Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Earliest memories of your DCs

I am curious: DD has remember a few things that date when she was btw 3 and 6 months old. Things that she had no way of knowing by other means because we never make any comment on it.

For example, she remembered the way DH used to give her her vitamine D drops - by using his finger and letting DD lick it. DH stop it when she was 3/4 months old because she had teeth and was biting. We never comment on that with anyone or with ourselves and we did not use that method when DS was born.

She remember as well that her movil was turning. Again, we retire it when she was 6ish months old because she was sitting and grabing it.

And the other day I told her: when you were a little baby you used to say 'agjuuu'
and she looked at me and say 'yes, when I wanted to nurse'. Needeless to say, this was exactly the case.

She remembers this things once, and when you ask again she has re-forgotten and comes up with a funny made up story.

Do your DCs have memories like this?

I bet that If post this in a 'normal' parenting forum I will be accused to trolling!

Last year DS11 gave me a beautiful discription of learning to talk. Not sure how much faith to put in it, but I found it so moving!

I'll do my best to reproduce it -

It takes so long to learn to talk because in the begining you never know what sound is going to come out. You have to hold your throat a certian way, hoping to make a sound, and then try, and then listen to hear if it was right, and sometimes it isn't.

I got chills when I heard it. My son isn't one of those kids that give long detailed discriptions of things, real or fanciful.

Ask you children what it was like in the uterus, and being born, etc.
Trinity

Hi Dottie,
No dear, it's not your own guilt, although it's worthwhile to journal or share or whatever about whatever guilt you do have.

I'm sure that she has a memory of this, although she probably isn't verbally aware of it. What does she say when you ask her? Does this relate at all to the other thread?

Personally I believe that everyone remembers everything that has ever happened to them, but that most of the time it's "lost on the hard disk." Memories that came in before much language are tough to locate, but when you watch movies of dogs who find their way home when the family moves across the U.S., or ET who finally gets to go home, does she cry more than the others? That's a way to "work on" those early hurts.

((shrug))
My view anyway....
Trinity

Last summer DD5 changed her name. We thought it was cute at first, but after several months she would not allow us or anyone to call her by her given name.. She introduced herself by her chosen name very matter of fact. For a while we tried to talk her out of it, I realized she was serious and I really like the name we gave her.
Finally I told her: "Well, we gave you your name when you were born and you couldn't speak for yourself then. If you really want to change your name I guess it is okay."

She replied: "Mom, I tried to tell you that my name is .....when I was a baby, but you didn't understand what I was saying"

Really?, or is she just being cute and creative? Who knows-*shrug*

Really.
I think it's the total dignity of even infants that is so hard to swallow in our conditioned "one must work to earn one's value" world. Children are wonderful examples of the idea that every human life has great value and deserves respect.

LOL - during some of DS11 countless hours of testing, he was asked, at age 9 to complete the sentence - 'My Mind....'

His completion?

'--- has a mind of it's own!'

someone else must have loved this line, because it made it into the report!

Smiles,
Trinity

The Mary Poppins books have fabulous dialogs with mary and babies that no one else can hear. then at some point the babys "normalize" and can't talk any more.
that kind of quirkiness didn't make it into the disney movie.

This is an interesting discussion. My DD age 3 regularly chats about her birth and "monsters" being there when she was born. Well, I had a c-section so everyone there was fully gowned and masked, so who knows? She also said she was up in the sky floating before she was born. She has spoke about a couple other incidents during her first year with such certainty, I wonder if it's actually a memory. She has a very vivid imagination and has invented a place called rainbow land and a fictional sister that doesn't live with us, so sometimes it's hard to know when she's imagining and when's she's remembering.

That's really good!!!!

About the memories: I am pretty certain these are memories of DD, especially the thing with the vitamine D because we never mentioned it to her or anyone else or discuss btw us,,,

Dottie,

If I ask DD about her earliest memories she gives me a blank stare or makes up a funny story.

She remembers those thing by association of something in the present. It is not a voluntary recall of events.

Anyway, since she is not reading Shakespeare yet I have to bragg with something else, right?

Trinity is right about memory "coding." Here's how it was explained to me; although I have no sources to actually cite. Basically, we have memories from the beginning, and we start to code our memories verbally when we become verbal, around 3 or so. At that time, the recall mechanism becomes verbal as well. So as verbal adults we can retrieve memories back to when we became verbal. Gifted kids who became verbal earlier can retrieve those early memories better because the coding switched from non-verbal to verbal at an earlier date.

The memories from our pre-verbal days are all still in there, but once we become verbal we lack the recall mechanism. Some people who have verbal learning disabilities can also recall the early memories because they never switched over to verbal coding.

I had a friend who had brain surgery and he said that during the surgery and for several days afterwords he very clearly remembered what it felt like to be born. And yes his memory fit with info his mother later told him. Our best guess is that the surgeon must have his the part of the brain that stored the birth memory--it was there but couldn't be recalled.