Why don’t I remember much of what happened to me before I was about 3?

It turns out that all people have this problem. We all have “infantile amnesia,” which means that we do not have “episodic memories” (the ability to think back to specific events and to recall their details) from when we are very young. 

Although it’s called “infantile,” the amnesia lasts beyond the time when we are infants, extending through our toddler years.

How do we know this? Researchers have asked people to recall important events that took place when they were young, such as the birth of their sibling (link to research). People who were 3 or older can give some details about the event (remembering who they stayed with, or the first time they held their sibling). People who were toddlers don’t have specific memories like that. They might know the answer to who they stayed with, because their parents have told them the story many times, but they can’t actually think back and remember it for themselves.

There are probably many reasons why we don’t have episodic memories from when we were young children.

One reason is that our brains, like the rest of our body, are still developing, and many of the parts that develop latest are those parts that are most important for memory.

Another reason is that, as we get older, language becomes a key part of our declarative memories; we often “talk to ourselves” about past events and use language to organize the contents of our memories. But any memories that we have prior to the age of 3 would be unlikely to be organized with much language (because we were just figuring out how to talk at those early ages). Once we start organizing memories by language, it might become very hard for us to bring to mind those memories that were organized in a different way that did not depend on language.

A final reason is that episodic memories may require an understanding that there is a “you” that is constant in all those experiences, and young children may not understand this.  Elizabeth’s mother loves to tell a story about how, the night before Elizabeth’s 3rd birthday, she was crying because she did not want to say goodbye to her 2-year-old self.  She was scared that she would wake up in the morning, and her 3-year-old self would be entirely different than her 2-year-old self! Without understanding that we have one self that moves through time and experiences all events, it may be impossible to form episodic memories.

It’s important to keep in mind that, even if you have no declarative memories of events that happened prior to the age of about 3, those events can still be influencing your behavior! There is that whole category of “nondeclarative memories,” those that you can’t easily explain and verbalize. Many of those memories include the skills and habits that we developed as a young child – how to walk, talk, sit in a chair, sleep in a bed – that continue to benefit us through the rest of our lives.