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Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com

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Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It’s not unusual for adults to have quite poor recall of situations or events prior to age 10. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia

I can remember quite well my first years, including Kindergarten but it's very very hard for me to remember my primary school and to some extent the secondary school periods. I wonder, whether it's still the same phenomenon, or just that that period was relatively boring and unremarkable to my brain.

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#52
post #14

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.

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

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

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#53
post #46

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.

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…

> 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.

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#54
post #50

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 upda…

> 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

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#55

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.

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.

That sounds like memorizing a storytelling rather than what happened.

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#56
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely. When we first started dating, my wife said she couldn't remember anything before she was 10 (interestingly, this also included childhood friends), but after a few years of marriage I've definitely heard memories going back to age 3 or so. I suspect there's another cognitive difference at work here too, where my wife says she doesn't bother remembering things unless she thinks they'll be useful later, while I…

Agreed. What I think most people mean is that they can't recall events from those ages at will. Neither can I, but certain triggers can bring back a handful of vivid memories of events from when I was between 3-4 years old. For example seeing a house with the same architectural style as the one I grew up in.

Reading this thread brings back memories from early childhood too, I just came up with several memories from kindergarten of which I haven't thought in years.

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#57

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.

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

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#58
post #50

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 upda…

> 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

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...

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#59
post #42

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.

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. Th…

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)

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#60
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not unusual for adults to have quite poor recall of situations or events prior to age 10. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia

I can remember quite well my first years, including Kindergarten but it's very very hard for me to remember my primary school and to some extent the secondary school periods. I wonder, whether it's still the same phenomenon, or just that that period was relatively boring and unremarkable to my brain.

or maybe it's because this thread is all about preschool, so those memories are brought more into cognition.

Let's do an experiment, I'll try to conjure some primary school memories and we'll see if that brings forth some of yours:

- I remember a teacher sending me to fetch the polylux (a type of overhead projector) from another room. I didn't know yet what that was, but duefully obliged. I told the teacher in the other room that I was sent to get some kind of lynx, which I found hilarious.

- we did get flavored milk in paper boxes that had to be recycled in a special bin. The bin had only a slit so kids were forced to learn how to unfold the box so it takes up less space in the bin (those boxes are very common for all types of drinks and to this day it irritates me if someone doesn't unfold them when throwing them away). In the summer the bin would smell atrocious.

- I remember a fried who had a color printer & scanner at home and who offered to replicate a paper dinosaur model for the whole crafts class. 90ies inkjet technology was not up to the task and rendered all instructions unreadable - some kids managed to come up with some interesting creations still

- I well remember running through the hallway and somehow not making the turn, hitting my head hard on the wall/door

- at some point me and a couple of friends would build 'spaceships' out of boxes and bring them to school to play with during breaks. I got sick and while I stayed home I used the time to build a really big spaceship - but when I returned the next week, the spaceship craze had already ended

- bubble gum with pokémon stickers in them was all the rage

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