful. Some might be “firsts” (our first ice cream, our first day at school), or significant life events (the birth of a sibling, moving house). Others are surprisingly trivial.

So, what do your earliest childhood memories say about you? Do they reflect your early skill for remembering, your interests, or your individual experiences?

The answer to all three questions is yes – but this is not the whole story. Although we sometimes see memory as a video camera, recording our lives accurately and without bias, this is a myth .

Instead, our childhood memories are intricately shaped by our family and culture.

Read more: What outcomes parents should expect from early childhood education and care

Our first memories

If you can’t remember life as an infant, you’re not alone.

As adults looking back to childhood, we cannot typically recall anything before age 3-4 years . This phenomenon is known as infantile amnesia .

Although some individuals report very early memories of being walked in their pram as a baby, or falling asleep in a cot, these memories are likely to be fictional .

One of the most important developments for the onset of memory is language. Research shows that language is needed not just for sharing our experiences, but for encoding them.

For example, young children invited to use a fictional “magic shrinking machine” could only recall this one year later if they had the appropriate vocabulary at the time of the event.

We also know that bilingual adults who immigrated as children recall early memories in the language they spoke at the time the memory was formed.

In addition to language, children must also develop a coherent sense of self, or of “who I am”. This emerging development allows them to pin events to a personal story that is continuous across time. The sense that “this happened” develops into a deeper understanding that “this happened to me”.

Read more: Learning languages early is key to making Australia more multilingual

Family factors

While the development of language and sense of self enable our earliest childhood memories to form, family factors shape their contents.

Within families, parents reminisce with their children multiple times a day – reliving family holidays, for example, or bonding over sibling hijinks, or reflecting on past transgressions to discuss the lessons learned. Interestingly, however, there are strong individual differences in the way they do so.

Some parents use a highly “elaborative” reminiscing style : asking questions and providing event detail and structure in a way that scaffolds and encourages the child’s own contribution. Others are less elaborative.

Some parents also focus particularly on emotional content (“She was really sad! Why did she start crying?”), while others focus more on factual details.

These individual differences have important implications, with children eventually coming to adopt the personalised style of their parents: first during shared reminiscing conversations, and later in their own independent memories .

Read more: Parents can promote gender equality and help prevent violence against women. Here's how

What style of parent are you?

Here’s an example of a conversation between a highly elaborative mother and her pre-school aged child.

Mother: You and Daddy put the Christmas tree up together, and then you put on decorations! What decorations did you put on?

Child: Um… the Christmas balls!

Mother: That’s right! Daddy bought Christmas balls and stars to hang on the tree. What colours were they?

Child: Red and gold.

Mother: Red and gold. Pretty red balls, and gold stars.

Child: And there was the paper circles too.

In contrast, below is a conversation between a less elaborative mother and her preschool aged child.

Mother: I’m going to ask you about your preschool Christmas concert. Was that good?

Child: Yeah

Mother: What happened there?

Child: Dad came

Mother: Yes, but what happened?

Child: I don’t know.

Broader family structures and experiences also play a role. In Italy, children growing up in intergenerational households tend to have both earlier childhood memories and more childhood memories than children growing up in traditional nuclear families. This probably occurs due to more opportunities to engage in rich and elaborative reminiscing conversations.

In contrast, parents and children experiencing depression may show a tendency for “ overgeneral memory ” – that is, difficulty recalling specific memory details. Poorer quality parent-child reminiscing is related to overgeneral memory among three- to six-year-olds.

Read more: Essays on health: Australia is failing new parents with conflicting advice – it's urgent we get it right

Cultural factors

Just as our earliest childhood memories reflect our reminiscing conversations with our parents and our overarching family experiences, they also appear to reflect broader cultural practices and norms.

Consistent with the “individualist” values of Western culture, American college students’ earliest childhood memories are typically long, specific and self-focused.

Consistent with the “collectivist” values of Chinese culture, Chinese students’ earliest childhood memories are typically brief, and more likely to reference social responsibilities.

American mothers are also more likely than Chinese mothers to focus on their child’s own personal emotional experiences when remembering together, and it is likely that these early parent-child conversations serve as a mechanism for imparting cultural norms.

Read more: How children's picturebooks can disrupt existing language hierarchies

In New Zealand, where Māori culture includes a rich oral tradition in which stories are shared across generations, Māori mothers have been found to reminisce differently to Pākehā (European New Zealand) mothers about important life events. When talking with their children about their own birth stories, for example, Māori mothers include more elaborations, more references to emotion, and more references to relational time.

Interestingly, Māori also have the earliest average age of first memory on record. At 2.5, these earliest memories occur a full year earlier than in some other groups.

So the research is clear: our earliest childhood memories are intricately shaped by our experiences within our own families and cultures.

The process of memory formation is nothing like a video camera.

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Norton Field Guide’s Writing a Literacy Narrative

Key features / literacy narratives.

A well-told story. As with most narratives, those about literacy often set up some sort of situation that needs to be resolved. That need for res- olution makes readers want to keep reading. We want to know whether Nichols ultimately will pass the proficiency test. Some literacy narratives simply explore the role that reading or writing played at some time in someone’s life—assuming, perhaps, that learning to read or write is a challenge to be met.

Vivid detail. Details can bring a narrative to life for readers by giving them vivid mental images of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of the world in which your story takes place. The details you use when describing something can help readers picture places, people, and events; dialogue can help them hear what is being said. We get a picture of Agosín’s Chilean childhood when she writes of the “blue electric sky” and her “little blue notebook” in which she described her “house surrounded by cherry trees and gardenias.” Similarly, we can picture a little boy standing on a stool planting African violets — and hear a three-year- old’s exasperation through his own words: “I’d like to see a menu.” Dialogue can help bring a narrative to life.

Some indication of the narrative’s significance. By definition, a literacy narrative tells something the writer remembers about learning to read or write. In addition, the writer needs to make clear why the incident matters to him or her. You may reveal its significance in various ways. Nichols does it when she says she no longer loves to read or write. Agosín points out that she writes in Spanish because “nothing else from my childhood world remains . . . To write in Spanish is for me a gesture of survival.” The trick is to avoid tacking onto the end a brief statement about your narrative’s significance as if it were a kind of moral of the story. My narrative would be less effective if, instead of discussing my grandmother’s back- ground and my graduation, I had simply said, “She taught me to be a life- long reader.”

A GUIDE TO WRITING LITERACY NARRATIVES

Choosing a Topic In general, it’s a good idea to focus on a single event that took place during a relatively brief period of time. For example:

• any early memory about writing or reading that you recall vividly
• someone who taught you to read or write
• a book or other text that has been significant for you in some way
• an event at school that was interesting, humorous, or embarrassing
• a writing or reading task that you found (or still find) especially difficult or challenging
• a memento that represents an important moment in your literacy development (perhaps the start of a LITERACY PORTFOLIO)
• the origins of your current attitudes about writing or reading
• learning to write instant messages, learning to write email appropriately, learning to construct a website, creating and maintaining a Facebook page

Make a list of possible topics, and then choose one that you think will be interesting to you and to others — and that you’re willing to share with others. If several seem promising, try them out on a friend or classmate. Or just choose one and see where it leads; you can switch to another if need be. If you have trouble coming up with a topic, try FREE-WRITING, LISTING, CLUSTERING, or LOOPING.

Considering the Rhetorical Situation

PURPOSE:   Why do you want to tell this story? To share a memory with others? To fulfill an assignment? To teach a lesson? To explore your past learning? Think about the reasons for your choice and how they will shape what you write.

AUDIENCE: Are your readers likely to have had similar experiences? Would they tell similar stories? How much explaining will you have to do to help them understand your narrative? Can you assume that they will share your attitudes toward your story, or will you have to work at making them see your perspective? How much about your life are you willing to share with this audience?

STANCE: What attitude do you want to project? Affectionate? Neutral? Critical? Do you wish to be sincere? serious? humorously detached? self-critical? self-effacing? something else? How do you want your readers to see you?

MEDIA / DESIGN: Will your narrative be in print? presented orally? on a web- site? Would photos, charts, or other illustrations help you present your subject? Is there a typeface that conveys the right tone? Do you need headings?

Generating Ideas and Text

Good literacy narratives share certain elements that make them interesting and compelling for readers. Remember that your goals are to tell the story as clearly and vividly as you can and to convey the meaning the incident has for you today. Start by writing out what you remember about the setting and those involved, perhaps trying out some of the methods in the chapter on GENERATING IDEAS AND TEXT. You may also want to INTERVIEW a teacher or parent who figures in your narrative.

Describe the setting . Where does your narrative take place? List the places where your story unfolds. For each place, write informally for a few minutes, DESCRIBING what you remember:

• What do you see? If you’re inside, what color are the walls? What’s hanging on them? What can you see out any windows? What else do you see? Books? Lined paper? Red ink? Are there people? Places to sit? A desk or a table?
• What do you hear? A radiator hissing? Leaves rustling? The wind howl- ing? Rain? Someone reading aloud? Shouts? Cheers? Children play- ing? Music? The zing of an instant message arriving?
• What do you smell? Sweat? Perfume? Incense? Food cooking?
• How and what do you feel? Nervous? Happy? Cold? Hot? A scratchy wool sweater? Tight shoes? Rough wood on a bench?
• What do you taste? Gum? Mints? Graham crackers? Juice? Coffee?

Think about the key people. Narratives include people whose actions play an important role in the story. In your literacy narrative, you are prob- ably one of those people. A good way to develop your understanding of the people in your narrative is to write about them:

• Describe each person in a paragraph or so. What do the people look like? How do they dress? How do they speak? Quickly? Slowly? With an accent? Do they speak clearly, or do they mumble? Do they use any distinctive words or phrases? You might begin by DESCRIBING their movements, their posture, their bearing, their facial expressions. Do they have a distinctive scent?

• Recall (or imagine) some characteristic dialogue. A good way to bring people to life and move a story along is with DIALOGUE, to let readers hear them rather than just hearing about them. Try writing six to ten lines of dialogue between two people in your narrative. If you can’t remember an actual conversation, make up one that could have happened. (After all, you are telling the story, and you get to decide how it is to be told.) Try to remember (and write down) some of the characteristic words or phrases that the people in your narrative used.

Write about “what happened.” At the heart of every good NARRATIVE is the answer to the question “What happened?” The action in a literacy narrative may be as dramatic as winning a spelling bee or as subtle as a conversation between two friends; both contain action, movement, or change that the narrative tries to capture for readers. A good story dramatizes the action. Try SUMMARIZING the action in your narrative in a paragraph — try to capture what happened. Use active and specific verbs (pondered, shouted, laughed) to describe the action as vividly as possible.

Consider the significance of the narrative. You need to make clear the ways in which any event you are writing about is significant for you now. Write a page or so about the meaning it has for you. How did it change or otherwise affect you? What aspects of your life now can you trace to that event? How might your life have been different if this event had not hap- pened or had turned out differently? Why does this story matter to you?

Ways of Organizing a Literacy Narrative

Start by OUTLINING the main events in your narrative. Then think about how you want to tell the story. Don’t assume that the only way to tell your story is just as it happened. That’s one way—starting at the beginning of the action and continuing to the end. But you could also start in the middle—or even at the end. Shannon Nichols, for example, could have begun her narrative by telling how she finally passed the proficiency test and then gone back to tell about the times she tried to pass it, even as she was an A student in an honors English class. Several ways of organizing a narrative follow.

[Chronologically, from beginning to end]

• Introduce the story.
• Describe the setting and people.
• Tell about what happened.
• Say how the story was resolved.
• Say something about the significance.

[Beginning in the middle]

• Start in the middle of the action, giving enough information to let readers know what was happening.
• Fill in details: setting, people, specific actions.
• Make clear how the situation was resolved.

[Beginning at the end]

• Start at the end of the story: tell how the story ends up, then introduce the subject.
• Go back to the beginning of the story, telling what happens chronologically and describing the setting and people.
• Conclude by saying something about the story’s significance.

Writing Out a Draft

Once you have generated ideas and thought about how you want to organ- ize your narrative, it’s time to begin DRAFTING. Do this quickly —try to write a complete draft in one sitting, concentrating on getting the story on paper or screen and on putting in as much detail as you can. Some writers find it helpful to work on the beginning or ending first. Others write out the main event first and then draft the beginning and ending.

Draft a beginning . A good narrative grabs readers’ attention right from the start. Here are some ways of beginning; you can find more advice in the chapter on BEGINNING AND ENDING.

• Jump right in. Sometimes you may want to get to the main action as quickly as possible. Nichols, for example, begins as she takes the ninth-grade proficiency test for the first time.
• Describe the context. You may want to provide any background information at the start of your narrative, as I decided to do, beginning by explaining how my grandmother taught me to read.
• Describe the setting, especially if it’s important to the narrative. Agosín begins by describing the constellations in her native Chile.

Draft an ending. Think about what you want readers to read last. An effective ENDING helps them understand the meaning of your narrative. Here are some possibilities:

• End where your story ends. It’s up to you to decide where a narrative ends. Mine ends several years after it begins, with my graduation from college.
• Say something about the significance of your narrative. Nichols observes that she no longer loves to write, for example. The trick is to touch upon the narrative’s significance without stating it too directly, like the moral of a fable.
• Refer back to the beginning. My narrative ends with my grandmother watching me graduate from college; Nichols ends by contemplating the negative effects of failing the proficiency test.
• End on a surprising note. Agosín catches our attention when she tells us of the deaths and disappearances of her friends and relatives.

Come up with a title. A good TITLE indicates something about the subject of your narrative — and makes readers want to take a look. Nichols’s title states her subject, “Proficiency,” but she also puts the word in quotes, calling it into question in a way that might make readers wonder — and read on. I focus on the significance of my narrative: “How I Learned about the Power of Writing.” Agosín makes her title an expression of her sense of identity: “Always Living in Spanish.”

Source: Bullock, Richard. The Norton Field Guide to Writing . New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2009.

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Development of episodic and autobiographical memory: The importance of remembering forgetting

Patricia j. bauer.

Department of Psychology, Emory University

Some memories of the events of our lives have a long shelf-life—they remain accessible to recollection even after long delays. Yet many other of our experiences are forgotten, sometimes very soon after they take place. In spite of the prevalence of forgetting, theories of the development of episodic and autobiographical memory largely ignore it as a potential source of variance in explanation of age-related variability in long-term recall. They focus instead on what may be viewed as positive developmental changes, that is, changes that result in improvements in the quality of memory representations that are formed. The purpose of this review is to highlight the role of forgetting as an important variable in understanding the development of episodic and autobiographical memory. Forgetting processes are implicated as a source of variability in long-term recall due to the protracted course of development of the neural substrate responsible for transformation of fleeting experiences into memory traces that can be integrated into long-term stores and retrieved at later points in time. It is logical to assume that while the substrate is developing, neural processing is relatively inefficient and ineffective, resulting in loss of information from memory (i.e., forgetting). For this reason, focus on developmental increases in the quality of representations of past events and experiences will tell only a part of the story of how memory develops. A more complete account is afforded when we also consider changes in forgetting.

Forgetting is fundamental. Most of the time, we take it for granted that much of what we once remembered eventually (if not sooner) will be forgotten. We even plan for forgetting—creating notes and electronic reminders of things that we do not want to forget, but know that we otherwise would. Yet in spite of the prevalence of forgetting, theories of the development of memory largely ignore it as a potential source of variance in explanation of the course of change in long-term memory for past events—so-called episodic or autobiographical memory. Instead, focus is on what may be viewed as positive developmental changes, that is, changes that result in improvements in the quality of memory representations that are formed. The purpose of this review is to remove forgetting from the shadows and bring it into the spotlight of attention. The major argument of the review is that focus on developmental increases in the quality of representations of past events and experiences will tell only a part of the story of how memory develops. A more complete account is afforded when we also consider changes in forgetting (see Bauer, 2015 , for a review).

Complementary Processes in Development of Memory

There is no doubt that over the course of childhood, memory for past events and experiences gets better. The early history of the developmental study of memory is replete with examples of age-related improvements in task performance ( Bauer & Fivush, 2014 ). The trend is apparent whether one considers incidental memories, such as those formed over the course of everyday life, or deliberate and strategic remembering (see Bauer, 2013 , for a review). The changes typically are viewed in terms of positive developments in the quality of the representations of past events that are formed, in terms of improvements in component abilities, or both. For example, we attribute better retention over time to more veridical encoding (e.g., Ornstein, Baker-Ward, & Naus, 1988 ), to more nuanced differentiation of the details of one event or experience relative to another (e.g., Bauer & Lukowski, 2010 ; Riggins, 2014 ), to greater precision locating events in time ( Friedman, 2014 ) and place ( Lourenco & Frick, 2014 ), to more robust and autonomous retrieval processes (e.g., Roebers, 2014 ), and to increases in autonoetic awareness ( Tulving, 2005 ; Wheeler, 2000 ), to name a few. All of these changes contribute to the formation of memory representations that are of higher quality, through addition of more, better elaborated, and more tightly integrated features ( Bauer, 2015 ). The result is a higher quality memory trace and more robust remembering.

Critically, increases in the quality of the representations of past events and experiences are only one side of the mnemonic coin. The other side of the coin—the complement to positive change—is negative change in the representation, change that results in forgetting. Forgetting has been recognized as a force in memory since the beginning of scientific study of the faculty. Famously, Ebbinghaus (1885) carefully tested and documented the course of forgetting of lists of nonsense syllables over time, revealing highly replicable retention (and forgetting) functions. Yet forgetting has been largely ignored in developmental theories. With notable exceptions (e.g., Brainerd, Reyna, Howe, & Kingma, 1990 ), most developmental scientists do not feature forgetting processes in theories of “what develops” in memory for specific events or experiences. That is, they do not attend to developmental changes in the rate at which memory traces are forgotten. The argument developed in this review (see also Bauer, 2015 ) is that focus on positive change alone fails to account for why the development of memory takes the forms that it does. The argument applies to episodic memory in general, and to autobiographical memory—memory for personally relevant past events—and explanation of the phenomenon of childhood amnesia, in particular. Briefly, to explain the shape of the distribution of episodic and autobiographical memories in childhood and beyond, we must consider that over the course of development, there are increases in the quality of memory traces and there are decreases in the vulnerability of mnemonic traces to forgetting.

It is noteworthy that consideration of complementary processes in shaping the course of development is not unique to memory. An excellent example of consideration of complementary processes is in brain development. Throughout prenatal and early postnatal development, there are increases in neurons, dendrites and axons, synapses, myelin, glial, and other “positive” events that form the brain (e.g., Gilmore, Shi, Woolson, Knickmeyer, Short, Lin, Zhu, et al., 2011 ; Seress & Ábrahám, 2008 ). Equally importantly, there are “regressive” events as well. The best-known example is the number of synapses: the adult complement of synapses is reached only after an initial period of over-production, followed by pruning ( Huttenlocher, 1979 ; Huttenlocher & Dabholkar, 1997 ). In part as a result, cortical thickness first increases and then decreases, reaching adult levels only in adolescence ( Gogtay, Giedd, Lusk, Hayashi, Greenstein, Vaituzis, Thompson, et al., 2004 ). The fact that regressive events take place at different times in different structures and regions of the brain is recognized as an important part of the story of why cognitive processes develop as they do (e.g., Østby, Tamnes, Fjell, & Walhovd, 2011 ; Gogtay et al., 2004 ). It is further recognized that focus on one or the other of these trends—either positive events or regressive events—and ignoring the other, results in an incomplete understanding of the factors and forces that shape brain development.

Why accounts for the relative lack of attention to the “regressive” event of forgotting as a source of developmental change in episodic and autobiographical memory? The blunt answer is that, historically, there was no role for forgetting because very little was deemed to be remembered and thus available to be forgotten. By analogy to brain development, there was no overproduction and thus no need to consider pruning. This argument applied to the capacity to remember specific events and experiences—so-called episodic memory—in infancy and to the capacity to remember personally relevant or significant events (i.e., autobiographical events) and experiences in the preschool and early school years. In infancy, based largely on Piagetian theory (e.g., 1962), mental life was considered to be confined to the “here and now” world of present objects and ongoing events. It was not until the middle to end of the second year of life that infants were thought to have developed the symbolic capacity to recall objects, events, or other entities in their absence. Without the capacity for recall, no memories of episodes, events, or experiences were formed or retained and thus there was no need to postulate a role for forgetting.

Beyond infancy, the capacity to remember specific past events and experiences was recognized but the ability to form autobiographical or personal memories was thought to be a later developmental achievement. Autobiographical memory differs from “run of the mill” episodic memory (memory for what, where , and when : Tulving, 1985 ) in the extent to which the memories are personally relevant or significant, and to which individuals take a personal, subjective, or evaluative perspective on the events (e.g., Fivush, 2012 ; Fivush & Zaman, 2014 ). Traditional developmental perspectives suggest that for the first 5 to 7 years of life, the capacity to create this particular type of episodic memory is either lacking or substantially underdeveloped. In some cases, the missing ingredient is posited to be a general cognitive deficit; in other cases, it is something more specific (discussed in detail below). Regardless of the nature of the deficit, the explanation is the same: to the extent that memories of specific events are formed early in life, they lack features of later-developing autobiographical memories. This perspective provides a ready account for infantile or childhood amnesia ( Freud, 1905/1953 )—the relative paucity of autobiographical memories for the first 3 to 4 years of life, with a gradually increasing number of such memories over the first decade (see Bauer, 2008 , 2014 ). The explanation is that adults recall few (to no) autobiographical memories from this period because during the period, no such memories were formed. As was the case for episodic memory in infancy, there is no role for forgetting because there are no personal or autobiographical memories to be forgotten.

The major premise of this review is that episodic memories are evident even in infancy, and that autobiographical memories are evident even in the period eventually obscured by childhood amnesia. To explain developmental changes in the memory function and why the distribution of autobiographical memories looks the way that it does, we must focus on factors that improve the quality of memory representations, to be sure, yet we also must focus on developmental changes that affect the vulnerability of memory traces to forgetting. In the balance of this review, I focus primarily on forgetting. I do so because, as already noted, forgetting has been relatively neglected in the developmental literature, yet as discussed in sections to follow, there are strong reasons to believe that it is a major source of age-related variance in episodic and autobiographical memory function. Before turning to forgetting, I provide a brief review of evidence of remembering.

Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood

As implied above, consideration of forgetting is necessary only if there is something to be forgotten. If no memories are formed, there is no need to explain why they are not apparent. Evidence that even infants form and retain episodic memories, and that preschool and early school age children form and retain autobiographical memories, has been reviewed in detail elsewhere (e.g., Bauer, 2007 , 2013 , 2014 , 2015 ; Lukowski & Bauer, 2014 ). For this reason, I provide a brief review here.

Memory for Specific Episodes in Infancy

The notion that infants were unable to recall specific past events and experiences came under empirical scrutiny with development of elicited and deferred imitation techniques. Deferred imitation was introduced into the literature by Piaget (1962) . He reported on his daughter, Jacqueline’s, deferred imitation of a cousin’s temper tantrum. Piaget took Jacqueline’s re-enactment of the temporal tantrum after a delay as evidence of her ability to re-present the experience symbolically and thus of the capacity to recall the past. In the 1980s, the task was brought under experimental control (e.g., Bauer & Mandler, 1989 ; Bauer & Shore, 1987 ; Meltzoff, 1985 ), and since has been used to examine a number of attributes of infants’ memories, including whether the memories are of unique events, and whether the basic attributes of episodic memories— what, where , and when ( Tulving, 1985 )—are evident.

In imitation-based tasks, props are used to demonstrate individual actions or sequences of actions that infants then are permitted to imitate either immediately, after a delay, or both. Based on their behavior in these tasks, it is clear that infants remember what, where , and when , elements regarded as defining of episodic memories. Memory for the “what” of events is apparent in the first year of life (e.g., Carver & Bauer, 1999 , 2001 ), through infants’ reproduction of the actions they see modeled. By the second year of life, infants reliably recall the individual target actions of multi-step sequences even over delays (e.g., Bauer & Leventon, 2013 ; Bauer, Wenner, Dropik, & Wewerka, 2000 ). Infants also remember the specific features of the objects on which the actions were performed. That is, they reliably identify the objects they saw used to model sequences, even when the objects are presented among distracters of perceptually different but functionally similar props ( Bauer & Dow, 1994 ; Lechuga, Marcos-Ruiz, & Bauer, 2001 ). Memory for the specific features of the props used to produce events is associated with higher levels of recall over a delay ( Bauer & Lukowski, 2010 ). Infants also seemingly bind objects to specific events. Infants who witness a prop used in one sequence and then see the same prop used differently in another sequence exhibit impaired performance, relative to infants who see the prop used in only one sequence ( Wiebe & Bauer, 2005 ). Infants also remember the “where” and “when” of events. They correctly identify the locations in which specific events took place, even over delays of 1 and 3 months ( Lukowski, Lechuga, & Bauer, 2011 ). They also remember the “when” of events, as evidenced by reliable ordered recall of multi-step sequences (e.g., Bauer & Leventon, 2013 ; Bauer et al., 2000 ). Thus although infants cannot verify their episodic memories verbally, they reveal them in their behavior.

Memory for Autobiographical Experiences in Childhood

As noted above, autobiographical memory is distinguished from episodic memory by the personal, subjective, or evaluative perspective placed on the event and the memory thereof. Traditional developmental perspectives suggest that for the first 5 to 7 years of life, the capacity to create this particular type of episodic memory is either lacking or substantially underdeveloped.

Traditional accounts: Missing ingredients

One hypothesized reason for the late emergence of autobiographical memory is that it awaits development of a self-concept around which memories can be organized (e.g., see Howe, 2014 , for a review). Other accounts suggest that it is not a lack of a physical self-concept that precludes early memories that are autobiographical, but rather, a subjective self who takes personal perspective on life events and evaluates them for their significance to the self (e.g., Fivush, 2012 ; Fivush & Zaman, 2014 ). Without these developments, there can be no auto in episodic memories and thus no auto biographical memory. Other conceptualizations suggest that for the first 5 to 7 years of life, children lack autonoetic consciousness. The absence of this form of consciousness makes it impossible for them to recognize that the source of their mental experience is a representation of a past event (e.g., Perner & Ruffman, 1995 ). The lack of autonoetic consciousness also means that children cannot mentally travel in time to re-live past events and experiences, a feature thought to accompany both episodic and autobiographical retrieval (e.g., Suddendorf, Nielson, & van Gehlen, 2011 ; Tulving, 2005 ; Wheeler, 2000 ). Although each of these explanations implicates a different specific component ability, they have in common the perspective that young children’s memories are lacking in qualities that typify the autobiographical memories formed by older children and adults. The general argument is that children begin to form, retain, and later retrieve memories that are autobiographical only once the conceptual ingredients that are missing from early memories become available.

An especially influential and well-articulated example of the perspective that the capacity for autobiographical memory is late to develop was provided by Nelson and Fivush (2004 ; see Figure 1 of the original publication, for a depiction). Nelson and Fivush (2004) suggested that it is not until 5 years of age that the many general cognitive and specific conceptual dimensions required for encoding, retention, and later retrieval of memories have reached a sufficient level of development to support autobiographical memory. Among the elements necessity for autobiographical memory, they note developments in self-concept, language and narrative, theory of mind, understanding of time and place, subjective sense of self, mental time travel, and autonoetic awareness, and others. In each case, the capacities undergo development from infancy through early childhood, eventually culminating in the capacity to form autobiographical memories. Until that time, children may have semantic and perhaps even episodic memories, but their memories are not autobiographical. This provides a ready account for childhood amnesia: memories formed in the first 5 to 7 years are not autobiographical, thus explaining the relative paucity among adults of autobiographical memories from this life period.

Schematic depiction of the length of time over which infants retain memories of specific past events from ages 6 to 36 months. The retention interval that infants tolerate increases dramatically over the first two years of life.

Consistent with the suggestion that early memories are not autobiographical is the observation that for much of early childhood, children frequently omit one or more of the elements that we associate with autobiographical memory, seemingly licensing the conclusion that they also are missing from the underlying memory representation, and thus, in turn, rendering them non-autobiographical. Specifically, a full autobiographical report features a number of elements, including not only what, where , and when , but also who was involved in the event, why the event unfolded as it did, and how the participants reacted to it in terms of their emotions, thoughts, or evaluations of the experience. The latter element is especially important to establishing the self-referential nature of autobiographical memories.

Evidence of early autobiographical competence

Although children’s narratives may be less than convincing of the autobiographical nature of the memories that give rise to them, a different perspective is gained by looking beyond children’s verbal reports. Using nonverbal imitation-based tasks described earlier, researchers have found evidence of memory for unique events even in the first year of life. Not only do infants recall what, where , and when , they also evidence behavior that indicates that they have some understanding of why events unfold as they do (e.g., Bauer, 1992 ). When they reproduce events, they exclude actions that are irrelevant to the outcome or goal of the event. And as they approach and enter the third year of life and gain the fluency to provide verbal descriptions of events experienced in imitation-based tasks, children spontaneously verbalize about who took part in the events ( who ) and they provide evaluative comments on the activities in which they engaged ( subjective perspective; Bauer & Wewerka, 1997 ). These behaviors make clear that sometimes well before they provide linguistic evidence, children encode, retain, and later retrieve memory representations that feature each of the individual elements associated with autobiographical memory (see Bauer, 2007 , 2015 ; Bauer & Leventon, 2013 , for discussions).

Beyond infancy, memory processes improve to the point that children remember unique experiences, even over substantial delays. Children also provide more frequent and consistent evidence that they remember the events from their own personal, self-referential perspective. For example, Hamond and Fivush (1991) found that children who experienced a trip to Disneyworld when they were 36 or 48 months of age remembered the event even 18 months later. In Bauer and Larkina (2014b) , children 3 years of age at the time of events remembered in excess of 60% of them over delays of as many as 3 years. In this same age period, children become increasingly accurate and reliable in determining which of two events occurred earlier and in justifying their choices ( Pathman, Larkina, Burch, & Bauer, 2013 ). They also gain command of the use of conventional indices of time, such as calendars (e.g., Friedman, Reese, & Dai, 2010 ) and seasons ( Bauer, Burch, Scholin & Güler, 2007 ; Bauer & Larkina, 2014a ), to locate when personally relevant event occurred. Children also become increasingly proficient at remembering the location in which they experienced specific past events ( Bauer, Doydum, Pathman, Larkina, Güler, & Burch, 2012 ; Bauer, Stewart, White, & Larkina, in press ). These changes mean that more events are stored with more, better elaborated, and more tightly integrated elements of autobiographical memories: unique events, with distinctive features, accurately located in time and place.

Children’s early memories also are self-referential. Between 18 and 24 months of age, children first begin to make reference to themselves in past events ( Howe & Courage, 1993 , for discussion). Throughout the preschool years, children develop a more self-oriented or subjective perspective on experience, as evidenced by increasingly frequent references to their own (and others’) emotional and cognitive states (see Fivush & Zaman, 2014 ). References to the emotional and cognitive states of the experiencer indicate the sense of personal ownership and unique perspective that is characteristic of autobiographical memories.

Children’s early verbal reports of past events frequently omit one or more of the elements that mark a memory as autobiographical. Yet this does not mean that the elements are missing from the underlying representation: absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. Indeed, review of the corpus of studies with infant participants reveals evidence of memory for all of the features or elements characteristic of autobiographical memory: what, where, when , as well as why and how (i.e., evaluation; subjective perspective) . Moreover, from virtually as early as they can talk, infants make reference to themselves in past events. Although no one instance of memory may feature all of the elements, they are apparent across memory “reports.” As infants become children, more and more representations feature all of the elements associated with autobiographical memory. As discussed elsewhere ( Bauer, 2007 , 2012 , 2014 , 2015 ), the net effect is that more and more memories are recognized as autobiographical.

The Role of Forgetting in the Development of Memory

The literature just reviewed makes clear that infants remember specific episodes and that children form autobiographical or personal memories. Throughout infancy and childhood, there are age-related changes in memory, such that both episodic and autobiographical memory become more robust, reliable, and more fully elaborated (see Bauer, 2007 , 2013 , 2015 , for reviews). It is tempting to explain the changes in terms of positive developmental events associated with the strengthening of memory traces such as those implicated in traditional accounts of the development of autobiographical memory (e.g., self concept). Yet just as in brain development, positive events alone cannot explain the course of development. This is especially apparent in the case of autobiographical memory—if self-referential memories of past events are present from early in life and just get stronger and stronger with development, what explains childhood amensia? Clearly, “regressive” events also must come into play. In the case of memory, the regressive event is forgetting. In this section, I outline the conceptual argument for including forgetting among the ingredients in the explanation of the development of memory. I then provide empirical evidence of the role of forgetting in shaping the development of memory.

Why Forgetting is a Candidate Source of Age-related Variance

The motivation to focus on forgetting as a candidate source of age-related variance in episodic and autobiographical memory is two fold. First, memories are non-trivial to form and retain. They begin their lives as distributed representations created by fleeting experiences. Preservation of them over the long term requires substantial processing involving an integrated network of structures. Second, the neural structures and network that are responsible for the transformation of experience into enduring memory representations undergo a protracted course of development. Early in life, when the structures and networks are less well developed, the processes that they subserve may be expected to operate less efficiently and thus less effectively. As a consequence, information that otherwise would be retained is lost from the memory trace, leaving the traces more vulnerable to forgetting. The net effect is that youth is a risk factor for memory. Moreover, the younger the child, the greater the risk that memory traces will be lost to forgetting. Before describing the course of development of the neural substrate responsible for memory, I provide a brief review of the processes involved in memory trace construction, storage, and retrieval. Consideration of the processes and the number of “moving parts” involved—any of which is subject to fail—helps to make clear why focus on the developmental status of the neural substrate is important to explanation of the course of develoment of memory across childhood.

Memory processes

As described in Bauer (2015) , a common metaphor for memory is a file cabinet stuffed full of file folders. Each folder contains the record of a past event. To recall any given event or experience, one finds the right folder, takes it out of the cabinet, opens it, and reads off what happened in the course of the event. Yet memory is nothing like a file cabinet and there are no file folders with records of experience. Rather, memory representations are made up of individual elements of experience that are encoded in synaptic connections between individual neurons in various regions of the cortex. Though we experience events as integrated wholes, at the neural level, they are widely distributed patterns of activity representing the different aspects of the experience, such as the sights, sounds, and movement. To live on as “memories,” the patterns of activity must be stabilized and integrated, processes carried out by a multi-component neural network that includes structures in the neocortex and the medial-temporal lobe. Later retrieval of a representation involves re-creation of the pattern of neural activity that gave rise to the experience in the first place (for reviews, see Eichenbaum & Cohen, 2001 ; Kandel & Squire, 2000 ; Manns & Eichenbaum, 2006 ; Rubin, 2005 , 2006 ; Winocur & Moscovitch, 2011 ; Zola & Squire, 2000 ). Critically, each of these steps is a source of vulnerability, even in adulthood.

They carry even greater risk in childhood. The first step in creation of a memory is encoding. The process of encoding begins with registration of different aspects of experience in different cortical areas. For example, cell fields in primary visual cortex register form, color, and motion; cell fields in primary auditory cortex register attributes of sounds; and cell fields in primary somatosensory cortex register tactile information. The inputs from these primary sensory cortices are further processed in unimodal sensory association areas where they are integrated into whole percepts of what the object or event looks like, sounds like, and feels like, respectively. Unimodal association areas in turn send (project) the information to polymodal or multimodal posterior-parietal, anterior-prefrontal, and limbic-temporal association areas. The coordinated activity of these cortical areas gives rise to experience of a coherent event.

For fleeting experience to endure as a lasting memory, the distributed trace must undergo a process of stabilization and the trace must be integrated into long-term storage. This process of consolidation entails neurochemical and neuroanatomical changes that create a physical record of the experience ( McGaugh, 2000 ). It depends on the coordinated actions of medial-temporal lobe structures and cortical association areas. Specifically, inputs from cortical association areas are projected to perirhinal and parahippocampal structures in the medial-temporal lobes. These cortices are thought to serve as an “intermediate-term memory” on which the hippocampus proper operates. It is in the hippocampus proper that all of the different components of the event are bound into a single representation ( Manns & Eichenbaum, 2006 ). The “binding” takes place as a result of iterative processing of the conjunctions and relations among the stimuli that gave rise to the event. That is, the pattern is regularly “refreshed” by additional neural signaling among the hippocampus, the surrounding medial-temporal cortices, and the association areas. The iterative processing also maintains and strengthens the linkages between the distributed cortical representations that make up the entire event. At the same time, it supports integration of the new information with that previously stored (e.g., McKenzie & Eichenbaum, 2011 ), based on overlapping or shared elements. The result is an entire pattern of interconnection of new information with old. Critically, the process of consolidation takes time—on the order of days to weeks to months (e.g., Wixted, 2004 ). Until traces are well consolidated, they are vulnerable to disruption and interference and thus forgetting.

Finally, when a memory is retrieved, the pattern of neural activity that represents the event is reactivated. Thus retrieval of information from long-term stores is accomplished by the same circuits as were involved in initial registration of the experience, including the hippocampus and surrounding cortices, amygdala (for emotional events), visual and other cortices, and lateral and medial prefrontal cortex (see Gilboa, 2004 ; Rubin, 2005 , 2006 , for reviews; see Maguire, 2001 ; Svoboda, McKinnon, & Levine, 2006 , for meta-analyses). Neuroimaging studies reveal that during the initial phases of memory search and access the more anterior, frontal-temporal components of this network are especially active, whereas in the later phases of retrieval—as the trace is elaborated—the more posterior, occipital and parietal regions are especially active (e.g., Daselaar, Rice, Greenberg, Cabeza, LaBar, & Rubin, 2008 ; McCormick, St-Laurent, Ty, Valiante, & McAndrews, 2013 ; St. Jacques, Kragel, & Rubin, 2011 ).

Neural structures and networks undergo protracted development

Efficient and effective stabilization and integration of widely distributed representations of experience into long-term memories requires a “well oiled” machine, involving numerous neural structures that are integrated into functional networks. Yet the “machine” undergoes a protracted course of development, and it is logical to assume that while it is developing, neural processing is relatively inefficient and ineffective, resulting in loss of information from memory (i.e., forgetting; Bauer, 2015 ). There are a number of reviews of the protracted course of development of the neural structures and network involved in memory trace formation, consolidation and storage, and retrieval (e.g., Bauer, 2009 , 2013 ; Ghetti & Lee, 2014 ; Nelson, de Haan, & Thomas, 2006 ). For this reason, I review it only briefly here.

As noted above, registration of experience, consolidation and storage of memory traces, and their subsequent retrieval, all depend on cortical regions. Over the course of development, there are substantive changes in cortical structures. As noted earlier, cortical thickness first increases and then decreases to adult levels. The inverted-U shaped function extends well into adolescence ( Gogtay et al., 2004 ). Moreover, the process is apparent across all of the major regions of the cortex (frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital), though the specific timing differs by region.

The medial-temporal structures that are involved in consolidation and storage of memory traces as well as their retrieval also undergo a protracted course of development. Within the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, which is the “route in” to the cell fields of the hippocampus, the number of synapses increases to peak levels in the second year of life and reaches adult levels at 4 to 5 years of age ( Seress & Ábrahám, 2008 ). The hippocampus itself does not exhibit the same dramatic and extended increase and decrease as the cortical regions. However, there is evidence that the distribution of volume changes over development, such that anterior regions lose thickness and posterior regions of the hippocampus gain thickness. The processes continue well into adolescence ( Gogtay, Nugent, Herman, Ordonez, Greenstein, & Hayashi, 2006 ).

There also are dramatic changes in connectivity within and between neural structures over development. There are pronounced changes in myelination both within the medial-temporal lobes, and in the hippocampus in particular ( Ábrahám, Vincze, Jewgenow, Veszprémi, Kravják, Gömöri, et al., 2010 ; Benes, Turtle, Khan, & Farol, 1994 ), as well as between prefrontal and medial-temporal structures (see Ghetti & Lee, 2014 , for a review). Unlike cortical thickness, which exhibits inverted-U shaped function, network connectivity increases linearly with age ( Østby, Tamnes, Fjell, Westlye, Due-Tønnessen, Walhovd, 2009 ; Schneider, Il’yasov, Hennig, & Martin, 2004 ). The changes continue well into the second decaded of life. These wide-spread and protracted changes can be expected to have important consequences for memory function.

Forgetting in Memory for Specific Past Events: Infancy and Early Childhood

In this section, I focus on three logical consequences of the nature of memory representations and of the developmental status of the neural substrate responsible for them. First, as just noted, because the neural structures and networks responsible for memory undergo a protracted course of development that extends into the second decade of life, we would expect greater vulnerability of memory in younger relative to older children, resulting in age-related differences in how long memories are retained. Second, because memory traces must be stabilized and integrated into long-term storage—and the facts that consolidation processes take time and that traces are vulnerable throughout the period of consolidation—we would expect to see age-related differences in retention even with age-related variability in encoding controlled. That is, information should be differentially lost from memory, even as it is being stabilized and integrated with long-term stores. Third, the amount of information lost in the course of stabilization and integration should explain unique variance in long-term recall. In essence, the more information that succumbs to decay and interference, the less that will remain available for storage and thus retrieval. I evaluate these expectations using examples from the literature on episodic memory in infancy. In the section to follow, I explore the implications of forgetting for autobiographical memory and its development, and the phenomenon of childhood amnesia.

The Vulnerability of Memory as a Function of Age

Perhaps the most dramatic age-related changes in memory function in infancy is in the length of time over which memories are retained. The changes indicate decreases in the vulnerability of memory traces with age. Based on performance on imitation-based tasks, described earlier, the length of time over which infants retain memories of specific past events increases over the first two years of life. As suggested by inspection of Figure 1 , in the first year, retention is limited to hours and days, whereas by the end of the second year of life, infants remember novel experiences over delays of 12 months or more ( Bauer et al., 2000 ; see Bauer, 2009 , 2013 , and Lukowski & Bauer, 2014 , for summaries). These data lend themselves to interpretation in terms of differential forgetting: there is greater vulnerability of memory in younger relative to older infants, resulting in age-related differences in how long memories are retained.

Age-related Differences even with Encoding Controlled

The data in Figure 1 are consistent with interpretation in terms of differential vulnerability of memory traces as a function of age. They also are consistent with an alternative explanation in terms of encoding. Specifically, it may be that older infants appear to remember over longer delays because they created higher quality memory representations in the first place. Though certainly a logical alternative, explanation in terms of differential encoding cannot account for age-related differences in retention when encoding-related vulnerability is controlled. To test this possibility, in a series of studies in my laboratory, we have controlled encoding statistically ( Bauer, Van Abbema, & de Haan, 1999 ), and by bringing infants to a criterion level of learning ( Bauer, Güler, Starr, & Pathman, 2011 ; see also Howe & Courage, 1997 ). We also have controlled encoding-related variability through matching of initial performance. Even with these controls, older infants exhibit less forgetting over time, relative to younger infants.

To illustrate the phenomenon, I use data from Bauer et al. (2000) , in which elicited imitation was used to test recall of infants 13, 16, and 20 months of age both immediately and over delays of 1 to 12 months (with different infants tested at delays of 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months). Prior to imposition of the delay, the infants were exposed to novel multi-step event sequences. As a measure of encoding, we tested immediate imitation of some of the sequences. From the larger sample of 16- and 20-month-olds who had been assigned to delay intervals of 1, 3, and 6 months, Bauer (2005) created matched subsamples, such that 16- and 20-month-olds in the subsamples exhibited identical levels of performance prior to the delay, thus controlling encoding-related variability. When tested after 1 month, the age groups exhibited comparable levels of forgetting. However, after 3 months and 6 months, the younger infants exhibited more forgetting, relative to the older infants. The patterns cannot be explained by differential retrieval success, as older infants also exhibited greater relearning of the sequences, relative to the younger infants. Thus even with encoding controlled, younger infants forget more rapidly than older infants (see Bauer, 2005 , for additional data on 13- and 16-month-olds).

Forgetting Explains Unique Variance in Long-term Recall

Differential retention is necessary for an explanation of developmental differences in long-term recall in terms of forgetting processes, but it is not sufficient . For forgetting to play a major role in explanation of patterns of long-term recall, it must explain unique variance in the outcome. We have found that it does, not only in infancy, but into the preschool years as well.

In Pathman and Bauer (2013) , we exposed infants to a number of multi-step event sequences in an imitation-based task. We then used subsets of the events to “probe” the integrity of the memory traces of the events at four different delay intervals: 0 delay, as a test of encoding, and then after 15 minutes, 48 hours, and 2 weeks. We then tested long-term recall after 6 weeks. As expected, we observed forgetting over the course of the delay. We also observed that each of the “probes” accounted for variance in long-term recall. Importantly, only the 15-minute and 48-hour probes explained unique variance; encoding-related variability did not explain unique variance. Thus measures of the amount of forgetting during the period of consolidation and storage (after 15 minutes and 48 hours) explained unique variance in retrieval after a long delay (6 weeks; see also Bauer et al., 1999 ; and Bauer et al., 2011 ). A similar pattern of findings was apparent in Bauer, Larkina, and Doydum (2012) among 3- and 4-year-old children. In the preschool study, a measure of performance 1 week after encoding explained unique variance in recall after 5 weeks, whereas encoding-related variability did not. Work by Brainerd, Howe, and colleagues indicates that forgetting accounts for significant variance in recall throughout childhood (e.g., Brainerd et al., 1990 ; Howe & O’Sullivan, 1997 ).

The literature just reviewed makes clear that in the domain of episodic memory, forgetting is critical for understanding remembering. In the first two years of life, there are pronounced age-related differences in the rate at which information is lost from memory. The rate of forgetting is accelerated in younger relative to older infants. The differences cannot be explained by differential encoding. Moreover, the amount of information lost from memory within minutes to days after experience of events accounts for significant variance in long-term recall. Similar findings are obtained in the preschool years, and beyond. In the next section, I take the study of forgetting into the domain of autobiographical or personal memory. As will become apparent, forgetting helps to explain the shape of the distribution of autobiographical memories across the lifespan, including the phenomenon of childhood amnesia.

Forgetting in Autobiographical Memory: Childhood Amnesia

As argued in Bauer (2015) , forgetting processes, and age-related changes in the vulnerability of memory traces to forgetting, have implications for one of the most robust phenomena in the memory literature, namely, childhood amnesia. After describing the phenomenon in adults and children, I provide data on the role of forgetting in explaining the phenomenon.

Childhood Amnesia: Adults

Late in the 19 th century, Miles (1893) conducted a survey of adults’ childhood experiences. Among other things, the survey inquired as to the earliest event the respondents could remember, and how old they were at the time. This and subsequent similar surveys (e.g., Dudycha & Dudycha, 1933a , 1933b ; Henri & Henri, 1895 , 1896 , 1898 ; Kihlstrom & Harackiewicz, 1982 ) have produced one of the most consistent and robust findings in the psychological literature. As illustrated in Table 1 , Panel a, the average age of earliest memory for a specific past event among adults in Western cultures is age 3 to 4 years (see, for example, Wang, 2006 , 2014 , for discussions of cross-cultural differences in average age of earliest memory). Moreover, the average age of earliest memory is consistent whether the source of data is a survey, free recall (e.g., Bauer, Tasdemir-Ozdes, & Larkina, 2014 ; Waldfogel, 1948 ; Weigle & Bauer, 2000 ; West & Bauer, 1999 ), or response to a cue word prompt (e.g., Bauer & Larkina, 2014a ; Rubin & Schulkind, 1997 ; though see Wang, Conway, & Hou, 2004 , for evidence that repeated probes can produce earlier estimates).

Average Age of Earliest Memory among Samples of Adults (Panel a) and Children (Panel b)

Note : Child data are from Bauer, Burch, Scholin, and Güler (2007) ; Bauer and Larkina (2014b) ; Peterson, Grant, & Boland (2005) ; and Reese, Jack, and White (2010) .

The average age of earliest memory also is robust to age-cohort effects. That is, the same general pattern is obtained from individuals 60 to 70 years of age at the time the memories are elicited and 20 years of age at the time the memories are prompted ( Rubin & Schulkind, 1997 ; see, Rubin, 2000 , for review). The similarity is observed even though for younger adults, many fewer years have passed since childhood. The same average age of earliest memory is found even when respondents are asked to remember a specific event the date of which is clearly known, such as the birth of a younger sibling, or a hospitalization, for example (e.g., Sheingold & Tenney, 1982 Usher & Neisser, 1993 ). Thus seemingly regardless of age at inquiry or method of inquiry, prior to age 3 to 4 years, most adults have few if any memories of specific past events from their own lives.

Another characteristic feature of the “amnesia” that adults experience for early life events is that between the ages of 5 and 7 years, adults have a smaller number of autobiographical memories than would be expected based on forgetting alone. It is only from later in the first decade of life that most adults are able to recall a significant number of past events that are spatially and temporally localized, and which have some degree of personal relevance or significance. Although this “peculiar amnesia of childhood” ( Freud, 1920/1935 ) is considered an adult phenomenon, as discussed below, there is a small but increasing body of evidence that by the end of the first decade of life, children also begin to experience it.

Though there are numerous studies of adults’ earliest memories, there are relatively fewer that are relevant to the shape of the distribution of memories across the lifespan. Indeed, the primary data on which is based the claim that before age 7 years, adults have a smaller number of autobiographical memories than would be expected based on forgetting alone, are derived from Rubin (1982) ; the shape of the distribution was empirically tested by Wetzler and Sweeney (1986) . Rubin (1982) asked young adults to think of past events related to each of over 100 cue words (e.g., dog, table, book ). He also asked them to estimate their age at the time of the event. To the data, Wetzler and Sweeney fitted a power function that in many investigations (e.g., Crovitz & Schiffman, 1974 ; Rubin & Wenzel, 1996 ; Rubin, Wetzler, & Nebes, 1986 ) has been shown to capture the distribution of memories across the lifespan. Wetzler and Sweeney found that the power function was a poor fit to data from birth to age 6 years, implying accelerated forgetting of memories from ages 6 and below. Memories from age 7 years were excluded from the analysis because age 7 years was considered the “inflection point” for childhood amnesia: after age 7 years, the rate of forgetting is assumed to be adult-like. Consistent with this suggestion, Wetzler and Sweeney found that the power function was a good fit to data from age 8 to adulthood (see Bauer, 2007 , 2008 , 2012 , for additional discussions).

Childhood Amnesia: Children

As just described, childhood amnesia was first identified in adults. Moreover, for over 100 years, the data documenting the amnesia came exclusively from adults. That is, there were no data on the age of earliest memory or the distribution of early autobiographical memories in children. Beginning in the 21 st century, data from children began to appear. As reflected in Table 1 , Panel b, the data indicate that childhood amnesia is apparent in children as young as 6 to 9 years of age ( Peterson, Grant, & Boland, 2005 ). Indeed, the data on the age of earliest memory among children are surprisingly similar to those among adults.

Accelerated Loss from Memory

The data on childhood amnesia in children present a paradox: why is it that children—who begin forming memories of specific past events even in infancy—themselves suffer from childhood amnesia? The explanation developed here (see also Bauer, 2015 ), is that early in life, the rate of forgetting is accelerated relative to later in life. As a result, though memories are formed, they are disproportionally forgotten, resulting in the phenomenon of childhood amnesia. Test of this hypothesis requires documenting memories created in the period eventually obscured by childhood amnesia and then prospectively tracking them across the boundary of the amnesia, to determine whether they are still remembered. Few studies fit this bill because most are retrospective in nature. That is, they are probes of what is retained from childhood, not what is lost . The few studies that focus on what is lost are discussed next; they reveal the emergence of childhood amnesia in childhood.

Emergence of childhood amnesia

One of the first prospective investigations of children’s memories from early childhood was conducted by Fivush and Schwarzmueller (1998) . When children were 8 years of age, they were asked to recall events they had experienced at each of the ages of 3½ and 4 years and 5 and 6 years. The number of events that the 8-year-olds remembered decreased from 92% from the ages of 5 and 6 years to 77% from the ages of 3½ and 4 years. A similar trend was reported by Cleveland and Reese (2008) , though the levels of memory were lower than those observed by Fivush and Schwarzmueller. Specifically, when children were 66 months of age (5½ years), they were asked to recall events that they had experienced at each of the ages of 19, 25, 32, 40, and 65 months. The number of events that the 5½-year-olds remembered decreased steadily as the retention interval increased from 1, 26, 34, 41, to 47 months in the past. The children recalled roughly 80% of events they had experienced 1 month in the past but fewer than 40% of events experienced 47 months in the past (at the age of 19 months). Both of these studies provide evidence that as time goes by, more and more events are lost from memory. Yet in both studies, events with the longest delays also had the earliest ages of encoding (i.e., 19 months in Cleveland & Reese, 2008 ). Thus it is not possible to determine whether forgetting was a result of the age of the children at the time of experience of the events or the length of the delay. Also, only Fivush and Schwarzmueller (1998) documented the fates of memories over the boundary of childhood amnesia (i.e., beyond age 7 years).

In Van Abbema and Bauer (2005) and Bauer and Larkina (2014b) , we varied the retention interval, but held the age at encoding constant, thereby allowing for examination of fates of early memories over time. Specifically, when children were 3 years of age, we recorded conversations between children and their mothers as they discussed a number of events from the recent past. Based on their contributions to the conversations, the children clearly remembered the events. Thus we had documentation of memories from the age period corresponding to that from which adults report their earliest memories. We then tested different subgroups of the children again roughly 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 years later, at the ages of 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 years of age—ages at which, based on adult data, we would expect to see evidence of childhood amnesia. The later interviews were conducted by experimenters (rather than the children’s mothers). The data indicate a role for forgetting in explanation of the onset of the amnesia. Whereas the children 5 to 7 years of age remembered more than 60% of the events from age 3 years, the 8- and 9-year-olds remembered fewer than 40% of the events. Moreover, whereas a maximum of 6% of children ages 5, 6, and 7 years recalled none of the events from age 3 years, 37% of 8-year-olds and 25% of 9-year-olds recalled none of the early-life events.

There also is evidence that younger children forget more rapidly than older children. In Morris, Baker-Ward, and Bauer (2010) , we examined recall of recent events by children ages 4, 6, and 8 years. One year later, when the children were 5, 7, and 9 years of age, we tested their recall of the events from 1 year in the past. The children who had been the oldest at the time of the events remembered 90% of them 1 year later (at 8 and 9 years of age, respectively). In contrast, the children who had been the youngest at the time of the events remembered only approximately 70% of them 1 year later (at 4 and 5 years of age, respectively). This pattern is strong evidence that within the period eventually obscured by childhood amnesia, the rate of forgetting is more accelerated among younger relative to older children.

Research by Peterson and colleagues ( Peterson, Warren, & Short, 2011 ) provides additional evidence of the emergence of childhood amnesia in childhood. They interviewed children 4 to 13 year of age about their “earliest memory”; they interviewed the same children again 2 years later. Over the 2 years between interviews, the average age of earliest memory in the sample increased from 32.0 months to 39.6 months. Moreover, at the second interview, many of the children nominated a different “earliest” memory. Indeed, among the children 4 to 5 years at the time of the initial interview, fewer than 10% nominated the same event at both interviews. Children 12 to 13 years of age at the first interview were more consistent, yet still reported the same event only roughly 40% of the time. These patterns stand in sharp contrast to those we have observed in research with adults. Specifically, over the same delay, the age of earliest memory reported by adults does not change, and more than 80% of them nominate the same event as their “earliest” memory ( Bauer et al., 2014 ). The pattern among children is suggestive of a “moving target” of earliest memory. In contrast, the corpus of adults is seemingly more stable.

The power function

The likely explanation for the greater stability of the corpus of early memories among adults ( Bauer et al., 2014 ), relative to children ( Peterson et al., 2011 ), is that among adults, the rate at which memories are forgotten slows over time. As described earlier, the results of retrospective studies in which adults are asked to provide memories in response to cue words ( dog, table, book ) indicate that the distribution of memories from ages 8 onward is well characterized by the power function ( Crovitz & Schiffman, 1974 ; Rubin, 1982 ; Rubin et al., 1986 ). As discussed by Rubin and Wenzel (1996) , the power function (e.g., Wickelgren, 1974 , 1975 ) implies that equal ratios of time (t 1 /t 2 = t 3 /t 4 ) will result in equal ratios of recall (recall 1 /recall 2 = recall 3 /recall 4 ). The result is that as time goes by, the rate of forgetting slows down, presumably as a result of memory trace consolidation (see, for example, Wixted, 2004 , for discussion).

The exponential function

The power function provides a good fit to adults’ data from ages 8 onward, but it does not provide a good fit to the distribution of autobiographical memories generated by children ages 7 to 11. Instead, as reported in Bauer et al. (2007) and Bauer and Larkina (2014a) , the exponential—rather than the power—function provides a better fit to data from children. Rather than a reduction in the rate of forgetting over time, the exponential function implies an accelerated rate of forgetting that remains constant over time. In the first study to suggest accelerated forgetting ( Bauer et al., 2007 ), we used the cue word technique to examine the distribution of autobiographical memories in children 7 to 10 years of age. The children successfully generated memories in response to the cue words and based on parental report, accurately dated them. Relative to the power function, the exponential function provided a better fit to the distribution of memories produced by the children (see Table 2 ).

Fit Indices for Exponential and Power Functions of the Distribution of Autobiographical Memories Elicited by Cue Words for Children 7 to 11 Years of Age and Adults

Note : For each age group, the best fit function is highlighted by a box. Data are from Bauer, Burch, Scholin, and Güler (2007) ; and Bauer and Larkina (2013).

The same pattern was obtained in an independent study by Bauer and Larkina (2014a) , in which we included not only children but adults as well, thus affording a within-study comparison of the distributions of memories. We tested 20 children at each of the ages of 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 years (100 children total), as well as two groups of adults: college students and middle-aged adults. As reflected in Table 2 , the data from the children provided a replication of the results of Bauer et al. (2007) . For the entire sample of children and for each group of children (7-, 8-, 9-, 10-, and 11-year-olds) separately, the best fitting function to the distribution was the exponential. In contrast, for both the college students and middle-aged adults, the power function provided a superior fit to the distributions of memories. These data clearly suggest that as old as age 11 years, the distribution of children’s autobiographical memories is not adult-like. In contrast to adults, children experience exponential forgetting.

The exponential function has important implications for the expected distribution of memories over the lifespan. Specifically, it implies a constant half-life such that over each unit of time (e.g., a month) the number of memories in the corpus decreases by one-half. For example, if Time 1 recall was of 100 memories, then recall at Times 2, 3, and 4 would be of 50, 25, and 12.5 memories, respectively ( Figure 2 , dappled bars). Figure 2 makes clear the contrast between a distribution of memories characterized by the exponential function and a distribution characterized by the power function. The distributions differ both in terms of the initial rate of forgetting, and in terms of the number of memories lost from the corpus with each unit of time. For both adults and children, many events are lost from memory virtually immediately after experience of them. Importantly, for adults, the rate of forgetting slows over time, with individual memories becoming less vulnerable to disruption and interference, resulting in a relatively stable corpus (e.g., Wixted, 2004 , for discussion). Children experience a sharp initial decline in the number of memories in the corpus (T2). Unlike adults, the rate at which children forget does not slow down over time—it is exponential. As a consequence, the pool of memories available for recollection is ever-shrinking, suggesting that memories do not consolidate (see Bauer, 2012 , 2015 ; and Bauer et al., 2007 ; and Bauer & Larkina, 2014a , for discussions).

Schematic depiction of the number of memories in the corpus that survive over each hypothetical unit of time (T1–T5) in distributions characterized by the power function (dark bars) and the exponential function (dappled bars).

Another important implication of an exponential rate of forgetting is that memories that survive the initial ravages of time may nevertheless eventually succumb to forgetting. This helps to explain the observations of Bauer and Larkina (2014b) , in which children has robust memory for past events as many as 3 years after experience of them, yet by the time 4 to 5 years had passed, they were no longer as accessible. The phenomenon also helps to explain the findings of Peterson et al. (2011) , in which it was observed that both the age of earliest memory and the specific event nominated as the “earliest” memory were unstable. The suggestion is that over the 2 years that intervened between interviews, early memories continued to be forgotten. As a result, the age of earliest memory had no place to go but up (to get older: from 32.0 to 39.6 months). With some early memories no longer accessible, the likelihood of sampling the same memory repeatedly over time decreases.

New Perspective on Characteristic Distribution

Consideration of the central role of forgetting in shaping the corpus of early childhood memories results in a new perspective on the characteristic distribution of autobiographical memories across the life span. As depicted in Figure 3 , Panel a, tradition views on changes in the corpus suggest a gradually increasing number of autobiographical memories across the first decade of life. From the first 3 to 4 years, there are few (if any) memories in the corpus. Between the ages of 3 or 4 to 5 or 7, the number of memories increases, but is smaller than the number that would be expected by chance. The adult distribution is achieved in the latter part of the first decade, after age 7 years. As noted earlier, this distribution had been tested empirically ( Wetzler & Sweeney, 1986 ). It is the perspective on the distribution of autobiographical memories that informs traditional theories of childhood amnesia (e.g., Nelson & Fivush, 2004 ; Pillemer & White, 1989 ).

Schematic depiction of the distribution of memories across the first decade of life from a traditional perspective, suggesting a gradually increasing number of memories with age (Panel a); and from the complementary processes perspective, suggesting a residual number of early memories remaining after forgetting (Panel b).

Recognition that autobiographical memories are formed beginning early in life, and of the powerful forces of forgetting to which those early memories are subjected, results in a dramatic change in perspective. As illustrated in Figure 3 , Panel b, the suggestion advanced here and developed in Bauer (2015) is that, rather than gradually increasing over time, the corpus of autobiographical memories actually shrinks over time. That is, events that once were remembered fail to fully consolidate, and thus remain vulnerable to decay and interference, until eventually, many are forgotten. From this perspective, the resulting distribution does not depict a gradual increase, but rather, the residual number of memories left in the corpus, after forgetting. In other words, from this perspective, the tail of the distribution apparent on the right of the figure is not the start of remembering, but the number of memories left in the corpus after forgetting. Moreover, because the rate of forgetting does not slow down, the pool of memories is ever-shrinking, contributing to the appearance of a “childhood amnesia component” ( Pillemer & White, 1989 )—a smaller number of memories than expected by normal forgetting (i.e., with “normal” forgetting equated with an adult rate, characterized by the power function). We may think of the process as one that reduces “pools” of memories to isolated “puddles” of memories. The result is a sparser representation. An additional consequence is that the representational structures become more difficult to retrieve, because they are more isolated from one another.

As evidenced in Bauer and Larkina (2014a ; see also Bauer et al., 2007 ), accelerated forgetting is the norm throughout the first decade of life. Yet even during this period, there is a gradual approximation of normal forgetting. That is, between 7 and 11 years of age, the rate of forgetting, represented by the b parameter of the power function (e.g., Wixted & Ebbesen, 1997 ), decreased from 2.21 to 1.62; there was a further decrease to 1.01 by the college years. Though direct evidence of structure-process-function relations is not yet available, it is reasonable to attribute the change in the rate of loss of information from memory to development of the neural substrate responsible for encoding, consolidation, and retrieval of memories (see above). Neural developments would herald inceases in the efficiency and thus the efficacy of mnemonic processes. That is, with more efficient processes, fewer elements of experience would be lost, both early in the transformation of experience into a memory trace, and as the trace is being incorporated into long-term storage. Stronger, better integrated traces are more readily retrieved. The consequence of improvements in memory processes would be improved function, in this case, a reduction in the rate of forgetting. Over the course of development, the rate of forgetting gradually approximates that seen in adults.

Conclusions

The argument put forth in this review is that understanding of developmental changes in episodic and autobiographical memory requires consideration of both sides of the mnemonic coin: the complementary processes of improvements in the quality of memory representation and decreases in the vulnerability of those traces to forgetting ( Bauer, 2015 ). Much of the developmental literature has focused only (or certainly, primarily) on improvements in memory with development. As a result of the attention, we have well documented evidence of increases in the fidelity with which events and experiences are encoded, in the precision with which the events in memory can be located in place and time, and in the robustness and degree of autonomy with which memory traces are retrieved, for example. Although these positive changes account for the waxing of the corpus of memories formed over the first decade of life, they fail to account for the waning of the corpus. A more complete understanding of the shape of the distribution of memories is achieved when we consider not only developmental changes that contribute to formation of memories that are of higher quality, but also developmental changes in the vulnerability of memories to the ravages of forgetting.

The primary focus of the present review has been on changes in forgetting. In the review, I documented age-related differences in the rate of forgetting, as evidenced by differences in the length of time over which infants maintain memories of specific past events (e.g., Bauer et al., 2000 ). The differences are apparent even when infants of different ages are well matched for their levels of initial encoding ( Bauer, 2005 ), or when encoding-related variability is controlled statistically ( Bauer et al., 1999 ), or by bringing all children to a criterion level of learning, thus eliminating encoding-related variability entirely ( Bauer et al., 2011 ; Howe & Courage, 1997 ). The patterns strongly implicate age-related differences in the processes that take place after encoding, and which are responsible for the transformation of fleeting patterns of experience into enduring memory traces (a.k.a. consolidation). Critically, the amount of forgetting shortly after encoding explains significant unique variance in long-term recall both in infancy (e.g., Pathman & Bauer, 2013 ) and in the preschool years ( Bauer et al., 2012 ).

A role for forgetting in shaping the distribution of what is remembered also is apparent in the literature on autobiographical or personal memory, and the specific phenomenon of childhood amnesia. Adults have few if any memories from the first years of life, and for much of their childhoods, a smaller number of memories than would be expected by normal forgetting alone (with adult rates of forgetting characterized by the power function; see Bauer, 2014 , for a review). Traditional developmental accounts of the phenomenon explain the apparent increase in the number of memories over developmental time in terms of improvements in the quality of memory traces. Yet missing from these explanations is a role for forgetting, the complement of remembering ( Bauer, 2015 ). Forgetting is essential to explanation of why events that once clearly were remembered later cannot be retrieved. Both retrospective ( Bauer & Larkina, 2014a ) and prospective ( Morris et al., 2010 ) studies of autobiographical memory in childhood indicate that children forget more rapidly than adults, and that younger children forget more rapidly than older children (respectively). It is as rates of forgetting slow to adult levels that the adult distribution of autobiographical memories is achieved.

In the review, I also put forth an explanation for why youth is a risk factor for memory. The explanation is in terms of the processes that are necessary for the transformation of fleeting patterns of activation we call “experiences” into enduring memory representations. The transformation is demanding of neural structures and networks that undergo a protracted course of development. It is logical to assume that until they are fully developed, the structures and networks will operate with less than full efficiency and thus relatively ineffectively. The result is that memory traces are more vulnerable to forgetting. As the neural substrate develops, the rate of loss of information from memory approximates that seen in adults. The result is stabilization of the corpus of memories: memories that survived the “storm and stress” of their infancy and early childhood remain accessible to recollection. This helps to explain the stability of the corpus of earliest memories among adults ( Bauer et al., 2014 ), and the absence of cohort effects even when comparing the age of earliest memory by 20-year-olds and 60- to 70-year-olds ( Rubin & Schulkind, 1997 ).

When we entertain the argument that forgetting has a role to play in shaping the distribution of autobiographical memories over the first decade of life, we must take a new perspective on the traditional graph of that distribution. Rather than a depiction of a gradual increase in the number of memories over childhood ( Figure 3 , Panel a), the graph can be seen as representing the residual in the corpus of memories that remains after forgetting ( Figure 3 , Panel b). That is, when a 10-year-old looks back on her or his lifetime of memories, recent events are well represented—many memories are accessible to recollection. Yet when called upon to retrieve memories from earlier and earlier in life, fewer and fewer of the memories remain. The younger the child at the time of the experience, the more rapidly they were forgotten. This complementary processes account helps us to achieve a better understanding of the classic phenomenon of childhood amnesia as experienced by children as well as adults.

• This review highlights the role of forgetting as an important variable in understanding the development of episodic and autobiographical memory.
• Forgetting processes are implicated as a source of variability in long-term recall.
• Forgetting processes are implicated due to the protracted course of development of the neural substrate for memory.
• A complete account of how memory develops must consider changes in forgetting.

Acknowledgments

Support for much of the research from the author’s laboratory was provided by HD28425, HD42486, and Emory College of Arts and Sciences. The author extends a special note of gratitude to the many collaborators who contributed to the empirical work that forms that basis of this review.

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Essay On Literacy Narrative-- The Growth Of An Early Memory

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Children , Teenagers , Literature , Family , Books , Love , Writing , Thinking

Words: 1300

Published: 01/23/2020

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The first thing that I remember is all-consuming sadness.

Not because of the subject matter of the story, although it was sad, if I remember correctly. But the true, heart-rending pain and overwhelming heartbreak came from the fact that the book was finished. I was young, but not too young; maybe eight or nine years old. It was my first (albeit not my last) love affair with a book, and my heart was breaking as I turned the final page. It was a feeling I would come to know well-- but at that point in time, young and impressionable, I thought I might die. I was always a melodramatic child. It lingered with me, this sadness. Now that I’m older, I can liken it to a hangover; uncomfortable, somewhat painful, and difficult to shake. The feelings that the story triggered in me stayed with me, haunting me over days. I tried to read other books; I flitted from one to the next without being able to focus. This isn’t like that other story, I thought. Nothing seemed to compare. And so it lingered; I think it was two days later when I decided the only cure was to read the story a second time. When I picked it up and read the first few lines, it became alive in my hands, like I was greeting an old friend again after an absence. I had never felt the need to reread a book before, so the experience was certainly unexpected and new. As I read, I began to notice things. I saw details in the story that I hadn’t noticed as I devoured it the first time around; the author’s wit and the complexity of the characters hit me with so much more force than I expected. As I read on, I found myself wanting to talk about the book, to discuss it with people; to share the ideas it ignited in me with someone who understood what I was feeling and experiencing. It’s difficult to be a reader in a society that doesn’t read. It means a certain amount of intellectual loneliness, and a little bit of frustration when a book comes along that shakes my worldview to the core. These books don’t come along often, but come they do-- and when they do, I cannot put them down. I become obsessed; incapable of putting them down. There were other books after that first one; they crawled into quiet corners of my life and kept me company. “A bookworm,” my parents would say about me, sighing and shaking their heads; but I could tell that they were happy; happy because I was able to occupy myself during long car rides and waits in restaurants, and also happy because books made me curious. I was a never-ending font of questions in my childhood.

“How many different kinds of dogs are there?” I’d ask.

“Look it up,” came the inevitable answer. And so I started to understand the library, and I started to understand how to do research; then later on, when Internet use became widespread, I turned to the Internet for answers I couldn’t find in books.

“What are you doing on that computer?” My mother has always been suspicious of everything.

“Reading about how Poe died,” I’d tell her. “He drowned in alcohol.”

She quickly learned not to ask too many questions.

But when I was very young-- before my first love affair with a book-- I loved stories. My father would sit by my bed at night, telling me stories. He wasn’t-- and still isn’t-- a big reader, but his creativity and ability to weave a story from air into something tangible and engaging is a gift. “Once upon a time,” he would always begin, “there was a family, and they lived with their dog, Ebony, and a mischievous cat named Mac.” Mac and Ebony went on wild adventures, often in my favorite haunts; in the forest, in the swimming pool and, once or twice, on a hot air balloon. Mac the cat always got into trouble; I think this character, which I loved from a young age, led me to books with mischievous and adventurous protagonists. I pored over Harry Potter; I went on adventures in Narnia; I lived a thousand lives before I became a teenager.

And then I began to write.

I think that if you aren’t a reader, you can never become a writer. A mediocre writer, perhaps; but never a great one. Becoming a writer means immersing oneself in text, learning the nuances and details of the language; it’s about choosing the perfect word to convey a meaning, not just the word that is close enough. People who don’t read have difficulty creating with written language. Learning to write means reading the best of the best and the worst of the worst; it means understanding what makes a story great, and what makes a story fail.

Writing is also an inherently selfish pursuit.

It’s often said that a writer reveals more of him or herself in a piece than he or she intends, and I think it’s true; when a writer creates a piece, he or she leaves a little of his or her soul on the page. We write to make ourselves feel better; we write for outside approval; we even write because there is no alternative-- because we have to write. When I picked up that first book as a child, I never intended to become a writer. I don’t mean that I’m a writer by profession, but instead, I mean that when I feel emotion, particularly strong emotion, I feel the need to create. When I have an idea, it has to go on paper. No matter what career I end up with, I will continue to read, and I will continue to write. That first book set me on a path towards an obsession with language, and I cannot seem to deviate from it. I worry about the state of the world, because I see so few children reading books these days. I’m not opposed to new media, or against video games and television, but I don’t think that they stimulate the mind in the same way reading a book does. I think the Internet is a great tool for teaching children that reading can be enjoyable and interesting; it’s just up to parents and educators to ensure that what the children are looking at online is appropriate for their age and not detrimental to their mental health in any way. I know not everyone will be enamored of reading and writing the way I am, and that’s fine; a little diversity is good for the world. But every child should be given the opportunity to love to read, in the same way that every child should be given the opportunity to become an artist, or a musician, or an athlete. These avenues should be open to children; I am eternally grateful that they were opened to me from such a young age. If I should ever have a child, I will teach them to love books. I have no other real plans for my potential future children besides this. I will give them hundreds, thousands of books until they find that one book they fall in love with for the first time. Once that battle is won, and I have created a reader for life, I can rest easy in the knowledge that any child of mine will remain passionately curious.

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My Earliest Childhood Memories, Essay Example

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One of my earliest childhood memories is when my father and I found a baby bird lying on the ground underneath a tree. Though I have never actually determined if this is true, the conventional wisdom at the time (and according to everyone I’ve ever discussed it with) was that if we returned the bird to the nest, the mother bird would reject the baby bird because it now carried the scent of a human being. In the internet age of instant access to information, that is the kind of thing we might have looked up online before proceeding. At the time, however, the closest thing we had to the internet was my set of Encyclopedias, and we were unable to determine from those whether the “human scent” issue was a genuine concern or a mere wives’ tale. Choosing to err on the side of caution –and with the only other option being a potentially dangerous excursion into a fairly tall, and not easily-accessible tree, we chose to take the bird in and do what we could to nurse it back to health.

My father, using what little information he had at his disposal, purchased some earthworms from a local bait shop and conjured up a home-made “bird food” of mashed-up earth-worm and a small amount of milk. He created a makeshift birds’ nest from an old cigar box and some shredded newspaper, keeping it warm with a small desk lamp. Several times a day, we fed this baby bird with an eyedropper, squirting small amounts of this “worm juice” concoction into its eager gullet. My mother got in on the act as well, taking responsibility for the daytime feedings while I was at school and my father was at work.

Surprisingly, and to my great joy, the bird survived the ordeal, and was soon doing its best to leave its new nest. We moved the box to the back porch, a screened-in area with plenty of room for the fledgling bird to practice its new-found flight skills in relative safety. Before long, the half-blind, squawking little creature had blossomed into a fully-feathered avian, ready to fly away and take its rightful place in the sky. Though it was many years ago, and was only a matter of a few days out of my life, it was an experience I never forgot. The compassion my father demonstrated for this tiny, defenseless creature was a life lesson that stayed with me to this day, and in some way, helped to shape the person I’ve become.

Several decades later, with my father now gone, my uncle (my father’s brother) came to stay with me. He was suffering from some rather serious diseases, including AIDS and Hepatitis C. Complications from AIDS had set in, including several bouts of pneumonia. I will admit that when the prospect of my uncle moving in with me first arose, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of being responsible for his care. I had very limited understanding of AIDS and Hepatitis, nor of what the ramifications of caring for an AIDS patient would mean in practical terms. I had a lot of soul-searching to do; not only was I fearful of the disease, I will admit that I was also selfishly concerned with what the impact of my uncle’s illnesses would be on my personal life.

As I pondered the situation, and tried to determine what would be the best course of action not just for me, but also for my uncle, I suddenly remembered that tiny little bird that my father had rescued so many years ago. Some men would have simply ignored the helpless creature, and left it there for nature to take its course. Others may have chosen to climb the tree and place it back in the nest, knowing that it would likely be rejected by its mother, but severing personal responsibility to the baby bird, and ending any concern for its fate. But my father did neither; he took the most difficult choice, but the only right choice; he took the defenseless and scared little creature into his home, and he showed me what real compassion was, by nursing that bird until it was ready to fly away.

Sadly, my uncle was not in the same situation as that baby bird. He was not going to fly away someday; the ravages of his illnesses were taking their toll, and he slipped a little further away every day. Like my father on the day we came across that baby bird, I had choices to make. I could let my uncle’s illnesses be someone else’s problem, or I could do my best to help ease his burden. And as I recalled the lessons of love and compassion I learned from my father, I realized I really had no choice; my uncle needed someone to pick him up and make him comfortable, and there was no question that I was the one to do that.

Those were trying times in the last few months of my uncle’s life. As he slowly lost control of his bodily functions, and as he slipped further and further into the fog of pain and medication, I sometimes thought that the challenges were too much to bear. Yet every day I found just a little bit more strength, another small reserve of energy and willpower, and I carried on for another day. And when the day finally came that he was gone, I realized that I hadn’t used up all my strength, but in fact I had received a wonderful gift from my uncle. For in his passing, I learned something about myself: I learned that the greatest part of my father, the part of him that I loved and admired, had in some small way been passed on to me.

For the lessons I learned from these two men, the one who cared so much and the one who needed so much care, I will always be grateful. Truly, the best way I can honor them, and thank them for the gifts they gave me, is to continue on in the nursing profession so I can share with others the gifts they shared with me.

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Best Childhood Memories Essay Ideas: 94 Narrative Topics [2024]

Many people believe that childhood is the happiest period in a person’s life. It’s not hard to see why. Kids have nothing to care or worry about, have almost no duties or problems, and can hang out with their friends all day long.

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An essay about childhood gives an opportunity to plunge into your memories. All you need to do is recollect those happy days and write a brilliant essay! In this article by Custom-Writing.org , you’ll find great tips and topic ideas to kickstart the process.

• 🔝 Top 10 Topics
• 💡 Coming Up with Ideas
• 🧸 Childhood Memories Essay Topics
• ✍️ Writing Examples & Guide
• 🔍 References

🔝 Top 10 Childhood Topics to Write About

• Your favorite holiday memory.
• Your brightest memories of winter.
• Your earliest school memory.
• Your first visit to a farm.
• What was your favorite toy?
• Do you remember your granny’s kitchen?
• Your childhood memories of your parents.
• Your best childhood friend.
• Things that you initially disliked at school.
• Experiments with physics in childhood.

💡 Coming Up with Childhood Memories Essay Ideas

Perhaps you got lost in your memories and cannot choose the best one to describe in your essay. Or maybe you have a bad memory and cannot recollect something specific to write about. If that’s the case, here are some recommendations for you.

Childhood Memories List: How to Write

Don’t know where to start? Try creating a list of your memories to decide which ones you need for your paper.

There are our top tips on making a childhood memories list:

• Write down everything that comes to your mind. What are some significant memories from your childhood? Every little experience starting with your earliest memory matters. Of course, you don’t need all of this information for your essay. Still, it will help your brain to start working in the right direction.
• Try to focus on specific things such as holidays, trips, or food. Everybody’s favorite childhood memories are often connected with them. Remarkable events also might include school, neighborhood, hometown, presents you received, and your achievements. Nostalgia is your best friend in this case.
• Divide your memories into categories. Good childhood experiences such as receiving a dream present or adopting a pet belong to one category. Life-changing events, key achievements, and unfortunate accidents can go into other categories.
• Try not to avoid bad childhood memories. It’s not the most pleasant thing in this task. But sometimes, writing about bad situations or challenges is a good strategic decision for your paper. It can also help your personal growth.

How to Remember Childhood Memories

What is your earliest memory? A frightening fall down the stairs? Or perhaps blowing candles on your second birthday? Whatever the content, it is probably short and vague.

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When we grow older, our recollections of early childhood become fragmentary . In fact, a profound memory loss occurs, which psychologists call infantile amnesia (you can learn more about it from the article “ New perspectives on childhood memory ”). Memories formed during early childhood are more fragile than those formed later in life.

That’s why it’s a great idea to write down our childhood recollections. This way, they’ll stay with us even after they lose their rich vividness and start to fade altogether.

Naturally, you can’t keep everything in your head. Some childhood memories will stay with you forever, while others vanish during your teenage years. Remembering something you have forgotten is not an easy task.

Here’s a way out: use this checklist to recall your childhood experiences:

Feeling completely out of ideas? Or maybe you can’t think of a specific topic? Keep reading to learn how to generate new ideas and write a great childhood memories essay.

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🧸 Childhood Memory Essays Topics List

Favorite childhood memory ideas.

• Meeting Santa at a mall
• A gift you’ve created yourself
• First time you stayed up all night
• Your first visit to an amusement park
• Your favorite children’s book or comic
• Your best childhood camping memory
• The craziest fact you’ve learned as a child
• Memory about winning a school competition
• What was the most fun school assignment?
• Your favorite food at the elementary school cafeteria

Early Childhood Memories Essay Topics

Kindergarten is often the place where kids start socializing for the first time. Think about your experiences with friends and teachers, as well as with your family. These topic ideas will help you get on the right track:

• The first day in kindergarten . Kindergarten is a new world for a child. It has an unfamiliar environment, new people, and rules. This essay can aim at discussing feelings and expectations that accompany a child on their first day.
• Describe the first pet you had in early childhood. Almost all families have a pet that they love. Often pets are given to children as presents. This essay can relate the best moments spent with a pet when you were little.
• A relative who was closest to you in early childhood. Every child has a family member with whom they enjoy spending time. It could easily be a parent, a grandparent, a sibling , or perhaps an uncle. Write about exciting moments related to your beloved relatives.
• Your first childhood hobby . Most people had hobbies when they were kids. This initial interest sometimes determines one’s future occupation. Here, you can describe the activities you used to do as a little child. Focus on the events associated with your first hobby .
• Festive events in kindergarten . During the whole year, people celebrate many holidays. Naturally, kindergartens hold festive events to amuse children. This essay can portray the unforgettable celebrations in kindergarten .
• Describe family gatherings from your childhood.
• A typical day in your kindergarten.
• What’s the first birthday celebration you remember?
• Activities or games in kindergarten .
• Your first Halloween costume.
• Things that you didn’t like in kindergarten.
• Write about your relationship with nature in early childhood.
• Describe a performance you took part in when you were little.
• What was the best teacher in your kindergarten like?
• Discuss the book or story you loved the most in early childhood.

Elementary School Memories Essay Topics

Would you like to look back at your elementary school days? This section is just what you need. Check out these ideas and get inspired:

• How you met your first teacher. Teachers lead children through a complicated yet exciting path. That’s why we all remember our teachers, especially the first day of meeting them. This essay can recount the brightest moments associated with this event. Additionally, you might describe the teacher’s appearance and personality .
• The most challenging lesson in elementary school . You can probably recall numerous lessons from your school years. This essay can aim at describing positive and negatives aspects of studies, as well as your favorite classes.
• Memories about extracurricular activities in school. It could be sports, artistic pursuits, or activities related to specific subjects. Describe your personal preferences and say who inspired you to start doing them.
• Celebration events at school. Celebrations create the brightest and most joyful memories. In this essay, you can share personal experiences about such events, be it school performances, shows, or games.
• Who was your best school teacher ? Describe the personalities of your favorite teachers and explain why you liked them.
• Write about a person who helped with school lessons .
• What did your first school building look like?
• Describe what you daydreamed about in school.
• Wonderful hikes or trips organized by the school.
• What were your plans for the future growing up?
• Write about going to a museum with your class.
• Memories of participation in school sports activities.
• Recall your participation in writing for a school newspaper .
• Did you take part in any important school activities or events?

Happy Childhood Memories Essay Topics

When writing about your childhood, you’d probably prefer recalling happy events rather than sad ones. But what if you don’t know which pleasant memory to choose? This list will help you make up your mind!

• The best birthday party ever. Recall the most exciting details associated with it. For example, describe some beautiful presents and a celebratory atmosphere.
• The day you’ve met your first love . Write about the impressions, feelings, and the most treasured memories associated with that day.
• Recall the best day spent with your childhood friend. Recount the activities and events that made you happy.
• The most significant achievement in childhood. Recall your achievements connected with the studies, sports, or arts. You can start by describing the task you’ve had, explain its importance, and thank the people who helped you.
• The day you made somebody happy . This essay can describe the instances where you helped others. What were your motivations, and why did it make you happy?
• Describe the best school gathering you can remember. Schools often organize parties where students can have fun. This essay can recount the circumstances and special moments related to such a party.
• Recall a fictional character you liked the most in childhood.
• Write about the best present you gave to someone when you were little.
• Describe the best surprise made by friends or relatives in childhood.
• The most wonderful journey or trip in childhood.
• A sad event that changed things for the better.
• What were the happiest summer holidays in your childhood like?
• Chronicle the day when your childhood dream came true.
• Write about your childhood fear and how you overcame it.
• Tell about getting a good grade for an important assignment.
• Describe the first home where your family lived.

Funny Childhood Memories Essay Ideas

Writing about a funny event is perhaps the best option you can choose. You’ll enjoy describing it, and your readers will appreciate you for making them laugh! Here are some prompts to kickstart the creative process.

• Recollect your childhood actions that make your relatives laugh. Children often behave in interesting, comical, and amusing ways. This essay can detail some fun moments that your parents remember.
• Amusing and funny moments in your favorite cartoons . You probably remember many great cartoons from your childhood. What made them funny? Do you still find them entertaining?
• The funniest pranks you did at school. If you were a mischievous child, this topic is for you. Recall various funny, elaborate, or even failed pranks you did at school.
• Describe the first time you rode a bicycle . Learning to ride a bike is a staple of many childhoods. It’s challenging, but once you master it, you will never forget how to ride it!
• What tricks used to help you pass difficult exams ? Usually, students make cribs or copy someone else’s answers. You can describe more creative ways of passing exams.
• Poking fun at younger siblings . If you have brothers and sisters, you probably tease each other. How do you feel about such activities? Do you both have a good laugh, or did somebody get upset?
• Playing superheroes in childhood. Many children have favorite superheroes such as Batman , Spiderman, Ironman, and others. What were your personal favorites? Did you try to imagine you have superpowers?
• Describe the most ridiculous haircut you’ve had when you were little.
• Funny moments with your school teachers.
• Did you have an imaginary friend? What were they like?
• Trying to cook in childhood.
• What tricks did you use to hide bad marks from your parents?
• Attempts to renovate your childhood room.

Childhood Christmas Memories Topics

Christmas is the favorite holiday of many children. Were you one of them? Choose your essay title from this list on Christmas memories:

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• What is the best Christmas present from your childhood? Describe the present, the wrapping, and your emotions related to it. Why did you want it so much? You can also try to remember where this present is now.
• Describe a family Christmas trip that you enjoyed the most as a child. Answer the following questions. What were the new places you have seen? What were the new people you met? How much time did you spend there? Did you feel homesick? What did you feel when you returned home?
• What was your favorite pastime during the Christmas holidays in childhood? For example, you can write about watching cartoons or playing with your siblings. Or maybe you enjoyed winter sports and walking with your friends.
• Was Christmas your favorite holiday in childhood? Explain why or why not. Create a list of the things that you did and didn’t enjoy. You can also compare Christmas with other holidays. Find several arguments to defend your opinion.
• Describe the best Christmas present you gave somebody in childhood . It can be something you made yourself or bought. Explain why you chose this gift and what was the recipient’s reaction. What did you want to show with this present? Was it your idea to give it? How did you choose it? Answer these questions in your essay.
• What are your favorite Christmas memories ? You have a wide choice here. You can describe family get-togethers, receiving or giving presents, eating sweets, or having fun while resting from school.
• Describe your favorite childhood Christmas photo . Explain why it is so valuable to you. Define the people or objects in the picture. Try to remember who took it and what camera was they used. Also, provide some information about the time and place.
• Write about your family’s Christmas traditions .
• Describe your favorite Christmas decorations in childhood.
• When was the time you stopped believing in Santa Claus?
• What was your favorite Christmas movie in childhood?
• Write about the Christmas dishes did you enjoy the most as a child.
• What was your favorite Christmas TV special ?
• What were your favorite Christmas songs when you were little?
• Describe the perfect Christmas Eve of your childhood.
• Tell about the friends you liked to invite to your Christmas parties.

These recollections can form a great foundation for your essay. Because childhood is often the best time in a person’s life, writing essays on your childhood experiences can be a real pleasure. If you try to be creative and choose a unique topic, you are sure to succeed in writing an impressive essay.

✍️ “My Childhood Memories” Essay Writing Guide

Writing about your childhood is an exciting assignment that has some peculiarities. Let’s explore some of them.

Childhood Memories Essay: Dos and Don’ts

Your main task is to make the reader feel like they’ve experienced the memory you described. There are certain elements that you can include in your essay to make it stand out. Similarly, some things are better to avoid.

Keep these things in mind, and you will surely write a perfect composition.

Childhood Memories Essay: Step by Step

Follow these steps of the essay writing process, and you will see that writing a good essay on your childhood memories is not as challenging as it may seem.

Narrative Essay on Childhood Memories: Outline

Every essay must have a proper structure. That’s why it’s useful to make a short outline before you start writing. It will keep you from losing your way as you write your essay. It also saves you time! If you have a plan, you won’t miss any important points in your essay.

Your paper should include:

After you’ve finished writing, revise and edit your essay . Make sure your paragraphs are written in a logical order. Read your essay aloud so that you can see how it flows and determine where you need to improve it.

Try our memory-activating prompts and follow these writing tips to compose your perfect childhood memories essay! If you’re not sure that you can write a good paper on your own, you can always ask our experts to help you out.

Further reading:

• School Days Essay: How to Describe a Memorable Event
• Growing Up Essay: Great Ideas for Your College Assignment
• Writing Essay about Someone Who has Made an Impact on Your Life
• Excellent Remembering a Person Essay: Free Writing Guidelines
• Life Experience Essay: How to Write a Brilliant Paper

🔗 References

• The Fate of Childhood Memories: Children Postdated Their Earliest Memories as They Grew Older
• Can You Trust Your Earliest Childhood Memories?: BBC
• How to Start Writing Your Own Childhood Memories for Posterity: HobbyLark
• 650 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing: The New York Times
• Bright Side Readers Shared 14 Childhood Stories and We Plunged Into Their Memories Together: Brightside
• Great Questions: StoryCorps
• Introductions and Conclusions: University of Toronto
• Make a List: Childhood Memories: Practical Parenting
• Tips to Retrieve Old Memories: Harvard University
• Make the Most of Your Memory: 10 Tips for Writing About Your Life: Writer’s Digest
• Childhood Christmas Memories: DNA Explained
• What Do Your Earliest Childhood Memories Say about You?: The Conversation
• Can’t Remember Your Childhood? What Might Be Going On: Healthline
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What’s Your Earliest Reading Memory? Tayari Jones Wants to Know

Abby Hargreaves

Abby Hargreaves is a New Hampshire native living and working as a Children’s Librarian in Washington, D.C. She fulfills the gamut of the librarian stereotype with a love of cats, coffee, and crocheting (and likes a good run of alliteration). Her MLIS degree enjoys the company of a BA in English from Hollins University, making Abby an advocate of women's universities. Her favorite color is yellow.

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Many of us enjoyed story time events at libraries, day care, and school growing up, but who remembers those moments? Maybe you recall a caregiver reading bedtime stories while you cuddled your favorite stuffed animal, listening to the adventures of the three pigs in “The Three Little Pigs.” Maybe your first grade teacher read from My Father’s Dragon over a period of weeks during circle time. Maybe the first time you remember someone reading to you was your best friend at college, who shared their favorite poems with you on perfect fall days on the quad. Or maybe your earliest memory of interacting with printed material was reading yourself! Whatever it was, it was certainly a magical time.

My parents both read to me frequently growing up, particularly at bedtime. Dad incorporated his own sound effects—in which I could choose to participate—into the Disney Little Golden Book edition of The Three Little Pigs . Mom favored 365 Bedtime Stories by Nan Gilbert, a copy of which I believe still sits in my parents house, flaking and falling apart, but still beloved. Now, my parents read to their grandchildren regularly, and I’ve developed a love of books over the years and become a children’s librarian, where I read at regular story times every week.

The first specific moment I recall, however, being read to was an instance when my dad decided to introduce my brother and me to The Hobbit . The two of us lay on my parents’ bedroom floor at the foot of their bed, while Dad opened the novel from his side of the bed, his nightstand light on in addition to the overhead light with the fan. Ethan and I lay quietly with our hands clasped under our heads while Dad painted pictures with his voice and Tolkien’s words. Of course, The Hobbit is not terribly well-suited to reading aloud. Tolkien’s winding and lengthy sentence structure can make for a tough follow-along, but it wasn’t about the story or the words—it was about spending time with my family, and a moment of my dad that I’ll remember and cherish forever.

There’s no doubt that reading and reading to children is paramount to their development , both cognitive and emotional. And while many of us were read to as children for the first time, some of us were adults when we first remember a significant moment of written words being read to us. When Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage , ( @tayari ) asked other Twitter users to share their earliest memories of reading or being read to , readers rose to the occasion. Here are some of the best responses to Jones’s question.

What is your earliest memory of reading or being read to? — Tayari Jones (@tayari) November 23, 2018

This reader remembers saying goodnight with Goodnight Moon .

My mom reading Good Night Moon to me every night. However, there is a pic of me at three sitting on the bed reading a newspaper. — … (@Prettybrains08) November 24, 2018

Kris learned about Patty Hearst through recitations of the Milwaukee Journal .

My foster father read the Milwaukee Journal out loud to me every day. I remember reading the words myself at about 4. I learned history, politics, health. I keenly remember reading about Pattie Hearst at 6. — Kris A. Newman (@KrisANewman) November 24, 2018

Wilhelmina describes the power of books even when there is a need and want for other things.

I can’t remember not reading. My father worked in NW DC and we lived in an apartment in NE. He rode the bus back and forth. Every day I would run down the hill to meet him and he would have a new book for me. Golden Books; Wonder Books. We had no car, but I had books. — Wilhelmina Jenkins (@minadjenkins) November 23, 2018

Crystal remembers her grandmother’s important role in her development.

My grandmother read to me so much that I could read on a third grade level in headstart. The beginning. — crystal wilkinson (@CrystalWilki) November 24, 2018

Sarah has had a TBR since as long as she can remember.

When I was around 2 I would take a stack of 10 or so books into my crib at nap time. Evidently I would flip through each one and then sleep, every day. — Sarah Randall (@cookcanread) November 23, 2018

Rene took on the role of reader for her brother.

https://twitter.com/ReneDenfeld/status/1066474011645767680

Genea is grateful for the love of reading her mother gave her via “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” and her stellar voice acting abilities.

My mother reading 3 Billy Goats Gruff and doing the voices! It still brings a smile to my face over forty years later! Reading is an awesome gift. Thank you Mama! pic.twitter.com/iLukGvijNo — Genea Monroe (@gtmonroe1999) November 24, 2018

Tori shares her love for Mrs. Weiss, who read with her one-on-one.

In kindergarten I was a slow at learning how to read so I went to this program called Reading Recovery where kids learned to read 1 on 1 w/ a teacher. I still remember my teacher Mrs. Weiss who helped me learn to love books! — Tori Halligan (@notorioustdh) November 24, 2018

Drew had a similar experience to mine, involving Tolkein.

My Dad read me Tolkien before I could read. — Drew Johnson (@DrewalsoKermit) November 23, 2018

Hope, with a nod to libraries, recalls Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill .

Love this question. My best clear memory is reading the library copy of Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, and wanting to live in its world of friendship and adventure. — Hope Dellon (@hopedellon) November 24, 2018

Reading was and is magic with Miranda.

I distinctly remember reading Little Bear and feeling my brain soar for the first time. It was a magic trick that I was doing! I was four. We were living in rural Senegal. I was in the front room of our mud hut, sitting with my mama. My grandmother had sent the book from Ohio. — Miranda Beverly-Whittemore (@MirandaBW) November 24, 2018

Sometimes, it’s a single word that opens up the world.

I remember the first word I ever read on my own. It was WATER, printed on a drain in a Baltimore street. I was two years old, walking with my granddad. I can still remember how proud he was, and how happy it made me. I'll never let go of that memory. pic.twitter.com/W0ahlONpAq — JaysonElliot (@JaysonElliot) November 24, 2018

Food and books have a way of finding each other, as evidenced by Rosalie’s childhood memory.

You know it’s funny there must have been a time but I don’t remember NOT being able to read. I remember not being able to swim. I used to sit at the kitchen table and read to my mommy while she cooked. I was very young. — Rosalie Lee (@LeeMirandaLee) November 23, 2018

Ah, the importance of modeling the behavior we want to see in children.

https://twitter.com/thomaspluck/status/1066130347027517440

Lisa, like many of us, remembers mornings of cereal ingredients.

I’m dyslexic & couldn’t read independently until 5th grade. I remember sitting at the kitchen table & reading the ingredients on the cereal box w/no problem. — Lisa Nelson-Haynes (@momsamango) November 23, 2018

Harry Potter is sure to show up in many first-reading memories.

My mom reading Harry Potter to me and my siblings as a bedtime story <3 — Emily Polson 👻 (@emilycpolson) November 24, 2018

Monise, showing us all up with an early encounter with the encyclopedia.

Not earliest, though. I read encyclopedias as a kid. Damn nerd. 😂😂😂 — Monise L. Seward (@MoniseLSeward) November 24, 2018

Dr. Ken gets a hug of a memory in the form of nursery rhymes.

I remember my mother reading stories to me from this book as a kid. It’s a hug of a memory. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/EuA37EBmox — Dr. Ken Carter (@DrKenCarter) November 24, 2018

Reading, making caregivers proud since the beginning of time.

Mom caught me reading to myself. She got very excited when I sighed instead of reading the word. It was such a confidence boost. I've loved reading ever since. — The Ke (@Kakes_Murray) November 24, 2018

More library love!

My most vivid memory related to books was going to the Lorain Public Library with my mom, having my own card, and checking out a big stack of books. We rode our bikes there because we did not have a car. I loved going to the library with my mom. — Jane from Lorain (@LorainJane) November 23, 2018

Jenn took the lead in her family.

I’m reading to my Dad – circa 1982 (?) pic.twitter.com/r5hcEsGbfX — Jenn S (@jennstri) November 24, 2018

Letisha got her reading start with a Dr. Seuss classic.

Reading one fish two fish, red fish blue fish on my own for the first time! — Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown, PhD. (@letisha122) November 24, 2018

Sonia also got her start with Dr. Seuss, and a title mentioned many times in responses.

Learning how to read “Green Eggs & Ham” and actually being rewarded with green eggs and ham as a meal. — Sonia Hazard (@SRHazardATL) November 24, 2018

Spite reading is the best kind of reading.

I read the letters on the K-Mart sign from my car seat when I was 2 1/2. The reason I remember it is because my mother made me do it three times, then read some other letters on other signs as well, because she didn’t believe I was really reading. I was angry. — Hanne Blank (@hanneblank) November 24, 2018

Check out Tayari Jones’s thread to see other great responses and fond memories of books and reading. And tell us in the comments what your answer is!

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Childhood Memories Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on childhood memories.

Memories are a vital component of our bodies. They shape our personality as all our knowledge and past experiences are stored there. All of us have memories, both good and bad. You have memories from long ago and also from recent times. Furthermore, some memories help us get by tough days and make us cheerful on good days.

Memories are the little things which help in running our lives smoothly. In other words, memories are irreplaceable and they are very dear to us. They help us learn from our mistakes and make us better. In my opinion, one’s childhood memories are the dearest to anyone. They help in keeping the child in you alive. Moreover, it also is a reason for our smiles in between adult life.

Importance of Childhood Memories

Childhood memories are very important in our lives. It makes us remember the best times of our lives. They shape our thinking and future. When one has good childhood memories, they grow up to be happy individuals. However, if one has traumatic childhood memories, it affects their adult life gravely.

Thus, we see how childhood memories shape our future. They do not necessarily define us but they surely play a great role. It is not important that someone with traumatic childhood memories may turn out to be not well. People get past their traumatic experiences and grow as human beings. But, these memories play a great role in this process as well.

Most importantly, childhood memories keep the inner child alive. No matter how old we get, there is always a child within each one of us. He/She comes out at different times.

For instance, some may act like a child on seeing swings; the other may get excited like a child when they see ice cream. All this happens so because we have our childhood memories reminding us of the times associated with the things we get excited about. Therefore, childhood memories play a great role in our lives.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

My Childhood Memories

Growing up, I had a very loving family. I had three siblings with whom I used to play a lot. I remember very fondly the games we use to play. Especially, in the evenings, we used to go out in the park with our sports equipment. Each day we played different games, for example, football on one day and cricket on the other. These memories of playing in the park are very dear to me.

Furthermore, I remember clearly the aroma of my grandmother’s pickles. I used to help her whenever she made pickles. We used to watch her do the magic of combining the oils and spices to make delicious pickles. Even today, I can sometimes smell her pickles whenever I look back at this memory.

Most importantly, I remember this instance very clearly when we went out for a picnic with my family. We paid a visit to the zoo and had an incredible day. My mother packed delectable dishes which we ate in the zoo. My father clicked so many pictures that day. When I look at these pictures, the memory is so clear, it seems like it happened just yesterday. Thus, my childhood memories are very dear to me and make me smile when I feel low.

Q.1 Why is Childhood Memories important?

A.1 Childhood memories shape our personality and future. They remind us of the good times and help us get by on tough days. Moreover, they remind us of past experiences and mistakes which help us improve ourselves.

Q.2 What can be a common childhood memory for all?

A.2 In my opinion, a childhood memory most of us have in common is the first day of school. Most of us remember what we felt like on the first day. In addition, our birthdays are also very common childhood memory that reminds us of gifts and celebrations on that day.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Childhood Memories — Life-Changing Memories of My Early Childhood

Life-changing Memories of My Early Childhood

• Categories: Childhood Memories

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Published: Jul 27, 2018

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My School Memory & Childhood Memory Essay & Paragraph

Here is a collection of essays and paragraphs on ‘My School Memories’ and ‘My Childhood Memories’. Everything changes over time. The school you attended as a child may not exist today, or it may not be as it was then. Some of the games and sports that you played as a child may have been lost in the modern touch today. The change must have caught your eye. How was your school then, how were your childhood days? Write an essay or paragraph describing your childhood memories.

Table of Contents

My School Memory Paragraph, 200 Words

By: Haque | For class 6-7 | 02-04-’22

Write a Paragraph on ‘Memories of My School Days’. In your paragraph, mention your class, lessons, examination, homework, games and sports, friends, Headmaster, other teachers, etc.

The memories of my school days are very sweet. I often remember the sweet memories of my school days. In our class, there were sixty students . We all loved one another. Our class lessons were very interesting. All of our teachers were experienced. They took special care of the weak students. We never put off our homework. There was a good academic atmosphere in our school. We attended our classes regularly. As a result, we were never afraid of examinations. Tutorial examinations were held every month half-yearly, 2nd terminal and Annual Examinations were held in our school. There were good facilities for games and sports in our school. We played football, cricket, and volleyball in our school. There were also facilities for indoor games. All the students of the class were very cooperative and friendly. We often arranged debates and went on picnics . The teachers were very helpful to us. They helped us both inside and outside the classroom . The headmaster was really an experienced teacher . The teachers were our guide , guardians, and friends . The happy memories of my school days still fill my heart with joy.

Take a walk to: Village Fair Essay & Paragraph

Memories of My School Life Essay, 400 Words

By: Haque | For class 9-10 | 02-04-’22

My school days were the best days of my life . I still remember my first day at school . My school life is the brightest part of my memory.

I can still feel how warmly my school welcomed me. The affection I received from my teachers and the love I received from my classmates will never be forgotten. That’s why I always consider my primary school memories as the treasure of my life.

Those who are my best friends today, I got from my school. And those teachers of my childhood are still my fatherly guardians. This is how my school life has helped me and enriched me.

I think if I didn’t have the golden memories and valuable experiences of my school life, I would have missed a lot in my life. I did not get my wonderful friends, my experiences, and happy memories. Those days of excitement helped me to appreciate the value of time and to find meaning in life.

My school life has taught me how to be disciplined , responsible, hardworking, and realistic. That’s how my school life made me, so today I’m happy with my career. I believe that what school life teaches a person really affects the rest of his life.

One of the brightest memories of my school was the day I won the prize in the annual inter-school science competition. It was an event of great joy for me and my parents and a moment of great pride for my school. The principal of our school gave me a medal that day.

In my school life, I used to note down all my events in a personal diary. Now when I get a little leisure, I open the diary. In this notebook, I am delighted to discover the memories and experiences of my school life. It fills me with confidence and courage.

I remember how happy my parents were when I got first place in the whole school. They embraced me with joy and love.

It is said that a person always remembers his first day and last day in school. I remember that too. I cried the first day I went to school, the same way I cried the last day of my school life, because of the sadness of leaving. That’s how school days are the most memorable days of my life.

My Childhood Memory Essay, 250 Words

By: Haque | For class 7-8 | 02-04-’22

Introduction: Childhood is the sweetest period of human life. I often remember the days of my childhood. When I remember my childhood days, I feel happy.

My Childhood Memories:   I was the youngest son of my parents. So, all the members of our family loved me very dearly. They bought me nice toys. My grandmother was very fond of me. She told me many interesting stories.

My Days in the Village: I was born in a village . The Padma flows by it. I swam in the river with other boys.

The whole village was my playground. I wandered in the village and played with my friends. The days of summer were the happiest days to us. We plucked mangoes and blackberries from tree to tree and ate them to our heat’s content. I had a great fascination for picking green mangoes during storm.

Education at Home: My learning was not dull. My uncle taught all the children of our family in the morning and at night.

The Village Maqtab: The village Maqtab was another interesting place for me. An old Maulavi used to teach us there.

School Days: The days of my school were very sweet. In school, we were afraid of our teachers.

The Village Hat: Another interesting memory was the village hat. The hat used to sit twice a week. I used to go to the market with my father. I used to buy sweets from the vendors.

Conclusion: How happy I was in my childhood days! The happy memories of those days still fill my heart with great joy. I wish I could have gone to those days again!

Read also: Friendship & Best Friend Essay & Paragraph

My Childhood Memory Essay, 600 Words

Introduction: Childhood days are very special to every person. A human child is born in a very helpless and weak form. Parents raise the child with utmost care and unconditional love. So, that period is a happy period for most people. However, childhood can be full of sorrow and nightmares for some orphans and helpless people. My childhood days were full of happy events. There were some sorrows too. But the happy memories invariably overshadow the sorry recollections. When I think of my childhood days I have a feeling of joy. My childhood days passed at Agrabad in Chittagong town. There we lived in a one-storied building.

Siblings, Parents, and Grandparents: I was the third child of my parents. My two elder sisters played with me and loved me very much. They shared every delicious food item with me. In the mornings and afternoons, I walked and played in the garden and on the roof of our house with my sisters. I asked them every type of question and they replied to my questions with their imaginations and little knowledge. I annoyed my sisters very much and wanted to follow them everywhere. My parents and sisters told me different types of stories. Those stories developed my imagination to full bloom. We had a radio and a cassette player in our house. I listened to different melodious songs on the radio and cassette player with my family. My grandparents also lived with us. I liked to pass time with them and listen to their experiences. Sometimes I made mistakes and when my parents were about to punish me, my grandparents always saved me. My grandparents died when I was seven years old. It was a matter of great shock to us. I still miss them.

Friends and Playmates: I had a few friends. They were our neighbors. At that time television was very costly and very few families had it. There was a color television in one of my friends’ houses. Sometimes I went to his house to watch TV. The programs on TV fascinated me. The number of my friends increased when I got admitted to the school.

The School: I was admitted to school at the age of five. The school was a very short distance from our house. I clearly remember my first day at school. I got up early in the morning, put on a white shirt and blue pants, and went to school with my father. In school, I met my teachers and classmates. My classmates were friendly and nice to me. My teachers also loved me very much.

Market and Park: Sometimes my parents took me to the market. At the market, they bought me dresses, chocolates, toys, balls, and other necessary items. They also took me to parks. We had a merry-go-round and other kinds of rides in the parks.

The Fairs: I also went to fairs with my parents. There is a big fair held annually in Chittagong. It is called ‘Jabbarer Bali Khela’. Many attractive toys and household items are found at that fair. My parents took me to that fair and bought me toys and sweetmeats. We also went to other fairs held on the occasion of Bengali New Year’s Day, Victory Day, Language Day, etc. We also went to different book fairs where my parents bought me books suitable for children.

Conclusion: A happy feeling engulfs me when I think of my childhood days. Then I lost myself in reverie and feel a strong nostalgia and longing for those days. That period has essentially made me the man I am now.

About the Author

A teacher, writer and blogger, started allparagraph noting students search online for paragraphs on various topics, short and simple essays , edifying stories and other materials of study . In composing these lessons we have tried to use as simple language as possible, keeping young students in mind. If you find any text inappropriate, please let us know so we can make it more useful through necessary corrections and modifications. Thank you!

4 thoughts on “My School Memory & Childhood Memory Essay & Paragraph”

Thank you too.

Hello, Mr Haque I’m a teacher of English at an Algerian middle school and I find your essay very useful and I’m presenting it as a test for my students could you, please tell me what is the source of your passage?

Dear Razika , Thank you for your comment. I am from Bangladesh. I am very happy to hear that you liked one of my blog essays. If I say about the source of writing, almost half of the writing on this site I have taken from some English grammar books of our country’s schools which are not included in the main syllabus and students read them as supplementary guidebooks. The other half of the essays and paragraphs here are my own.

Could you please tell me the topics or titles of some essays and paragraphs that are not on my blog but are often asked to write in schools in Algeria?

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Essay on Childhood Memories in 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 Words

Here are some beautiful essays on Childhood Memories in 200, 300, 400, 500, and 600 words for class 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. We have added an essay on 10 lines too. I hope you will love these essays. 

In This Blog We Will Discuss

Essay on Childhood Memories in 200 Words

Childhood memories are memories that we can’t forget ever. Some incidents are so bright in our minds that we recall it again and again. We all have tons of memories in childhood. These memories help us to build our character and personality, that’s why childhood memories are hugely important in our life. 

When people think or discuss these memories, then they feel very happy and delighted. That’s why we need to think and write about these memories. I have some really good memories from my childhood. I spent a long time in rural areas. 

I’ve completed my school from a village primary school. That was a very good experience for me. I can remember lots of incidents from there. I went to visit a village fair with my father and we bought lots of toys for me and my siblings. 

I still can feel the ‘Nagordola’, lots of people, colorful shops, and songs playing on loudspeakers when I close my eyes. These feelings and memories are priceless. I wish if I could go back to my past and see childhood again, that would be amazing. But I know it’s not possible. I miss my childhood a lot. 

Essay on Childhood Memories in 300 Words

Introduction: 

Memories are some special visualization on our brain that helps us to recall some past incidents that happened to our life. It shapes our personality for the future. Sometimes we remember our long-ago past memories and it makes us happy. 

Childhood memories are the best example of that. We all have lots of childhood memories and these are golden. These memories are vivid in our minds always. I know some memories could be hard to remember but most of them are vivid in our brain.

My Childhood Memories:

I have so many memories that I can remember now. Most of them are related to my family , parents, and siblings. Because I have spent most of my childhood times with them. My father was a government worker then and he had very little time to spend with his family.

But still, he managed to spend a huge time with us. I loved his activities. He took us to different places for a picnic. My mom used to cook very delicious meals for us. I can remember, we were staying at a village in Bihar and it was the house of an uncle. We went for a long drive from there. 

There was an amazing side view on the road. I loved the villages of Bihar. The people were friendly. I spent an amazing time with my cousins there. These memories are very bright on my mind and I love to think about all those days. 

Conclusion: 

I know your childhood memories are also amazing and you love to think about these memories a lot. These memories make us happy. I love to think about these amazing days. 

Essay on Childhood Memories in 400 Words

Childhood is that time when we had nothing to worry about. We were free and only spent time with our fellow childhood friends. We could do anything. We had no limitation to do anything. 

I had an awesome childhood that I love to recall again and again. I wish I could get back to my childhood. That is a mind-blowing part of my life. 

When I think about my childhood, it reminds a few of my friends, such as Satish, Jay, and Ganesh. We lived in a rural area in Bihar. That area was very beautiful nature. I loved spending time with nature. When we were students of class 1 or 2, we used to leave school and go to the river. 

I caught lots of fish in the river. It was a very beautiful hilly river. I wish I could go back to that amazing place. It makes me very happy when I recall these memories. I loved to jump into the water and swim there. I promise I was an excellent swimmer back then. 

We also went to different places to catch birds and do different types of naughty stuff. Though I had to follow some strict rules at home, still I was super naughty. My father was strict but he loves us very much. 

My siblings were very good with me. I used to spend lots of time with them at home. We had different types of games to play together. I loved playing cricket and football mostly. 

First Day at School: 

The first day at school is the best childhood memory that I can recall. That was a tough day for me. I was not a good boy who wanted to go to school with his own wish. I did different things to not go to school. 

But finally, my father bought me some books, a school bag, and a school uniform and I agreed to go to school. The first day was full of scariness for me. We went to the headmaster’s room and he asked me some easy questions. I knew the answers but I was unable to answer due to lots of pressure going on in my head. 

I love to think about all of my childhood memories, these memories are my own and that’s what pushed me to create my personality and character. We all need to appreciate our memories in childhood. 

Essay on Childhood Memories in 500 Words

We all have lots of past memories in our lives. But I think childhood memories are the best memories that make us happy and delighted. You can’t deny that we all have some memories that are very special to us. 

I have some childhood memories too that I never can forget. Today I will talk about some of these memories here. 

Importance of Childhood Memories: 

Do some people think that childhood memories are really important? I think it is. Because these memories make a huge impact on our personality and lifestyle. It helps us to be that person that we want to be. 

We should never ignore our past memories. These are big lessons in our life. That’s why I think it has huge importance in our life. 

My Childhood Memories: 

I have some amazing memories. Most of them are with my family, my parents, my siblings, and my grandmother . I have three siblings and they are very close to my heart. We always had a great time together. I spent my entire childhood in a neighborhood in Delhi. 

I had lots of friends there. I am still connected with a few of them. We spent really good times together. I loved playing cricket in the afternoon. I have lots of good memories playing with them. I can remember the first day of school. 

It was very exciting for me. I always was an attentive student and I used to make good results in the class. My teachers loved me a lot for that. These memories are very sweet and I wish I could go back there and experience the same thing again. 

I used to visit my native village sometimes. That was another exciting journey for me. I spent an amazing time with my cousins there. We went for a picnic and did lots of crazy things. 

A Horrible Experience of Childhood:

Along with lots of good experiences I have some horrible childhood experiences too. When I was five years old, I didn’t know how to swim. And that time I was in the village. We were playing football and there was a pond near the field. 

When the ball went to the pond, someone went and picked it. A boy thought I might know how to swim and he pushed me to the pond. When I was trying to come out of the water but couldn’t he was laughing and thinking that I was making fun. 

But when he realized he jumped and took me off the water. That was a very shocking memory that I can’t forget. It could be worse. 

I love to think about my old childhood memories. These memories bring a broad smile to my face. I know it’s the same for everyone. These memories are very much cute and loving. It could be a topic of gossip too. People love sharing things about their childhood, I do. 

Essay on Childhood Memories in 600 Words

Childhood is the best stage of human life where they can spend time without any worry and pressure. We all have had that amazing time. The best part of childhood is spending time with fellow kids. We all have some good and some bad memories that we can recall from childhood. 

There are lots of memories that we have forgotten and some we can remember slightly. I am going to share some memories from my childhood that I still can’t forget. I think these are the golden memories and the time was priceless. 

I have been raised in a big family with lots of loving members. I have all the sweet memories with them. I especially want to mention my grandmother. She was an extraordinary lady. I have two siblings and we used to play in the garden in front of my home . 

My father bought us different types of toys and playing equipment. I loved playing cricket from childhood and still play that often. My little sister was like my assistant. She was always with me whatever I do and wherever I go. 

We used to steal pickles from the refrigerator that my grandma made. I still can feel the smell and taste of that pickle when I look back at the memories. My dad was a super busy person, but still, he spent enough time with us. I can remember a picnic at a zoo where the entire family went. 

My mom took some delicious food items there. I can’t remember what exactly the dishes were, but they were amazing in taste. That was an incredible day. We sometimes visited our native village and that was the best moment for me and my cousins. 

We got enough space to run, play football, and do all the stuff that we can’t do in the city. When I think about my childhood, that takes a large part there. Because I have so many amazing memories related to village life. 

My First Day at School: 

The first day at school is a beautiful memory that I can remember clearly. That was a very special event for me. I was very excited. I have been preparing for school and worked very hard for three months. My mother was also working very hard to teach me all the basic things such as alphabets and a few rhymes. 

I was pretty confident. I got my new uniform, school bag, some books, and new shoes. And the day came and they took me to school. That is quite a popular school in the city. My parents took me to the headmaster’s room. 

He was a gentleman and he greeted us properly. I can remember he asked me some basic questions and I answered them confidently. He called an assistant teacher and sent me to my classroom . A class was going on there already and I joined it. I found tons of boys and girls my age. 

I made some friends on the first day. I went back and found my parents waiting for me. That was a pleasant experience for me. I will never forget that day. My parents were very supportive and that’s why everything was easy for me. 

Conclusion:

Childhood memories are very important in our life. We should remind ourselves of all the beautiful moments. When we think about our childhood it makes us laugh and we feel very genuine. 

That’s very important in our life. These little memories can shape our personality in the future. These are good times and they teach us how to overcome some problems in real life. 

10 Lines Essay on Childhood Memories

1. We all have lots of beautiful memories from our childhood that make us extremely happy.

2. This memory recalls are priceless and everyone loves to talk about them. 

3. I have some exciting memories of my own childhood. 

4. We were living in a village when I was a kid. I spent my entire childhood there. 

5. It was possible for me to experience lots of exciting things that a city kid can’t.

6. I learned swimming at the age of 5 and I used to swim in the nearest river with my fellow childhood friends. 

7. My parents had some rules to follow and of course, they were extremely strict. But still, we managed to find time for doing lots of naughty activities. 

8. I have most of my memories with my siblings and my cousins. 

9. These memories are priceless and I keep smiling when I think about these golden days. 

10. I love all these childhood memories and these are my base of personality. 

How do you write a childhood memories essay? 

To write a childhood memory, you need to look back to your childhood. It’s a very important topic for school and college students. By writing on this topic, you will get an opportunity to look back at your past memories. It is not hard to write about childhood memories. You need to think a bit and you will come with tons of beautiful memories. 

How would you describe your childhood memories? 

To describe your childhood memories, you need to write them first and then you can do some edits to make it look good. Here are some described essays on childhood memories, you can use them for your study purpose. 

Why is Childhood Memories important?

Childhood memories are very important for us because our memories help us to build our personality and make us the perfect human. It’s a huge lesson in our life. 

What can be a common childhood memory for all?

‘The first day at school’ could be a common memory for all. There are some memories that are related to our parents and siblings, they could be common for all too. 

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SymfonyCon Vienna 2024 : Very last day to enjoy early bird tickets!

For the first time, the international Symfony conference of the year, SymfonyCon Vienna 2024 , will be held in Austria in the center of Vienna on December 5 & 6, 2024!

Today is the very last day to enjoy the early bird registration

Book your ticket and choose the best ticket option to attend the SymfonyCon Vienna 2024 your way, among our 3 kinds of tickets:

Conference ticket only . It includes the access to the entire conference days, 3 english-speaking tracks with more than 35 outstanding speakers on December 5 & 6 , replays of all talks, morning and afternoon coffee breaks and lunches on both days, and access to the conference party for yourself.

Workshop ticket only . It includes the access to both workshop days on December 3 & 4 (you will need to select your workshop topic once announced), morning and afternoon coffee breaks and lunches on both days.

Combo workshop and conference ticket . It includes the 2 tickets above: access to the 4 days from December 3 to 6, morning and afternoon coffee breaks and lunches on each day, and access to the conference party for yourself.

🔥 I take advantage of the preferential rate to register now

Call for papers is still open: Submit your talk and workshop proposals!

Increase your chance of selection by following the next points:

• SymfonyCon talks last for 30 minutes and are followed by 5 minutes for Q&A; Workshops can be 1 or 2 days.
• Talks about Symfony and related projects (Twig, Doctrine, etc.) are prioritized over generic PHP talks. Original talks that haven't been delivered in previous conferences are also prioritized.
• You must have the rights to use your talk/workshop materials and you must be allowed to speak publicly about the project or topic you will present.
• We usually receive lots of similar proposals; consider submitting several proposals to increase your chances of being selected.

A technical committee will select the sessions among the proposals received at the closing deadline. All speakers will be contacted by email.

Every selected speaker and trainer will receive a complimentary conference ticket and a speaker gift! Speakers who do not reside in the conference city will also have their travel and accommodation expenses covered.

If you have never spoken at a conference before, you can take advantage of our speaker mentoring program! Experienced speakers will gladly assist you in preparing for your conference, whether it involves creating your slides or rehearsing your talk. Feel free to seek advice in the #diversity or #speaker-mentoring channels on the Symfony Slack or include comments requesting guidance when submitting your talk proposal.

🫵 I dare to become an International Symfony speaker!

We can't wait to meet you physically to learn and share the latest about Symfony. Join us and be part of the @symfony community! 🫶

Help the Symfony project!

As with any Open-Source project, contributing code or documentation is the most common way to help, but we also have a wide range of sponsoring opportunities .

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What Solar Eclipse-Gazing Has Looked Like for the Past 2 Centuries

Millions of people on Monday will continue the tradition of experiencing and capturing solar eclipses, a pursuit that has spawned a lot of unusual gear.

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By Sarah Eckinger

• April 8, 2024 Updated 12:37 p.m. ET

For centuries, people have been clamoring to glimpse solar eclipses. From astronomers with custom-built photographic equipment to groups huddled together with special glasses, this spectacle has captivated the human imagination.

Creating a Permanent Record

In 1860, Warren de la Rue captured what many sources describe as the first photograph of a total solar eclipse . He took it in Rivabellosa, Spain, with an instrument known as the Kew Photoheliograph . This combination of a telescope and camera was specifically built to photograph the sun.

Forty years later, Nevil Maskelyne, a magician and an astronomy enthusiast, filmed a total solar eclipse in North Carolina. The footage was lost, however, and only released in 2019 after it was rediscovered in the Royal Astronomical Society’s archives.

Telescopic Vision

For scientists and astronomers, eclipses provide an opportunity not only to view the moon’s umbra and gaze at the sun’s corona, but also to make observations that further their studies. Many observatories, or friendly neighbors with a telescope, also make their instruments available to the public during eclipses.

Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen, Fridtjof Nansen and Sigurd Scott Hansen observing a solar eclipse while on a polar expedition in 1894 .

Women from Wellesley College in Massachusetts and their professor tested out equipment ahead of their eclipse trip (to “catch old Sol in the act,” as the original New York Times article phrased it) to New London, Conn., in 1922.

A group from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania traveled to Yerbaniz, Mexico, in 1923, with telescopes and a 65-foot camera to observe the sun’s corona .

Dr. J.J. Nassau, director of the Warner and Swasey Observatory at Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, prepared to head to Douglas Hill, Maine, to study an eclipse in 1932. An entire freight car was required to transport the institution’s equipment.

Visitors viewed a solar eclipse at an observatory in Berlin in the mid-1930s.

A family set up two telescopes in Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1963. The two children placed stones on the base to help steady them.

An astronomer examined equipment for an eclipse in a desert in Mauritania in June 1973. We credit the hot climate for his choice in outfit.

Indirect Light

If you see people on Monday sprinting to your local park clutching pieces of paper, or with a cardboard box of their head, they are probably planning to reflect or project images of the solar eclipse onto a surface.

Cynthia Goulakos demonstrated a safe way to view a solar eclipse , with two pieces of cardboard to create a reflection of the shadowed sun, in Lowell, Mass., in 1970.

Another popular option is to create a pinhole camera. This woman did so in Central Park in 1963 by using a paper cup with a small hole in the bottom and a twin-lens reflex camera.

Amateur astronomers viewed a partial eclipse, projected from a telescope onto a screen, from atop the Empire State Building in 1967 .

Back in Central Park, in 1970, Irving Schwartz and his wife reflected an eclipse onto a piece of paper by holding binoculars on the edge of a garbage basket.

Children in Denver in 1979 used cardboard viewing boxes and pieces of paper with small pinholes to view projections of a partial eclipse.

A crowd gathered around a basin of water dyed with dark ink, waiting for the reflection of a solar eclipse to appear, in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1995.

Staring at the Sun (or, How Not to Burn Your Retinas)

Eclipse-gazers have used different methods to protect their eyes throughout the years, some safer than others .

In 1927, women gathered at a window in a building in London to watch a total eclipse through smoked glass. This was popularized in France in the 1700s , but fell out of favor when physicians began writing papers on children whose vision was damaged.

Another trend was to use a strip of exposed photographic film, as seen below in Sydney, Australia, in 1948 and in Turkana, Kenya, in 1963. This method, which was even suggested by The Times in 1979 , has since been declared unsafe.

Solar eclipse glasses are a popular and safe way to view the event ( if you use models compliant with international safety standards ). Over the years there have been various styles, including these large hand-held options found in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 1979.

Parents and children watched a partial eclipse through their eclipse glasses in Tokyo in 1981.

Slimmer, more colorful options were used in Nabusimake, Colombia, in 1998.

In France in 1999.

And in Iran and England in 1999.

And the best way to see the eclipse? With family and friends at a watch party, like this one in Isalo National Park in Madagascar in 2001.

Our Coverage of the Total Solar Eclipse

Anticipation and Anxiety Build:  Across parts of the United States, Mexico and Canada, would-be eclipse-gazers are on the move for what could be a once-in-a-lifetime event .

Awaiting a Moment of Awe:  Millions of people making plans to be in the path of the solar eclipse know it will be awe-inspiring. What is that feeling ?

The Eclipse Chaser:  A retired astrophysicist known as “Mr. Eclipse” joined “The Daily” to explain why these celestial phenomena are such a wonder to experience .

Historic Photos:  From astronomers with custom-built photographic equipment to groups huddled together with special glasses, here’s what solar eclipse-gazing has looked like for the past two centuries .

Hearing the Eclipse:  A device called LightSound is being distributed to help the blind and visually impaired experience what they can’t see .

Animal Reactions: Researchers will watch if animals at zoos, homes and farms act strangely  when day quickly turns to night.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s top rival, calls for early elections after protests in Israel

Gantz says government ‘must set a consensual date for September’ while Netanyahu’s popularity continues to decline amid the ongoing war in Gaza

Israeli minister Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet and main rival of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu , has called for snap parliamentary elections in September, as pressure builds over the war in Gaza.

“We must set a consensual date for the month of September, or if you prefer for the first anniversary of the war,” Gantz, said on Wednesday during a speech from his office in Israel’s parliament.

Netanyahu has been facing pressure from several sides in recent weeks, particularly since Saturday, where demonstrations brought together thousands of people calling for the prime minister’s removal.

It includes protests demanding boosted efforts to secure the release of hostages taken in Hamas’s 7 October attack that sparked war in Gaza .

The prime minister’s Likud party rejected the call for an early election, but it was welcomed by the leader of the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, who last month urged new elections in a strident criticism of Netanyahu’s handling of the conflict.

“When a leading member of Israel’s war cabinet calls for early elections and over 70 percent of the Israeli population agrees according to a major poll, you know it’s the right thing to do,” Senator Schumer wrote on X.

Early elections require the agreement of 61 elected officials, or the majority of deputies in the Knesset, where the Likud has the most seats but does not have a majority.

Likud said a national poll while Israel is at war “would inevitably lead to paralysis” and harm the military’s fight in Gaza.

According to the latest polls, in the event of early elections, Gantz would be well ahead of Netanyahu, whose popularity has been declining since 7 October.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, mainly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data.

Palestinian militants took more than 250 hostages and presently 130 remain in Gaza, including 34 who the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 32,975 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.

• Benjamin Netanyahu
• Israel-Gaza war
• Palestinian territories
• Middle East and north Africa

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