Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

Sounds not less intuitive than the band gap explanation. How did you explain color tinted windows?

Even weirder is how glass is partially reflective. What mechanism lets some light through but sends other light off in such a regular ordered way?

isn't empty space made up of virtual particles aka particles with a life time so minute it's basically not there ? :)

> She wouldn’t enter the living room if google home was plugged in, and we would have to convince her it was OK google was listening

granted, that one doesn't seem so unreasonable

To be fair, many people think it's not OK for Google to be listening, and you should be careful not to accustom your daughter to tech surveillance.

I consider these highly desirable behaviors in the unique future event of dystopia.

In general, paranoia is a highly effective deterrent to doing an undesirable behavior, because the paranoid really don't cheat. Whereas if you have to do it because it's your job, or the law? Eh.

Pretty much agree, like the original post, I can't see how her son remembered all these irrational things they thought when they were 2 years old.

I remember things from when I was that age (not a lot, but a more than most people for sure. And I'm in my 50's) I think it varies from person to person. My brother remembers nothing from that age.

There's probably some genetic switch flipped or something.

I can remember back to age 9 months. I tried writing out all my early-childhood memories (< age 5 years) once when I was in college and got to about 10 screenfuls worth (encompassing only up to age 3), at which point I got bored and figured I'd just post what I had to LJ. My sister has similar, though not quite as vivid, recollections. I'd heard all my friends saying they basically couldn't remember anything before age 10, and I thought "bullshit", but apparently they're the ones who are normal and I'm the one who's a psychological oddity.

I have one therapist friend who said that early memories are a sign of trauma, but then I've also had therapists that say early memories are a sign of giftedness. Maybe these are one and the same, and developing consciousness and memory too early is its own form of trauma.

It's been fascinating to watch long-term memory develop in my son, though. When he was about 20 months old, we went on a walk by a house in the neighborhood that had a half-eaten pizza box strewn across its yard. We went back two weeks later, and he asked "Where's the pizza?" I was like "What pizza?" until I remembered what it had looked like a couple weeks before, and was like "It got cleaned up. How did you remember there was a pizza there?"

At that age I swore I would remember certain things into adulthood so I could tell somebody.

1. It is too hot. It is always too hot. Don't wrap me up so I can't get cool.

2. Fingernails shouldn't be used on scalps.

3. You aren't leaving now. Don't say you're leaving now when you will not leave for another half hour.

Yeah it sounds weird, I lost most memory pre-6, except rare shocking events (the first time I met twins when I was 4, the first time my sister ate wallpaper when I was 3, when the cat died when I was 3 and my mom explained me what death was, things like that that I remember quite vividly but with no pre/post context)

> That a 16-year old remembers such detail about age 3 seems… unusual. I don’t mean a memory here or there; this child remembers very specific experiences and the feelings he had about them when he was almost pre-verbal.

Even today, I remember one "crazy conclusion" like the article talks about from I was very small (probably around 3). We lived near a river, which I inferred must be circular (like an ouroboros), because otherwise it would drain away. For some reason I can't exactly recall, I thought the town across the river was on the island this would form, and the town I lived in was along the outside edge. This of course meant that you could go to the center of the other town, but not to the center of our town.

I also have memories that were certainly from before I was 2 1/2 (my family moved then, so they stuck with me because that made them distinct). One of these memories is obviously real, but got "patched up" with some peripheral details from a little later in life. The memory was set outside at the bottom of the stairs of the apartment where my parents lived when I was born, the peripheral details of the design of those stairs and the setting beyond my immediate vicinity got replaced with those of different apartment building near our new house). I only realized this when I was 10, and we visited the town where I was born and went back to that apartment building.

Also, none of these memories were traumatic in the slightest. They were just little forgettable things to an adult that were new and unusual to me as a toddler.

I felt the same way. I never buy it when people say they remember anything when they were two. I have 5 kids, one is only 2, but none of the other 4 remember anything from when they were two. I guess people can be different but I have a hard time believing it.

I buy the explanation that it’s trauma. When I was an infant I had a lot of surreal hallucinations, and I have many early memories because of that. It was like my brain was mixing dream imagery into my waking vision. Definitely some kind of mental illness, but it went away eventually! ;P

He doesn’t. He remembers his mom telling him about the incident and it has morphed into him thinking he remembers it.

My kid swears he remembers this one incident that my wife and I joke about, but what he remembers is the video of it. You physically don’t have the brain cells for long term memories until around age 5 which is why most childhood memories start around there.

It’s not unusual for adults to have good recall from about two years old onwards:

Childhood amnesia, also called infantile amnesia, is the inability of adults to retrieve episodic memories (memories of situations or events) before the age of two to four years, as well as the period before the age of ten of which some older adults retain fewer memories than might otherwise be expected given the passage of time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia

A 3 year old can remember something at 16 if they regularly recall it. It gets refreshed like DRAM. I do this with my kids for special memories. They can remember everything they did at LEGOLAND the day after. So I have them tell me about it, regularly, and they remember it permanently.

I actually remember a lot of things from age 3, less now, but likely more in details when I was sixteen. I got thrown over the shoulder out of nowhere while we are hanging out in the playground the first year I was in kindergarten (3 yo), then I was vomiting up blood, it wasn't entirely fluid with some kind of jelly texture, which clearly scared the kid and he ran away, I don't know that kid and I don't remember his face, but I remember the experience, the playground, the sun, there were two kids who'd come over and one of them throw me over his shoulder. I also remember when we went to the aquarium with my parents, where they had this stuffed dolphin and we bought it. Of course there are a lot more that I don't remember, but I'm aware of those things that I do. When I think about it is that the difference is when you ruminate over those things, it becomes a continuous experience. For the kindergarten incident, I was curious about the thickness of the blood, and I was thinking a lot why was it solid. And for the toy dolphin, every-time I was playing with it, I remember where we get it.

A side note: my mother majored in education, so she actually talks about Childhood Amnesia, which other's have mentioned, to other parents or teachers mostly. She told it that kid don't remember anything before five. So when I tell her things about the experience of my younger self when I was well in to primary school, she was perplexed.

Also: while I'm actively thinking about it, those memories came flooding in, and though I'm not going to put them here, I think it gives a valid point that yes one can remember at the age of three.

I have (verified) memories from age 2. It took me a while to get used to most people not having memories from that early.

Normal theory is you don't remember anything before 3 years old.

You will only have memories of memories before three.

Given his belief seem to go to after 3 years it just fits with the current theory.

Pop Science article - https://www.zmescience.com/research/why-we-cant-remember-bef...

Memory exists from the start of life. You can train an infant to recognize a signal (a sound, a light for instance) and associate it with a pleasant or unpleasant experience.

The reason we don't have memories from our first months of life is because, it seems, when we learn to speak the previous experiences become somehow inaccessible to our cognition (but they're still there).

It doesn't seem impossible that people who learn to speak early have more early memories.

But of course, there is always the possibility that the memories are those of the adults who repeated them so frequently that the children began to treat them as their own.

I wish I had such "useful" memories. I just vividly remember having my diapers changed (before the modern "panty-style" ones) and really disliking it. The material had very rough surface (to a child), probably due to bleaching many times.

Yeah. I’m always skeptical of those memory.

Often; in my case; I feel it’s me remembering that I did remember something like that.

Or full on familly tradition about that thing you said or did. « Remember? »

The child in the article seems especially unique in several ways.

> This did not become a long term issue for him. I made sure he felt safe during this minor ladybug invasion and when he got older he figured out where and how he had jumped to the wrong conclusion and it was never a big deal. But it could have been, especially if I had not made sure to make him feel safe and protected and take his fear seriously even though I knew there was no real threat.

I also got a helicopter parenting vibe from this article. Particularly the way she seems to be crediting her parental decisions with the child not developing “long term issues” from having some ladybugs in their bedroom.

I don’t have any issues with her decision to let her son sleep in her bedroom for a couple days (and I might have done the same). She just seems to be overvaluing the importance of her response in this situation, and undervaluing kids’ natural ability to develop and outgrow their fears.

This is a bit unfair though. The general advice I've seen is that if a kid doesn't start forming simple sentences by the age of three, parents should start looking for help. Reason being, a delay in speech development may later lead to other problems, among them life-long speech impediments. As a stutterer myself, I can attest that having these are no fun.

Also, pre-school is beneficial for development in general. They start learning how to function as part of a wider society there. The only 'mistake' I can identify in the article was going for the 'on-off' pre-school regimen. According to some experts in child development I've spoken to (Montessori method), predictability of routine is paramount to healthy development. If the child is 'on-off', he/she doesn't really become a core part of the 'pre-school society', has trouble making friends, and in general it messes with their little heads that there is no predictability on how their day or week is going to go.

But helicopter parenting? No, not really.

I'm also getting the impression the kid was raised without a father, based on the fact that one is never referenced.

The specifics all sound borderline traumatic for the child, so if he remembers anything at all he'll remember these events in particular.

I've got plenty of memories from about the age of 5 - almost all of them scary or embarrassing for little me. And I'm nearing 40. When I was 16 could I still remember stuff from the age of 3? I wouldn't be surprised.

I remember loving ducks and trains for some reason when I was about that age. But I don't have a lot of specifics.

I’m afraid it’s your lack of experience with kids. Mine are 16 and 17 now and all this seems perfectly credible.

Kids often get bent out of shape by things in their childhood. It’s part of growing up, and part of the job of a parent to spot these things and figure out what to do about it.