Speculation concerning childhood memories

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You will also remember things you think of more. So if you're nostalgic and think of your part events now and then, you should be more likely to remember them. I have always liked reminiscing, sometimes alone, sometimes with my family, so maybe someone like that is more likely to remember anyway.




Yeah, that's something that surprises me too: How come so many children are so downright stupid?? I understood at a very early age that I had to stay on the sidewalk and that medicine wasn't candy, yet so-called "normal" children will run out in the street, eat medication like candy and drown themselves in the nearest pool. I'm tempted to say natural selection in practice. I get that children can't understand every possible consequence but there should be limits to how much they don't understand it when there is no cognitive delay.

I have one memory from around age 2. I was sleeping with my grandmother and a bat got into the room. I remember laying in bed with her standing above me, swatting at the bat with a broom. I asked her about it a while back and she remembered the incident. I have considerably more memories from age 3, a lot of them are about wrapping balls of yarn around furniture (my favorite activity at the time). I remember many dreams I had at that age, most of them very frightening. I can also remember, in great detail, the placement of furniture and things in a house we moved out of when I was only 3.

As another poster mentioned, I always felt older than my age, and wonder if this has something to do with my memories of being so young. I enjoyed adults more than children, and I couldn't wait to get older so that people would "take me seriously." By the time I was 12 or so, any friends were usually 5 years older or more. Now, I am 24, and most of my friends are around age 40.

Hmph - in some other threads on here it said a lot of times that children with AS are more naive than NT children, because we are unable to read body language and all of that s**t, and evidently an NT child of 4 years old will think ''ohh, hang on this man looks rather rough, I can see by his 'body language', I'd better not take sweets from him'', which I never believed because vulnerability and innocence is normal in ALL children, NT or not. But I suppose I've just got to ignore the annoying contradictions that go on on this site.

By the way I was never allowed out the garden gate on my own until I was at least 6 years old, and I wasn't allowed very far from the garden on my own until I was at least 8 years old, and I first started walking to school on my own when I was about 10. And the same rules applied to other children that I knew too, and they were all NTs. If a child as young as 4 is seen walking anywhere alone in the street, people get concerned and call the police and the parents could get into trouble, whether they think the child is intelligent enough to walk on their own or not.

I have only few, week memories of childhood; I have difficulty even remembering last week. I have no trouble recalling facts and things, but experiences and people fade away into the ether.

As a child and teenager I always felt older than my peers, though this feeling has flipped around on me as an adult. I think it stems from processing the world logically, we see every situation rationally and struggle to comprehend how those around us do not see it as we do. If they don't see what is so obvious to me they must be slow. A similar situation as to an NT not understanding our Aspie related difficulties. I doubt it has anything to do with memory or even level of development.



Yes reminiscing will make your memories stronger but also less accurate.

Contrary to popular belief, memory is not a static thing. Every time you recall a memory it becomes diluted, like a game of telephone. You do not remember the the original, you remember the last time you recalled it. Now clearly I can not speak to your individual experience but oftentimes the most vivid memories are in fact the least accurate. Study after study shows just how unreliable memory is, to be so certain about the accuracy of a memory is quite frankly absurd.

Certainly there is an exception in Savant memory however there is no evidence to suggest that there is a in between; either you have perfect memory or, vastly more likely, you have a very flawed memory.

My first memories were of being in my crib but I have a flood of memories from when I was 2 and we moved across country. I remember what I was thinking and I thought of the memories all through my life and so I kept the memories alive.

I was 2 when I first met my father's sisters. I remember them sitting in chairs around the room and I was standing in the center of the room. I remember looking at the patterns in their dresses above their knees. I remember thinking they were not children but not quite adults either, but I didn't have a word for teenager. I remember them calling me and wanting me to come to them but I didn't respond, I was just analyzing the situation. My mother told them I was shy.

I remember moving back east when I was 4. We travelled by train and I looked out the window the whole time. I was so impressed at how big the world was. That's when I stopped believing in Santa Clause for obvious reasons.

I remember being a baby and listening to sounds in my crib. I remember the sounds. I remember liking the sounds and waiting for them and anticipating them.

I do think I have long ago memories because I remember what I was thinking at the time. I was analytical and logical even when I was a small child.

In elementary school I remember thinking how wrong the nuns were when they disciplined children by saying mean things and criticizing them. I thought I knew better then adults and had better moral judgment.

When I was a little kid, I couldn't leave the yard alone. It wasn't from fear of being hit by cars or because of strangers (the nearest highway was half a mile away across a pasture), but because it was very common for the pigs to get out and settle down in the trees by the driveway. They could have easily seen me as food.

On the first day of my father's first grade, my grandfather saddled up two horses, one for each of them. He then rode with my father to school, waiting for school to be let out, and then rode home with him. The distance was about five to six miles.

After the first day, my grandfather would set my father on the horse and my father would ride to school alone. In the afternoon when school let out, someone would put him on the horse and he would ride home alone. If he had fallen off of the horse, he would have had no way to get back on the horse.

I remember reading something about autistic brains growing more rapidly after birth and and normal brains catching up later.


Also an explosion of synapse formation occurs during early brain development and then goes through a process of pruning excess synapses. something goes wrong with the pruning process in autistic brains.


Actually I also made a connection between these findings and early childhood and infant memories.

There is also a process of pruning neurons.

Don't the brains of Autistic children contain far more neurons and have a substantially higher neuronal density than can be accounted for by a failure in the process of neuronal pruning?

This is just conjecture going wild: It seems to me that with all the additional neurons in some parts of the brains of Autistic children, they must be far more densely packed. As the neurons are extending their axons and dendrites, some of the axons end up at places where they are not needed and the resulting neurons are eventually pruned. With the higher density, I wonder how that affects the odds of axons being extended into the wrong areas and forming synapses in places where they are not needed.

Here is a link to the Henry and Kamila Markram interview about The Intense World Theory for Autism.
They believe that accelerated brain development in autistics makes the brain too sensitive, too early.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/article419html

I see you are 22, sad to say this is the England of today where Children are not free and are taught that our fellow man is our enemy.

My experience was in 1963, in Streatham, South London where today its probably not that safe for an adult let alone a 4 year old.

I do look back with eyes tainted by the wickedness of todays world with mild horror, for instance one evening, I had gone to a school friends house in another part of Streatham, I was probably 5 by then, certainly no older as I was put in Childrens Home at 5, anyway, I left friends house by the back door which meant going through the garden and along the alleyway to the road, unfortunately I was too small to be able to reach the catch on the gate to the alley, so I was trapped.
Maybe I tried going back to Friends house and having the same trouble. or maybe they where gone out by then?, I cannot remember, what I do remember is that I was still trapped and it had turned to night, then this middle aged man whom I had never set eyes on in my life and was alone, let me out and took me back to his house, we were alone in his house as well, I remeber he gave me a banana whilst he contacted my Grandfather whom he must have known, to come and collect me.

Another incident, I was 4 or 5 and had forgotten my front door key and Grandfather was out, so I just stood there in my front garden waiting, after a while I so badly wanted a wee that I just went in my pants and short trousers, the thought of getting it out and weeing in the garden was something that I had not realised was permissible to do in such an emergency.

So anyway, this lady passed by, saw my predicament and took me back to her house where she washed and dried my trousers and made me comfortable.

Nowadays, such kindhearted people wouldnt even dare to do such a thing, in fact a lot would just look the other way as must have happened to that poor little lad in Liverpool.

I found a little girl about 3 or 4 wandering around a parking lot at about 11 pm at night in Houston. I took her into the nearby grocery store and let the employees sort it out. It turned out the parents were in the store shopping.

Now that is just preposterous.

We actually agree on something!

Don't shoot me though, Iam just reporting what I remember somebody else saying, not saying I agree with it at all, though at the same time I learnt that just because somethings outside your range of experience, it doesn't automatically mean the other fella is a lier if he claims its in his.

I was never naive in regards to strangers. I was always very skeptical of people, even at a young age. My parents told me at some point to not talk to stranger but for me that was a given. That's something I'd never do by default. They also said not to go with a stranger and not to accept candy from them, and it made sense to me that stranger equaled danger. Both my,mother and I recall an incident on the train taking place when I was 3 or 4. I loved playing on the train. I'd go to the handle bar pole (IDK the correct word for it), in front of the door on the side that didn't face the station, and I'd grab it and run around in circles. Once a woman approached me and asked me where my mother was. I knew I wasn't to talk to her so I just stood there until she gave up and walked away. My mother saw it too and thought it was no point in talking to her, because I wasn't one of those (stupid) children who would just wander off the train at some random station (how can any child that age be so mindless??) and I stopped my game at the station when people went on and off the train, so I wasn't in the way.

In my first day care (2-4 years) a photographer came to take a group picture and an individual picture of all the children. When my parents picked up a camera I'd monkey around in front of it. But when my name was called that day it just felt wrong. So I refused and stayed put in the sandbox. They ended up taking the picture there instead and I refused to look at him, I focused entirely on my spade.

When I was 6 I was playing in the snow outside my grandparents' block. An old woman came up to me and and tried to talk to me. I ignored her. She handed me a marzipan figure wrapped in plastic. I refused to take it, I just stared ahead waiting for her to go away already. My parents were parking the car and would come along any minute, so I wasn't afraid. She gave up and put the candy on the snow next to me and went inside the stair well. My parents came soon after and I told them what had happened, pointed at the marzipan and said she'd given me that. I had no intention of even touching it. My mother laughed and said ti was probably (insert the name of a neighbor of my grandparents) and that I could have just accepted it.

When I was 8, my grandfather and I drove to my mother's workplace to pick her up. As usual I went inside, just next to the door, and waited for her there. A woman asked me if I were (insert my mother's name)'s daughter. "Yes." She said she worked with her and offered to take me to her. I was skeptical and asked her what my mother looked like, her middle name, her eye color, and more. I still didn't trust her so I declined. When my mother came, she said her colleague had told her that I had given her the third degree. My mother thought it was funny, and told me that that woman had been (insert name) and that I could have safely followed her.

When I was somewhere between 10 and 12, I was on my way to my grandparents, and walking on the sidewalk when a car came by and stopped. A man said 'hi. I figured he might be asking directions so I stopped but was wary. He asked if I wanted to help him sell flowers and stated getting out of the car. I turned and made a wild dash towards the block, luckily I was nearby.

I was never a naive child when it came to the stranger danger. Family equaled safety, anyone else had to prove themselves. (Of course in the end that didn't work either but that's another matter.) And I knew how to behave in traffic. Sufficiently so that when I was 6 I was allowed to bring a 3 year old playmate to my grandparents' despite the fact that we had to walk by the road (not the busiest of roads though and there was sidewalk). The other girl was also smart enough to know to stay on the sidewalk.


I was allowed to play outside alone from I was about 2 years old (although my mother kept an eye on me from the veranda) and I would play in the general area, sometimes we'd go a little farther away. From school age (7 years) I was allowed to go wherever my classmates lived if I wanted to see them. My parents just wanted to know who I was with and that if I went home with someone after school, I'd call when we got to my classmate's home.
I can't imagine what it's like to not have that freedom,like so many children today.


Nambo were you okay with those strangers taking you home like that? I would have been petrified and tried to make a break for it unless my fear paralysed me.



Okay, so feeling older isn't a factor then. i just wondered if that might be a contributing factor.

If our brains develop faster after birth, as Marybird mentioned, that could account for earlier memory.

I think you're on to something regarding the latter part, that we all see the other party as slow because they don't get what we get.

I was quite happy, the only adult I was ever petrified of was my stepfather.
I do have an uncanny ability to know what a person is like just by seeing them, like a dog can, maybe I had it then?, maybe it developed due to the violence my stepfather gave me, a survival mechanism?

I have Reactive attachment disorder due to neglect and abuse, but when I was a child, in lieu of the complete lack of affection from my Mother, I was quite happy to cuddle adults I had only just met.

My initial Children's society notes say that on the first day, when I was being psychologically assessed, and was doing IQ tests and the like, that I gradually inched my way around the table until I was sitting on the lap of the Female psychiatrist.

Once an hour, my notes say, I would stop play and go and get a hug from one of the women in the home.