Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

https://raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com/2021/06/crazeh-conclusions-in-early-childhood.html

by DoreenMichele • 5 years ago

147 85 5 years ago

raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com

xt00• 5 years ago

I sort of wonder if the crazy conclusions are on the parents side or the kids side..

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.

Causality1• 5 years ago

Maybe it's due to my lack of experience raising children but a lot of this seems very bizarre. A sixteen year old remembering events from when they were three? Staying up till three AM talking to their parent? Being scared of other people seeing them as stupid before the age of three? The article doesn't come out and say whether this child was diagnosed by a professional but it seems obvious to me that they should've been. I hope they received treatment and beneficial accommodations.

josephg• 5 years ago

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.

philipswood2• 5 years ago

Yeah, fear-tinged memories seem to stand out:

I can remember being in my parent's bed on a moonlit night, them asleep, being scared at the shadows of the trees on the windows. The shadows looked like monsters.

This happened in a small town we moved from when I was 4 or 5.

Strangely a lot of these memories were "un-indexed". I had no association to recall them with until my son was about that age and when he had similar experiences I recalled mine.

simonh• 5 years ago

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.

TedDoesntTalk• 5 years ago

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.

Seems almost incredible.

smcameron• 5 years ago

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.

nostrademons2• 5 years ago

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?"

tablespoon2• 5 years ago

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.

That doesn't seem normal, either. I mean, they couldn't even remember a friend they had from first grade? Maybe they weren't prompted adequately.

ncmncm• 5 years ago

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.

xwolfi• 5 years ago

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)

tablespoon2• 5 years ago

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.

erik_landerholm• 5 years ago

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.

mongol2• 5 years ago

I remember how a ladybug tasted because I crushed one with my finger and put it in my mouth. Don't know the exact age but I were as old as children are when they do those things.

quantumsequoia• 5 years ago

I'm 25 now and I have memories from when I was 2. I think it just varies from person to person

pram• 5 years ago

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

pjerem• 5 years ago

What are you writing on ? What is this Hacker News thing ?

plank_time• 5 years ago

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.

philipswood2• 5 years ago

Interested in the source for the "You physically don't have the brain cells for long term memories until around age 5" to go look at.

I have some recall of a few, vivid, subjective, first person, "umwelt"-style memories of events that I can date to before I was five.

These feel very different to my normal "episodic" memories.

Having spoken to my dad about the same subject before, he has some that he can place to about age 2 or 3.

I'm not arguing your point; granted, memory is reconstructive imaging from some engram and not a replay of some recording and I'm super convinced that our brains and mind go through several developmental stages that function quite differently.

I also find it super interesting that people with hyperthymesia usually have a perfect recall start date a bit after age 10.

karlshea2• 5 years ago

Well I have very specific memories from ages 3-5 and they couldn’t have been from someone telling me about it, so that can’t be right.

moksly• 5 years ago

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.

If your research shows that I would strongly urge you to publish it, because that’s a groundbreaking find.

In reality, the brain reaches its “full” size of 90% of your body mass around the age of 3. 75% at the age of 2 and 50% at the age of 1 and 25% at birth. Every source we have in Denmark suggests that the human brain starts forming memories around 5 months into the pregnancy.

It is access to these memories that aren’t always present, and that access seems to depend on repetition in ages 0-2 and language development beyond that.

However, if the brain was physically unable to form memories before the age of 5, well… small children wouldn’t be able to talk, walk or even breathe.

TheSpiceIsLife2• 5 years ago

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

spoonjim2• 5 years ago

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.

brutus1213• 5 years ago

Want to echo this. I think we are remembering our remembering. There is bonafide scientific research on this. There was a Microsoft Research Cambridge project called SenseCam .. I think the first paper was helping a woman with memory loss. She was really remembering her memory of recalling a moment.

When I encountered that research, I reflected on my own childhood memories and concluded that this DRAM mechanism is what is going on for me.

On an alternate note, I'm in my 40s now and I hardly remember anything. I have two little kids and am often shocked when I see pictures from a year or two ago (can't remember when they were that young). A few other tech friends have suggested things are similar with them. I am constantly having to learn new stuff in my line of work (AI) ... stuff from 2017 is often referred to as "old". I'm a bit worried my memory capacity is finite and starting to overwrite on itself (sort of like a fake SD card that overwrites content or the Johnny Mnemonic movie)

chriskanan• 5 years ago

Spaced repetition is a technique for exploiting psychology's spacing effect for getting information to be stored longer [1]. That is (roughly) a memory needs to be recalled to be retained and the optimal time to do that recall is just before forgetting the material. This is implemented by Anki, which I loved using throughout my PhD and a few years afterwards with 20K+ flash cards on AI, math, and neuroscience. I started skipping doing it every day after becoming a professor, but I wish I had the time to pick it back up.

Also, memories become plastic and maleable when recalled, so just because they can recall something does not mean the memory hasn't been twisted by doing so [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_consolidation (see section on reconsolidation)

openfuture• 5 years ago

That sounds like memorizing a storytelling rather than what happened.

photojosh• 5 years ago

I'd add, the "on this day" photo library feature is amazing as your kids get older and memories fade. Little video snippets (and live photos: priceless) from when your kids were 2, 5, 10 years younger. Searching for keywords from image/face recognition when you remember something and getting a real memory back.

Of course, there's a balance with living in the moment too, but as someone who forgets what happened yesterday, I try to document as much as I can.

viztor• 5 years ago

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.

ggeorgovassilis• 5 years ago

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

aaron695• 5 years ago

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...

bambax• 5 years ago

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.

ben_w• 5 years ago

You can train an infant to recognize a signal (a sound, a light for instance) and associate it with a pleasant or unpleasant experience.

And pre-birth, baby cries have distinct accents: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/babies-al...

But there’s more than one type of memory, and learned associations are not the same as episodic memory.

odiroot2• 5 years ago

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.

dopidopHN• 5 years ago

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? »

wyldfire2• 5 years ago

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

failwhaleshark• 5 years ago

Misattribution in pattern-matching is common and necessary to construct and improve workable inner models of self, others, and the world.

This requires training ("pre-training" or guidance from a more omniscient-esque knowledge agent), trial-and-error testing, and feedback to attain mastery (accurate and precise pattern-matching).

Think of it analogous to genetic programming of the olden days:

1) Create an arbitrary model (code that results in answers of "is it safe?" "is it helpful?" etc.)

2) Test it

3) Find parts that work and parts that are broken

4) Mutate mostly the broken parts

5) Repeat until funding runs out

It's better to fail-safe being afraid of something if you don't understand it because life is fragile and many things could eat you/hurt you. And, young ones don't have that same experiences or defenses of full-grown, mature (-ish? because they're parents) adults.

aszantu• 5 years ago

Got lots and lots of traumatic memories from childhood. The conclusions were.

I'm on my own, i have to be strong. I want to be a warrior/hunter so i can provide for myself.

Im responsible for other ppls emotions.

blarg1• 5 years ago

I vaguely remember when I was less than 4 years, where things had a dream like quality.

A butterfly landed on my shoulder and I didn't see it take off so I thought it had gone through my skin into my body. Freaked me out a bit :(

xchaotic• 5 years ago

This story looks borne from the helicopter parenting theme. Some kids learn some things slower and it eventually cleared up. But with helicopter parenting he was sent to pre school and all this reverse psychoanalysis was done. It’s not wrong and it’s borne from parents caring about their kids, but letting them be kids is cool as well.

freetime2• 5 years ago

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.

toxik• 5 years ago

It’s very common for people to overvalue their own contribution to positive outcomes. I know I do, sometimes I can see myself doing it, but it doesn’t take away the feeling that it’s true. I see it in my parents-in-law too, they think they taught my kid do something new or they saw a behavior first where we (the parents) have seen it for forming weeks.

I think it’s important to let it pass, it helps us feel involved and meaningful.

jgilias• 5 years ago

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.

saiya-jin• 5 years ago

I definitely get that vibe from the article. I can see those kind of mothers around me too - outwardly they seem strong and successful (inwardly not satisfied nor happy with their life, if you ever have the chance to know them better), but they very often measure and compare their kids with other. Life is a race with rest of mankind to them and they transfer their mindset to their kids. Needless to say the effect it has on kids is rarely positive long term.

The whole piece basically feels like a humblebrag how great mother she is and how she made all the right choices.

It doesn't contradict what you say per se - kids can have development impediments, and there are dedicated experts to help them. Did she ever reached to those? Nah, she knows the best whats good for her kids. Again, one of those described above.

(The older I get the more I see how people are just few certain 'types' and few subtypes and once they are in certain category, they almost always behave in predictable patterns for given category. Once you are familiar with those, rarely can anybody surprise you with their behavior. This is certainly one of the types I meet)

ArkanExplorer• 5 years ago

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

rednalexa2• 5 years ago

Other entries in the blog mention she has a military husband.

ramshanker• 5 years ago

I blogged about myself-8-year-old memory when I was 17 (Year 2006).

TLDR was >>> The only way of becoming a king is to learn more and more MATHS. I associated Kings with some sort of personality who is very-very good at maths , whose question no one can solve in his empire except him . <<< :D

More at following link. http://blog.ramshanker.in/2006/03/child-imasination.html

iamflimflam1• 5 years ago

I remember as a child being extremely puzzled as to how glass worked. I could not understand how something solid could be transparent. I had seen that when things moved quickly they seemed to become translucent so I came to the conclusion that glass was made up of tiny cogs, all moving extremely quickly. It never made complete sense though. I must have driven my parents insane with my constant questions of how glass really works. Frustratingly I don’t think they really understood why I was so fascinated by it.

andi999• 5 years ago

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

lugged• 5 years ago

Colored cogs.

animal531• 5 years ago

My mother and I had a multi-year argument going about a house we drove past (when I just entered school). One of us argued that they had color tinted windows, whereas the other argued that it was just the color of their curtains.

barrkel2• 5 years ago

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?

darkerside4• 5 years ago

Crystals are by definition ordered by a very regular pattern. I don't fully understand the mechanism, but I'm not surprised that it exists.

agumonkey2• 5 years ago

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

wyldfire2• 5 years ago

The atmosphere on Earth has stable particles -- they have a lifetime similar to other matter on Earth. But their density is so low that light passes through them mostly undisturbed.

Empty space outside of planetary atmosphere is a void, there's "no" particles there (some Hydrogen and Helium and radiation).

ups101• 5 years ago

Around age 7 my daughter showed ocd like behavior (incessant scratching her arms) when she realized loosing connection during chrome casting meant the device kept playing. We had to unplug the chromecast device and inspect it, lying there dead and silent on the table, to settle her down. Same thing when our pc was updating, saying “please do turn off computer” and then _proceeding to reboot on its own_ at end of update. 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 (!…). as a toddler she would shake from fear if curtains were gently blowing - we figured she thought someone was standing there and tried to inspect it together to no avail. only recently we understood she in fact feared the house would blow away. Equal parts worried and proud of my little tin foil hat in the making :-).

pantalaimon3• 5 years ago

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

fxtentacle• 5 years ago

Especially because it is documented that at least animals can "feel" (for lack of a better word) electromagnetic waves, including those created accidentally by cheap wifi/bluetooth devices.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11011-017-0016-2 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/15368378.2014.90...

soulofmischief2• 5 years ago

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.

borski• 5 years ago

Sure, but if she has generalized anxiety, adding more to the plate in the form of “oh, also Google wants to throw you in prison eventually” is just not worth it right now :)

I’m exaggerating for effect, because kids do

daniel-cussen• 5 years ago

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.

jgalt212• 5 years ago

One recurring theme: Bright kids of a certain age are just smart enough to jump to crazy conclusions rooted in lots of knowledge for their age but little real world experience.

Are they describing pre-schoolers, or the hybrid VC / thought leaders of X. With X being the particular publishing heavy firm you find most annoying at the given time.

darkerside4• 5 years ago

I don't think these phobias are probably rooted in as much reason as ascribed in the article. We have instinctive emotional reactions to things like bugs. When an adult asks us for a reason, we find a pattern and supply it because it seems to make grownups happy.

aliasEli• 5 years ago

One of my early memories was of a very big statue that was standing on a cube that was almost the same size as me. I must have been less than four, because we moved to a different place after that. Years later I visited the same spot, the cube was about 50 centimeters high.

Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

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