Is it possible to forget your childhood

This happens to most people. Some worry that their childhood amnesia could be indicative of severe trauma, but that's usually not the case. In fact, the very idea of repressed childhood memories is highly debated because you cannot prove that something has been repressed unless you have evidence that it happened in the first place.

Think about your earliest memories. Go as far back as possible, and try to paint a picture of each year. How far back can you go? If you're like most people, your memories start to get fuzzy when you try to recall anything before preschool. Childhood amnesia or infantile amnesia means that someone is unable to remember their early childhood.

It's very common, and not necessarily a sign of any brain injury or external trauma. Although the average person can't remember sucking on a bottle as a baby, many people find it strange that they can't remember life as a three-year-old.

At three, you know you were talking, and you could even use the bathroom, but it's still rare to remember that part of your life. Your memories are probably faded like an old picture that has been sitting in the sun for too long. You've probably heard your parents or someone who knew you when you were a toddler talk about events that happened during that time, but you can't remember what they're talking about.

It may be a bit frustrating. Odds are that nothing eventful happened during that time, but it can feel strange to know there are parts of your life you can't remember. It may feel like your life began at the age of four or so.

Before this age, pictures, videos, and stories from friends and family are the only evidence of your existence. Memories of being a young child generally fade over time. A child may be able to recall their early memories much better, but an adult may have more difficulty remembering what happened before a certain age. Why is that? Do our memories fade as we age? Or do we remember parts of our lives that are more eventful?

Children start losing early memories around their preteen years. By the age of 11 or so, they are less likely to recall early memories, and as their brain matures, they seem to lose those memories completely. Some children can even forget early memories by the age of seven. You may wonder why we can't remember anything before a certain age. The brain is a complex organ, and we're still learning how it functions, so there are many theories about childhood amnesia.

One of the biggest theories is synaptic pruning. To understand this concept, imagine a small tree. When the tree becomes too big, it needs to be pruned to stay healthy. Synaptic pruning suggests that the brain has the same need. To get rid of memories that are no longer necessary, the brain may remove these memories if they're not needed in the present. In theory, this keeps your brain running efficiently. Each evening as part of our bedtime ritual, we sit in our family's Calming Corner and pull out the mood emojis attached to the stuffies and talk about each mood group, and the feelings we felt throughout our day: happy yellow , sad blue , calm green , and mad or scared red.

Because I was someone who was not taught to name or feel her emotions I was mostly asked to ignore or suppress them , this was new to me… perhaps just as new to me as it was my children.

It turns out that simply recalling a feeling, linking it to an experience, and then sharing it allows children adults as well to wire their emotive midbrain to their higher-level "learning" brain for better emotional awareness and control.

And as we heal the inner parts that feel wounded, and soothe our reactive limbic firing, we rebalance emotions and diminish the harmful effects of chronic stress. As my children learn and grow, so too do I. We can heal the past when we learn how to show up for ourselves and our feelings in the present.

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Your cart. Close Cart. Where Does Memory Come From? Leave a comment Name. Please note, comments must be approved before they are published. For example, you might have been present when your sister fell into the swimming pool. The adults will remember it clearly because they had to save a child. Your sister is also pretty likely to have a clear memory of it, for understandable reasons. Synapses are the things that allow electrical currents in our brains to move around. Ah, those were the days.

The good news is that when you hit puberty, your brain does a spring cleaning and prunes a lot of unneeded synapses, improving your memory. So yeah, who needs synapses anyway? It can be annoying not to have a better recollection of your childhood, especially if you remember it as happy. On harder days, you might wish you could reach back into your brain and pull up a memory of having the time of your life on a swing set. But thanks to synaptic pruning, combined with adolescence a time when most people really start to discover who they are being more memorable , those early years can become lost.

One of the simplest ways to regain some memories of your childhood is simply to talk with people! If you have older siblings or you can talk with your parents, sit down and discuss the old days with them. Family vacations , your favorite belongings, even memories of grandparents and other relatives — you may find that something tickles your memory and opens the floodgates.

Most parents like to take plenty of pics and prove what a cute little button you were. This means they probably captured lots of everyday things. Seeing those events again can often trigger memories. Instead, pay special attention to the everyday items.

Memories are more than visual. You might find that when you revisit a location, the sights, smells, and sounds can bring back happy recollections. Try taking a road trip to a place you used to go to with your family. You might find that little has changed and that the hot dogs there taste just like they used to — and OMGoodness do you remember that time you ate them by the lake?

You do now! You could even go local and take a trip back to your old school. Just seeing the buildings or smelling the familiar scent of the schoolyard or cafeteria could bring back the old days a little.