Childhood Memories: What Can They Teach? Where do our childhood memories go?
Journey to the Fairytale. Childhood memories, or Five years later. Part 2.
I welcome all guests of our site, all lovers of the interesting and unusual, amazing and wonderful - all travelers. Vyacheslav is with you.
Today we continue the conversation with the youngest participant of our bus trip to European amusement parks, share memories of the impressions that this trip was filled with.
P. Natasha, I have one more interest Ask Q: Where would you like to go back? Can you name one particular place you would most like to return to?
H. Hmm, just one?.. Maybe I will surprise you with my answer, but I will choose the observation deck on the roof of the Montparnasse skyscraper. I want to relive this feeling when the whole city is spread out in front of you. As if you are the master of this world. You are so high! It's all in front of you, in full view. And, that's it, this is a sense of one's own greatness. You can do anything! Anything in good sense. Those. you can smile, you can say that everything will be fine. It doesn't feel like you have so many problems. I noticed the higher you stand, the less feeling that you have problems. You just forget at some point. I'm just here, I'm just now. I just live and enjoy it. And so I would choose Montparnasse. I would like to experience it all again.
P. Have you ever wanted to stay longer while traveling? Maybe somewhere there was not enough time?
H. Time? .. Here, we were in Strasbourg only in the Europa-Park. It would probably be interesting to see the city itself. And for some reason, Cologne remained very blurry in my memories. I would like to go there again. I just now remember the Cologne Cathedral, I understand that it is Gothic, I understand that I like Gothic. I would like to see this building again. See the city itself. I think we didn't have enough time for it. We didn't really spend much time there. We looked and moved on. I think this city is very beautiful at night or in the evening.
P. But now complex issue. What was difficult about this journey? What difficulties did you face? Maybe something caused you fear or anxiety?
H. Let's remember that I was then nine years old. Fine? This important factor. I was nine years old! So I was scared to go on a roller coaster. But, nevertheless, you dragged me. And I don't regret it. What an impression! There is something to remember! I remember Flight to the Moon. Let me see a little. But then my body went through a lot ... You know, I saw Mars, I saw a comet, I also saw the Sun. And then we turned around. And I didn't see anything else. She opened her eyes when we arrived. I also remember the beginning. For some reason, I compare it with the Angry Birds game. We were pulled back, as if from a slingshot ... and then - once! And we're flying up! Ah! And there you want to scream, but ... But for some reason we yell when we have fun, and not when we are scared. It was perhaps the scariest moment.
What else should I be afraid of at nine years old? Only those terrible hills. And everything else ... I was not even scared when you left me alone in the park. When you're off to the ride and I'm like, "Oh! They gave me money! Let's go buy ourselves some yummy food!" And how did I buy bracelets then! I still remember! I'm even a little ashamed of it. (Author's note - a set of five colored rubber rings, with which Natasha has not parted since day or night)
You left, and there were two souvenir stalls nearby. I go into one and immediately see - Oh! bracelets! She went and looked. I'll go to another kiosk and have a look. Then I return. I went like this six times! Then I plucked up the courage and said to the seller: “Can you give me these? .. Please!” How did I say bracelets then? How are bracelets in English? Come on, check if I said it right or not?
P. What did you say then?
H. Bracelets. I think the seller understood. Now let's check looking at google translate ) Bracelets… Ah! I got! I didn't know the word! Bracelets! A! Happiness! Five years later great mystery opened, and now I'm really happy! And I'm proud of myself. I guessed that word! Just happiness! "Can you give me these bracelets, please!"
I don't even remember how much I bought them for. I paid, I went out, and my mother was like this: “Natasha!” "I spoke English!" Mom: “Okay, goodbye.” I remember this well too. So, you know, I do not regret that I stayed and bought myself these bracelets, and did not go with you on a roller coaster. But I bought a thing that I had left for such big time. There were once hieroglyphs on them, and ASTERIX is written on the other side, but everything has already been erased.
P. And some new cities, new people? Blacks didn't scare you?
H. No, on the contrary, they attracted. It's interesting! When I saw black people, I had no fear. I didn't know there were so many of them in other countries. In Russia, we rarely meet a Negro ...
Other cities? No, it wasn't scary. Because you are there. I see that you are here, I have not left you anywhere. Mom, dad are nearby - everything is fine! There was no fear, only curiosity. Excitement in a sense. Would like to know more.
P. What can be called the most important, important achievement for you in this journey?
H. Wow, what a question! Achievement - in the sense of personal? ( in a whisper ) I survived Colorado! Now I will try to formulate. Here it is necessary to describe some kind of moral achievement - when you did something on yourself.
I have always communicated with people, so it was not a big problem for me to meet and communicate with people who travel with us. It was ok.
P. Is it an achievement to ask for a bracelet in English at a kiosk?
H. Here! Here! All! Dad is great! Yes, it was an achievement! Because I spoke with a native speaker for the first time. No, not a native speaker, but with those who live with this language. Who does not know Russian. If you speak Russian, they won't understand you. Even such a simple phrase "Can you give me these bracelets, please!" But it was correctly formulated. I had to make an effort on myself to open my mouth and address the person in English. Because I had a feeling that I would now say some nonsense, that he would not understand me. And for some reason, I didn’t even have the thought that I could explain everything with gestures. Why didn’t I think then that I could just hold out a bill, like “Take the money, give me bracelets”? Yes, this is probably the biggest achievement!
P. Can you remember any funny or comical incident from this trip?
H. Come on! Come on! First two days! Alarms and fireworks - I remember everything! First day. We just checked into the hotel. I'm like, "Wow! Now it's time for the doshiki! When every evening mom (mother!) makes noodles for you! This is why I also love traveling. For the fact that you can eat Rolton. Mom herself asks: “What, Natasha, will you want: vermicelli or puree?” And you don't know what to choose. There is happiness!
And then I sit on a chair. Mom heats the water with a boiler. You can't do it, but everyone does. You are somewhere in the bathroom. What happened to you there? Such a sharp sound "Ai!", And the alarm starts yelling. At first we thought it was because of you. And the siren doesn't stop. How I liked this picture when we decided: “Well, we should probably go out ...” Mom had already turned the whole clearing. She put the kettle away in her suitcase. I got dressed, got ready, almost did my hair. We leave ... People are standing on the street, who is in what. Children are in their arms in blankets. All barefoot. One girl, I still remember, has a towel draped over her shoulders, dark raw hair, water and foam run from them. Those. apparently, she was washing, she was pulled out of the shower: “Let's run, hurry!”. And here they are all. Moreover, they are not Russian. The Russians come out dressed. Waddle. “Oh, that the alarm went off? It's probably a drill. What could have happened? How I love this Russian confidence that nothing could go wrong.
The second case is Waterloo. At that time, my bed in my room was not far from the window. The day was quite busy, I want to sleep already, I'm getting sleepy. And suddenly suchwook - BOOM! We're all: "What's going on?" We approach the window, and there are fireworks!
Until that moment, I had never seen such grandiose fireworks. Because such forms! Colors! Exploding small such balls all over the sky! The whole sky seems to be in golden lights! And they so quietly fade, fall. But they are being replaced by others! They crumble into asters. I do not know how to explain it. IN different sides. I remember that green and purple fireworks were imprinted in my memory. And those yellow lights. And the red ones were a fountain! And then we looked at them for about half an hour. For half an hour it just rumbled non-stop. You look, and it already ripples in your eyes. So it's beautiful!
Here are two funny cases. Just luck - get on the alarm, and then to the coronation. Rarely does this happen to anyone. But it happened to us!
P. When traveling, what interests you the most - the road, people, food, cities?
H.And can I just say: "EVERYTHING!"
Cities are a new architecture, a different atmosphere. Every city has its own atmosphere. Cities abroad are different. They are cleaner. It really is. There are smooth roads. There are other people there. It didn't bother me, on the contrary, it seemed very interesting.
Food? You know, I'll say that the food is not the main thing. I'm not very interested in different delicacies. But trying coffee with a croissant in Paris is worth it! This is wow! It's great when some simple things. But go to a restaurant to eat frog legs!? I wouldn't be able to eat it. I am not a gourmet who loves delicacies. This is not what I travel for. Trying some simple things - Belgian waffles, croissants - it's great! But National cuisine I'm not very interested.
Road. ABOUTBasically, it's fun. And the fact that you look out the window, you see nature. It's beautiful too. Gives moral pleasure, satisfaction.
P. Tell me, please, can I sit on the couch, watch some kind of travel program on TV. Or do you have to drive? Who cares?
H. The difference is huge!!! It's one thing when you sit on the couch doing nothing and when you see it yourself - these are completely different things! You see photos of the Eiffel Tower and you think, "Hmm, cool tower." And when you stand next to this HUGE tower that starts to sparkle, you just have emotions over the edge!
When you sit in front of the TV, there are no such sensations. You do not hear these voices of people nearby. You see them, but they don't see you. When you are there, it is a different atmosphere, you can feel it. It's completely different! Plus, when you yourself walk, you can take it and step aside, look at another thing.
When you watch TV, they show certain moments, certain shots, for example: “The Louvre. This picture is good, we will show it to you. We will show you like this: like this - the plan, look here people are walking, here around the picture. We will show you more, please, here is a shot of Versailles, here is a shot for you - a beautiful fountain, in a park near Versailles. And you do not see the whole picture, you do not see it all around you at 360 degrees. You see certain moments - flat. And when you're standing there, you can go and touch the weed. It seems to be nothing of the sort, but! ... She, by the way, is cool to the touch! You can step aside, look at one picture here, move on and look at another. Stay with this longer. You move the way you want, you can stay somewhere. And it's all around you, it's all around you. And not just in front of you, when on - look at the picture on the TV screen. These are completely different things. And of course, the journey is much more interesting. When you get into this world, and not just watch from the sidelines.
P. Probably the most interesting thing we discussed. What else would you like to tell? Here, no questions asked, just so you can tell me more?
H. It's harder without questions. Here! I remembered such a thing! I remember a lot of artists! In Montmartre! You walk and they just around you! They draw, they create! You know, even looking at them, you yourself have a desire to create. You want to sit next to me, get paints and start painting. Maybe complete garbage, but you also want to do it! Maybe not as beautiful as they are, but you also have a desire. You are inspired by them! Here is the atmosphere of what they sit and draw. Such a quiet evening, warm. Pleasant hum. Not absolute silence, and not wild screams, but there are conversations, they are a little away from you, in the background. You go and watch people draw. There are so many of them! It's even beautiful. I'm trying to find a word that would describe my state at that moment. I just admired them.
I also remember... I don't even remember where it was. There was a fountain with ducks swimming in it. I really liked these ducks. We also had a guide there: “Okay! Let's go further! Okay, okay, okay!" I remember this. He spoke all the time. "OK? All clear?" I also remembered for some reason, there we passed by a car with an electric motor, which was charging from an outlet in the parking lot.
P. It was we who went on a tour of the Latin Quarter, past the Sorbonne. The local guide was a young man. There, in the Luxembourg Gardens, there was some kind of fountain-type pond in which ducklings swam.
H. I remember pineapples in Europa-Park. They are so tasty and juicy. It was cool! Do you also remember the Russian zone in Europa-Park and this terrible Grandfather Frost! With a white face, in a white coat. Such a monster!
Now I remember something else. Panic rooms! In general, in any park, the fear room is unrealistically great! When you sit in such a shell, and it turns you. It's not scary! It's exciting. When you sit down and drive into the dark You look here - and there is a door, here is some kind of hand, and here is a skeleton. Once there - the coffin opens, a skeleton stands up like this - Hello! It's so cool!
I remember the Grand Opera. We didn't go there, though. Opera house in Paris. We saw the facade, but even that left a strong impression. It is powerful, beautiful and aesthetically pleasing! This theater outwardly combines power and aesthetics. I don't think these are well compatible things. Because usually aesthetics is combined with subtlety. She was here too. Just very beautiful!
Here is an interview with our smallest participant in a bus tour of European amusement parks. As you can see, the impressions of five years ago have not lost their colors and depth. And these memories allow parents to take a fresh look at their child, to see the journey through children's eyes.
We, as parents, this moment We set ourselves the goal of showing children the beauty and diversity of our big world. And a joint family trip - the best way her achievements.
Unfortunately, not everyone wants to remember their childhood. Often it is filled with fears, traumas, feelings of uselessness, lack of love, care and attention.
Well, who willingly agrees to stir up something that has been so diligently hidden for many years and what you definitely don’t want to return to?
This question arises for those who seek to learn how to remember their past lives, because before going directly to them, you need to complete the basic course of the Institute of Reincarnation, where students work with early childhood memories for just a whole month.
And often there is resistance:
“I don’t have happy memories as a child, I have nothing to see there!”
“There is too much pain and tears in my childhood, why would I plunge into it? I don't want to experience it again!”
“I don't remember my childhood before 5 years old. I don’t remember and that’s it!”
And here the most important thing is to decide for yourself: Are you ready to change something in yourself and your life? or will you still bury your head in the sand and give up the treasures that you have, in addition to injuries, resentments and claims?
Treasures, everyone has them! Believe in the vast experience of the teachers of the Institute of Reincarnation, through which hundreds of students and clients, who are afraid and resist, have already passed.
And only a trusting and benevolent atmosphere in the space of the “school of wizards”, as we affectionately call our Institute, allows you to open up sooner or later and remember how many wonderful moments you had in your childhood, even if initially it seemed to you like seven circles of hell.
I want to open the veil just a little bit and show what can be found even in the most joyless childhood.
Favorite toy
Surely each of you had a favorite toy! It could be beautiful doll saying "Mom!" and languidly clapping blue eyes. Or soft Teddy bear, with whom it was cozy and not scary to fall asleep, embracing and burying her nose in his furry cheek.
Or maybe it’s a doll sewn from scraps and old threads, nondescript and shabby, or a rough wooden figure carved by someone’s hands, but which was cuter than anything in the world !!!
It could not even be a child's toy at all, but an ordinary object: a spoon, a saucepan lid, a hook or a bead. But you still remember how you squeezed it in your palm and what you felt at the same time!
It doesn't matter what the toy was. What matters is what she was for you baby and how you felt again and again, taking her in your arms, cradling her and talking to her, trusting all your joys and sorrows.
furry friend
You were absolutely lucky if in your childhood there was a real Friend- a pet with which you played together, walked or simply looked after him, watched.
Who was it? Faithful and devoted dog? A funny mischievous kitten whose antics can be remembered endlessly? Or a wounded pigeon that you dragged from the street, saving a bird's life despite the protests and misunderstanding of adults? Or maybe a cute hamster stuffing his cheeks so funny?
Pigeons made a nest on our balcony. Grandmother cursed terribly and insisted on throwing out unclean birds. How fiercely I defended the ugly blue creatures without feathers with huge crooked beaks!
And how sweet was the feeling of victory and saved lives, when my perseverance overcame my grandmother's severity!
I have also loved horses since childhood. And I had my own horse! I rode it across the fields at full speed. He clapped his hooves beautifully and gracefully. Our days were full of travel and adventure around the village where I grew up.
And nothing that my steed was imaginary. For me, it was the real deal!
soulful meetings
Also, the memory of people who gave us affection, care, attention.
Maybe someone from the family was especially close to you, with whom you felt a strong kinship who will always understand, caress and caress, treat you with something tasty or just smile gently, winking conspiratorially.
Maybe this is a doctor in the clinic who could calm and overcome your fear? Or the janitor Uncle Vasya, with whom you had a special welcome ritual! Or a grandmother on a bench, who always has candy and a kind word?
And it doesn’t matter at all whether you saw each other often or it was a single meeting, the warmth of which, when remembered, warms your child’s heart even now.
hidden places
Some of you may find special places in the treasury of childhood memories. Those in which you felt unusual, which seemed magical and amazing, even if only for you.
What is this? A dacha where you rested in the summer with your family or grandmother's yard? A huge children's store full of toys and everything you could dream of?
Or maybe a library with its silence and the smell of books, which hid so much interesting and unknown?
Or a small cave on the seashore, where you could squeeze through with difficulty, but in which you felt like Robinson? What else: a stream, a quiet corner in the yard, a tree house or an old attic?
let yourself travel back to your childhood places!
A dream come true
You can also look for moments when your most cherished dream! Something that you have lusted after, perhaps for a long time. And here is the very moment when you finally found what you wanted!
What was it? Puppy or kitten? A trip to an amusement park? Or maybe a sister or brother? The first meeting with an outlandish animal at the zoo? First encounter with the sea?
An incredible feeling when you remember such a moment and feel that the Universe hears you, it fulfills your desires.
Everything is possible and everything is real!
You can dive into this state more often in order to be filled with its resource and easily fulfill your dreams at your current age.
Just try!
treasure chest
This is not all the treasures that can be found in the childhood of each of you! I only mentioned a few things. And in the next article we will continue our journey through the back streets of childhood.
Now imagine that your childhood is an old dark chest, in which there is everything: scary, and painful, as well as funny and joyful.
And when you remember another pleasant, happy or joyful moment, you light a firefly in your palms. Each time, put a new firefly in your old chest.
Thus, gradually it will be filled with light more and more. And where there is a lot of light, there is no place for darkness. That's how it goes childhood healing.
You can try right now!
- Create an intention for a week every day to remember at least one joyful moment or meaningful detail from your childhood.
- Savor this memory, feed on it and put your “firefly” in the chest!
And at the end of the week look back and compare Has your attitude towards childhood changed? Do you remember what happened to you during this week? You will be surprised how many things around you will change. But the main thing is how much lighter it will become inside!
I propose to share your “fireflies” in the comments and thus help each other to pull out more and more new memories and be filled with light and love!
My first memory is my brother's birthday: November 14, 1991. I remember my father driving my grandparents and me to the hospital in Highland Park in Illinois. We went there to see the newborn brother.
I remember how they brought me to the ward where my mother was lying, and how I went up to look into the cradle. But best of all I remember what program was then on TV. Those were the last two minutes of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. I even remember what the episode was.
In sentimental moments of my life, I feel that I remembered the birth of my brother, because it was the first event that deserves to be remembered. There may be some truth to this: early memory research shows that memories often begin with significant events, and the birth of a brother - classic example.
But it's not just the importance of the moment: most people's first memories are around the age of 3.5 years. At the time of the birth of my brother, I was just that much.
When I talk about the first memory, of course, I mean the first conscious memory.
Carol Peterson, Professor of Psychology at Memorial University Newfoundland, has shown that young children can remember events from 20 months of age, but these memories are mostly erased by 4-7 years of age.
“We used to think that the reason we don’t have early memories is because kids don’t have a memory system, or they just forget everything very quickly, but that turned out to be not true,” says Peterson. – In children good memory, but whether memories last depends on several factors.”
The two most significant, as Peterson explains, are the reinforcement of memories with emotions and their coherence. That is, whether the stories that pop up in our memory are endowed with meaning. Of course, we can remember not only events, but it is events that most often become the basis for our first memories.
Indeed, when I asked developmental psychologist Stephen Resnick about the causes of childhood "amnesia," he disagreed with the term I used. In his opinion, this is an outdated view of things.
Resnick, who works at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, recalled that shortly after birth, babies begin to remember faces and respond to familiar people. This is the result of the so-called recognition memory. The ability to understand words and learn to speak depends on working memory, which is formed by about six months. More complex forms of memory develop by the third year of life: for example, semantic memory, which allows memorizing abstract concepts.
“When people say that babies don’t remember anything, they mean event memory,” Resnick explains. While our ability to remember events that happened to us depends on a more complex "mental infrastructure" than other types of memory.
Context is very important here. To remember an event, a child needs a whole set of concepts. So, in order to remember my brother's birthday, I had to know what "hospital", "brother", "cradle" and even "Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends" are.
Moreover, in order for this memory not to be forgotten, it had to be preserved in my memory in the same language code that I use now as an adult. That is, I could have had earlier memories, but formed in rudimentary, pre-verbal ways. However, as language was acquired, the brain developed and these early memories became inaccessible. And so it is with each of us.
What do we lose when our first memories are erased? For example, I lost an entire country.
My family emigrated to America from England in June 1991, but I have no memory of Chester, my birthplace. I grew up learning about England from TV programs, as well as the cooking habits, accent and language of my parents. I knew England as a culture, but not as a place or home...
Once, in order to verify the authenticity of my first memory, I called my father to ask about the details. I was afraid that I had invented the arrival of my grandparents, but it turned out that they really flew in to see their newborn grandson.
My father said that my brother was born in the early evening, not at night, but given that it was winter and it was getting dark early, I could mistake evening for night. He also confirmed that there was a crib and a TV in the room, but he doubted one important detail - that Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends was on TV.
True, in this case we can say that this detail naturally cut into the memory of a three-year-old child and fell out of the memories of the father of the newborn. It would be very strange to add such a fact years later. False memories do exist, but their construction begins much later in life.
In the studies that Peterson conducted, young children were told about alleged events in their lives, but almost everyone separated reality from fiction. The reason older children and adults begin patching holes in their memories with fictitious details, Peterson explains, is because memory is constructed by our brains, not just a series of memories. Memory helps us to know the world, but for this we need whole, not fragmentary memories.
I have a memory of an event that chronologically precedes the birth of my brother. I vaguely see myself sitting between my parents on a plane flying to America. But this is not a first-person memory, unlike my memory of visiting the hospital.
Rather, it is a “mental snapshot” from the outside, made, or rather constructed, by my brain. But I wonder what my brain missed important detail: in my recollection, my mother is not pregnant, although at that time the stomach should already have been noticeable.
It is noteworthy that not only the stories that our brain constructs change our memories, but vice versa. In 2012 I flew to England to see the city where I was born. Having spent in Chester less than a day I felt that the city was surprisingly familiar to me. The feeling was subtle, but unmistakable. I was at home!
Was it so because Chester in my adult mind occupied important place like the city of birth, or were these feelings provoked by real pre-verbal memories?
According to Reznik, probably the latter, since the identifying memory is the most stable. In my case, the "memories" of the city of birth that I formed in infancy may well have persisted all these years, albeit vaguely.
When people in Chester asked me what a lonely American was doing in a small English city, I answered: "Actually, I come from here."
For the first time in my life, I felt that nothing inside resisted these words. Now I don’t remember if I was joking after: “What, is it not noticeable in my accent?” But over time, I think this detail may become part of my memory. It makes the story more interesting that way.
.We called them magic stones. They were just pieces of pebbles - like those you buy for an aquarium - in the sandbox on the playground where I played preschool age. But my friends and I endowed them magical properties, hunted for them as for a treasure, and neatly laid out in handfuls of "emeralds", "sapphires" and "rubies". Sifting through the sand for these magical gems is one of my earliest memories. I was at that time no more than three years old. Memories from kindergarten also come down to single moments: I draw letters on yellow paper with pink lines, I watch a film about marine animals, the teacher cuts a large roll of paper so that we can all paint our portraits with our fingers in paint.
When I try to remember my life before my fifth birthday, only these flashes come to mind - like flashes of matches in the dark. At the same time, I know that I thought, felt and learned a lot then. Where have all these years gone?
Psychologists call this dramatic forgetting "infantile amnesia." On average, human memories extend no further than the age of three and a half years. Everything before that is a dark abyss. "It's a fixed focus phenomenon," says Emory University's Patricia Bauer, an expert on memory development. “It requires attention because it is a paradox: young children remember the events of their lives, while adults store a very small part of these memories.”
During recent years scientists have finally begun to understand exactly what happens in the human brain when it begins to forget a collection of its earliest memories. "We're building on the biological base," says Paul Frankland, a neuroscientist at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. New data suggests that the brain is obliged to let go of most of childhood - this necessary part transition to adulthood.
Sigmund Freud gave the name to infantile amnesia at the beginning of the 20th century. He argued that adults forget their childhood years of life in the process of suppressing unpleasant memories of the awakening of sexual experiences.
Although some psychologists give credit to these claims, the most common explanation for infantile amnesia is that children simply cannot form stable memories before the age of seven, although there is little evidence for this hypothesis. For almost a century, psychologists believed that childhood memories didn't last because they didn't last long.
In the late 1980s, the reformation of child psychology began. Bauer and other scientists began to study children's memory: for example, they created a toy bell and struck it - and then waited to see if the child could repeat these actions in the right order after a pause of minutes or months.
One experiment after another has demonstrated that the memories of children three years old and younger are indeed retained, albeit with limitations.
At the age of six months, childhood memories persist for at least a day; at 9 months - within a month; by the age of two years - within a year.
In a landmark 1991 study, researchers found that children as young as four and a half years old can recall details of a trip to Disneyland a year and a half earlier. However, around the age of six, children begin to forget many of their early memories. An experiment conducted by Bauer and colleagues in 2005 showed that five-and-a-half-year-old children remembered more than 80% of their experiences in three years old, while children of seven and a half years remembered less than 40%.
This work revealed the contradiction underlying infantile amnesia: children can form and access memories during the first years of life, with most of these memories eventually fading at a much higher rate than we usually forget the past as adults.
Some scientists have suggested that retaining memories requires language or a sense of self—something we lack in childhood.
However, while verbal communication and self-awareness undoubtedly reinforce memories, their absence cannot fully explain infantile amnesia. After all, some animals have large and complex brains relative to their body size, like mice and rats, but they don't have speech or presumably our level of self-awareness, but they also forget their childhood memories.
Then, then, the scientists reasoned, the paradox has a more significant physical basis common to humans and other mammals with large brains. Question - what?
Between birth and early adolescence The brain lays down some of its circuitry and strengthens the pathways of electrical impulses in fat tissue to make them more conductive. In the process of massive growth, the brain builds countless new bridges between neurons. IN early years we have much more connections between brain cells than in adulthood - then most of them collapse.
All this excess brain mass is the raw clay out of which genes and experience mold the brain to fit its particular environment. Without this brainwashing, kids won't be able to learn as much and as fast as they can.
As Bauer and others have found, this ability to adapt comes at a cost to us. While the brain is undergoing a long stage of development outside the womb, the large and complex network of different brain regions that together create and store memories is still in the process of developing and is not able to form memories in the way it will be able to in adulthood. As a consequence, long-term memories formed in the first three years of life are our least stable memories and are more likely to fade or disintegrate as we get older.
Earlier this year, Frankland and colleagues published a study revealing another way the brain says goodbye to childhood memories: not only fade, but hide. A few years earlier, Frankland and his wife, Sheena Josslin, also a neuroscientist, began to notice that the mice they studied were showing worst results during memory tests after spending some time in a cage with a squirrel wheel.
The couple knew that exercise on the wheel promoted neurogenesis, the growth of new neurons, in the hippocampus, the area of the brain that plays key role in the process of memory. And while neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus apparently strengthens the ability to learn and remember, Carl Deisseroth of Stanford University and other researchers suggest that it may also require some amount of forgetting.
Just as there is only room for a certain number of trees in a forest, the hippocampus can only contain a certain number of neurons. New brain cells can occupy the territory of other neurons or even replace them, which in turn can destroy or alter the small circuits that store individual memories.
It turns out that the high rate of neurogenesis in childhood is partly responsible for infantile amnesia.
To prove this hypothesis, Frankland and Josslent moved small and adult mice from their usual small plastic box to larger metal cages. In new containers, they gave the rodents a small blow. electric shock. The mice quickly began to associate metal cages with electric shocks and shook in terror whenever they were placed in these conditions.
Baby mice began to forget about this connection after a day, adult mice remembered it. However, if, after electric shocks, adult rodents ran around the wheel, thus stimulating neurogenesis, they began to resemble cubs in their forgetfulness.
Prozac, which also stimulates neurogenesis, has the same effect. Conversely, when scientists slowed neurogenesis in babies with drugs or genetic engineering, the young animals formed much more stable memories.
To take a closer look at how neurogenesis changes memory, Frankland and Josslin used a virus to insert a gene encoding green fluorescent protein into the DNA of newly grown mouse brain cells. The radiant coloration demonstrated that the new cells did not replace the old ones; rather, they were joining an already existing chain. This suggests that, technically, the many small circuits of neurons that store our early memories are not destroyed by neurogenesis. Instead, they are carefully restructured, which probably explains why original memories are so difficult to retrieve.
“We think it's an accessibility issue,” Frankland comments. But it's also a matter of semantics. If a memory cannot be accessed, then it is effectively erased.”
This rearrangement of memory circuits means that while some of our childhood memories are indeed erased, others are preserved in an encrypted, distorted form. Research suggests that a person can recover at least some childhood memories by responding to certain cues - causing the occurrence in the memory of some moments associated, for example, with the word "milk". Or by imagining a home, school, or special place associated with a certain age, which allows relevant memories to emerge on their own.
However, even if we can unravel some of the individual memories that have gone through the vague cycles of growth and decline in the children's brain, we can never fully trust them - some of them may be partially or completely fictional.
Research by Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California, Irvine has shown that our earliest memories are often an inexplicable mixture of real events, stories from others, and scenes our unconscious mind has made up.
In a series of groundbreaking experiments in 1995, Loftus and colleagues gave volunteers short stories about their childhood received from relatives. The study participants did not know that one of these stories is about how they got lost in mall at the age of five, was mostly fiction. A quarter of the participants said they remember such an incident. And even when they were told that one of the stories had been made up, some participants failed to understand that we are talking about the incident at the mall.
When I was little, I got lost in Disneyland. Here's what I remember: it's December, I'm looking at a toy train in the Christmas village. Turning around, I realize that my parents have disappeared. Horror seizes me, I begin to wander around the park in search. A stranger comes up to me and takes me to a giant building with a bunch of screens showing surveillance footage. Do I see parents on one of them? I did not see. We return to the train where I find my parents. I run into their arms, overwhelmed with joy and a sense of relief.
I recently asked my mom for the first time what exactly she remembers about that day at Disneyland. She said that it was summer and that the last time they saw me was near the boats traveling through the "jungle", and not at all near the railway at the entrance to the park.
As soon as they realized that I was missing, they immediately contacted the Tracing Center. The park employee actually found me and brought me to the center where I was reassured with a scoop of ice cream.
I was baffled that her story contradicted so much what I thought was a very accurate and accurate memory, and I asked my mom to look in old photo albums for evidence, but she could only find pictures from a previous trip to Disneyland. Apparently, I will never have clear evidence of what happened then. Only shimmering, like pyrite, tiny fragments of the past remained in my head.
- Childhood memories allow you to regain what is erased over the years: spontaneity, fantasy, lightness.
- Some of us need the courage to touch again the childhood problems and resentments repressed into the unconscious.
- To heal old wounds, to understand oneself and to accept means to give strength and meaning to one's adult life.
Each of us from time to time feels the need to return to his childhood. Touching it, we rediscover forgotten sensations: lightness and serenity in relation to life, sincerity and spontaneity in actions, pure joy or genuine sadness in the feelings that surround us. Looking at the world through the eyes of the child we once were, it is as if we are awakening from a long sleep.
Associations evoke memories
Childhood returns to us at the level of sensations: taste, touch, smell. A piece of biscuit cake allowed the hero of Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time to feel again the serene happiness forgotten long ago.
“The taste of madeleine cake is a classic example of how an insignificant detail, a fleeting sensation triggers a chain of the earliest childhood memories,” says psychotherapist Margarita Zhamkochyan. “And each of us has our own memories that can turn us into children again.” For 29-year-old Inna, this is the smell of strong tobacco: “My grandfather tarred Belomor from morning to evening, he was simply saturated with it. I still, feeling this smell, remember the summer, the house of my grandparents, how we splashed from a hose in the sun, how we baked potatoes in the ashes.
Feeling like a child again, we experience happiness that seems to no longer belong to us.
40-year-old Anna smiles: “Every time I bite off a piece of sheep cheese, it’s like I’m at VDNKh, in the Sheep Breeding pavilion. I loved going there with my mom so much! When she, exhausted by the smell, tried to take me away, I began to cry bitterly.
And 36-year-old Dmitry feels like a child when he hears the once popular motive of Yuri Antonov "Sea, sea ...". “In an instant, I return to that summer when my brother and I were first brought to the beach: there this song sounded from the speakers for days on end. The sea was cold, parents did not allow children to swim for a long time, but our mother said that we were seasoned and we were allowed. My brother and I spent several hours in the water and were probably the happiest kids in the entire resort.”
Feeling like a child again, we experience moments of happiness that, it seems, no longer belong to us, but they give us special feeling that you want to keep forever.
Madeleine cake in Proust's novel
“Dejected by the gloomy today and the expectation of a bleak tomorrow, I automatically raised a spoonful of tea with a piece of biscuit to my mouth. But as soon as the tea with cake crumbs soaked in it touched my palate, I shuddered: something unusual happened in me ... I was filled with some precious substance; rather, this substance was not in me - I myself was this substance. I stopped feeling like a mediocre, inconspicuous, mortal person.
Marcel is the hero of the novel In Search of Lost Time. Towards Swann by Marcel Proust - tries to understand the nature of this wonderful feeling and finally remembers: his aunt treated him to such pieces of madeleine cake in the mornings when, as a child, he spent summers in her small town. The memory, which the mind tried in vain to resurrect, came alive thanks to the biscuit crumbs; that before which thoughts surrendered, sensations did.
Proust writes: “But when there was nothing left of the distant past, when living beings died and things collapsed, only the smell and taste, more fragile, but more tenacious ... remind of themselves, hope, wait, and they, these barely perceptible tiny ones, among the ruins, carry on themselves, without bending, a huge building of remembrance.
Memories from the past are the key to the present
Each childhood memory, no matter how trivial it may seem to another person, it is surprisingly important for us. Why is it so big attractive force precisely these brief moments, unknown why preserved in our memory?
The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, believed that childhood memories allow us to understand the behavior of an adult. He called the child the father of an adult. His student, the great Austrian psychoanalyst Alfred Adler, used the analysis of early memories to recreate the individual life history of his patients.
“There are no random memories,” Adler wrote in “What Life Should Mean To You,” “out of the countless impressions that fall on a person’s lot, he chooses to remember only those that, although vaguely, are felt by him as connected with his the current situation."
We turn to childhood, because it is in it that enormous resources are hidden.
“Adler believed that when our lifestyle changes, our memories also change: other stories from childhood come to us, we interpret the cases that we remember differently,” explains psychotherapist Elena Sidorenko. Reflecting on them, we get the opportunity to look at ourselves from the outside, to realize the pattern, the continuity of everything that happens to us and, thanks to this, influence our future.
“Remembering, we look for the source of our personal strength in those distant events and experiences,” says psychotherapist Margarita Zhamkochyan. - We turn to childhood, as if warning and consoling ourselves, because it is in early age enormous resources are hidden. And the amazing thing is that, by remembering, we can return them to ourselves.”
Immediacy or infantilism?
Looking at how an adult man enthusiastically plays football with the boys, many people think: “What a childish thing!” When an elderly lady, having listened to street musicians, suddenly throws off her cloak on the hands of her venerable companion and starts dancing, we are touched: “What spontaneity!” But if this kind of behavior is repeated in our loved ones over and over again, we feel annoyed: “Total infantilism!”
“Every adult wants to be a child sometimes,” explains psychotherapist Viktor Makarov. - We act like a child, we fool around, but then we straighten our tie - and into the office! returning to habitual way life, we act like adults: we allow ourselves to be different. But an infantile person is always the same.” “Psychologically, an adult is able to directly express his feelings, but at the same time keep promises, be responsible for decisions made. An infantile person cannot do this,” agrees family therapist Inna Khamitova.
Infantilism has many faces: irresponsibility, egocentrism, dependence on others, unwillingness to deny oneself pleasures, inability to make decisions independently. An infantile person is sure that there will always be someone in the world who will solve his problems: a husband or wife, bosses or the state. But in fact, he simply refuses to grow up, and this is not at all the same as a genuine return to the brightness of the sensations of the first years of life.
The most recognizable example of this behavior is Peter Pan, a boy who chose not to grow up. In fact, this is a tragic character. Despite all the charm of this image, it reminds us that there is no other way personal development, except for growing up - from childhood to adolescence, from youth to maturity. It is a sad life for those who remained on the eternal "pier" of one of early stages his life, denying himself the right to know what will happen next.
Why do we tend to forget childhood experiences?
Many modern psychotherapeutic schools, following Freud, help us to look for the causes of our adult problems in early childhood. But it is difficult to go this way ... without difficulty and doubt. Even in working with a psychoanalyst or a psychotherapist, some of us fail to extract childhood memories from the depths of our memory.
“It is difficult to look into oneself, because it is scary: after all, childhood makes us not only experience moments of happiness, but also suffer, feel small again, defenseless or rejected,” explains existential psychotherapist Svetlana Krivtsova. “Therefore, many people prefer to forget about their childhood, but along with difficult memories, they also reject childish lightness, spontaneity, a vivid sense of life.”
Forgotten inner child can help us understand our own children
Psychoanalyst Tatyana Alavidze confirms: “In their youth, some people are in a hurry to quickly become adults, they are ashamed of any manifestations of childishness: they do not dare to fool around, play, show their feelings. By suppressing a child in himself, a young man (or girl) is trying to reinforce a sense of his own importance - after all, in fact, he is not sure that he is an adult, he is afraid to "compromise" himself with children's actions and dreams. But even as an adult, such a person often continues to behave in the same way.
The consequences of this behavior are often dramatic, especially when we become parents ourselves: it is this forgotten inner child that can help us understand our own children. Receiving attention and support from the adult we have become today, our childhood gives in return its invaluable properties: clarity of feelings, serenity of the soul, the ability to fantasize, play and create. Not only psychotherapy teaches us to return from time to time to the child living in us, to communicate with him - each of us has such an opportunity. It is in our interests to use it to make our life richer, more harmonious, creative and truly alive.
