childhood amnesia and helping your child remember

I have always been surprised when talking to people how little of their very early childhood they remember. I'm one of those people who have an inordinate amount of memories of those very early years. My first memories start somewhere around 2.5 years of age. It is possible that I have memories stretching back before the age of 2.5 but I am not able to tie all my memories to a dated event. Though, I just have too many memories for some of them not to be much closer to 2 than 2.5.

Well, a month or so ago I started doing some research on early childhood memory and why I seemed to be the only person that I knew who had very early memories. Evidently Freud called the phenomenon childhood amnesia and of course he had some off the wall reason for it occurring. He theorized that childhood amnesia occurs when a young mind blocks out unsuitable impressions or emotional trauma, which he considered a universal human experience. It is funny to think that if I used his reasoning then I had the most normal childhood of anyone I know. I did have a pretty good early childhood thought, but I don't think it was that good. The vast majority of my memories are of time spent in groups of three or less. I guess I have a dozen or more memories when my whole family was together in the same room. On the other hand I have at least a hundred memories of time spent with just one or two other people.

That said, I ended up tracking down this article from the American Psychological Association's Monitor on psychology. I have been kind of excited about it ever since I found it. I guess it just answered a lot of questions that I have had floating around in my head for years. What surprised me the most is that a child's ability to remember his\her early childhood has more to do with the culture the child was reared than anything else. For example:

Researchers have found that depending on your culture there can be a two year span between early memories. What helps someone remember or not remember their early childhood is the way parents and other adults discuss--or don't discuss--the events in children's lives.

I'm not really sure if there is any benefit in having early childhood memories, but for some reason Leslie and I want to promote it in our children's lives. Before John David could really communicate we started talking to him about places we just went or activities we had just finished. For instance if we went to a lake and saw boats on the water we would talk to him about the boats on the way home and ask him if he remembered them or we would ask him if he liked the boats. It wasn't too long after he could somewhat communicate that he started saying "member" "member" when we were talking about something.

I think along the same line as John David's "member" "member" I don't remember to much conversation. I just see the events as I would see a movie with the sound off, but I still have some kind of running commentary in the background. For the most part I think this is due to the fact that I was very young and my speech was probably quite limited.

In the article they have a section on "high-elaborative" versus "low-elaborative" mothering.

One of my favorite things to do is after the bedtime books have been read and the lights are off and things have gotten quiet I will ask him if he remembered either something about the story we just read or about something we did that day. It must be working because a few days ago it had gotten too late to crack open a book so I just put him in bed without reading anything. He really was not going to take me not reading him a book, so I decided to compromise by trying to tell him a story. Within a few seconds he got real quite as I told him the are you my mother story. After telling him a story or two I asked him to tell me a story, and to my surprise he busted out into a song. He was singing a song about his Grandpa Losch and some of the events that transpired during the visit during Christmas. He was even singing about Lindsey and her stuffed animal puppy. It really surprised me because he is just 34 months and he was singing a song about an event that had happened more than a week earlier.

Again, I am not sure that having early childhood memories is an important thing, but if two years is the spread then it seems like an awful long time not to remember anything. I look back on those early childhood memories quite fondly, so I want to foster that in our children. So I guess the word is, if you want to foster early memories in your child's life then get started with some good open ended questions.

So, when were you first memories?