Discovering the importance

of childhood memories

It’s often hard to remember memories before the age of 3 because lan-

guage skills aren’t well developed. If you can’t speak, how can you talk

about what you did that day? And if you can’t articulate what you did,

how can you add it to the library shelf of your long-term memory?

Another reason why memories from a very young age are hard

to remember is because the brain is not fully developed then. In

Chapter 7 I talk about the hippocampus. This part of the brain

plays an important role in consolidating memories and it’s not fully

developed before two years of age. This makes it hard for very

young children to form connections between their experiences

and transfer that into their long-term memory library.

To remind yourself of your happy childhood memories, take a walk

down memory lane. Flick through your photo albums to trigger

happy holidays, and read through old birthday cards and letters

that you’ve exchanged with loved ones. Sometimes you can forget

how many happy moments you’ve had and reminding yourself is

important. Don’t store your photo albums in a hard-to-reach place

like an attic. Instead, keep albums in a prominent place like a book-

shelf so you can reach for them regularly.

Not all memories are reliable. A false memory, as the name sug-

gests, is a memory of an event that never happened or an embel-

lishment of an event that did happen. This occurrence is most

common with childhood memories. You may remember an event

that never occurred, such as owning a rabbit when you were little.

You can also have a memory that elaborates on an event that did

actually occur. If, for example, you had a dog as a pet, you may

remember that you and your dog used to chase rabbits in the

nearby field. However, your parents may point out that you lived

in a busy city with no fields nearby.