'I’m haunted by the thought that if I vanished right now, my child would remember nothing of me'
Photo: [email protected]/Getty Images It’s early summer, and my 1-year-old daughter and I are standing in our sunny kitchen, dancing to the cheerful pop song on the radio and eating fresh blueberries. She’s beaming at me with her little berry-stained mouth because this is her perfect Saturday morning: in her home, with her favorite food, and — I like to believe, at least — her favorite person.
Researchers have developed clever methods for testing memory formation and retention in children too young to describe what they recall. In one study scenario, for example, 3- and 4-year-olds are individually taken from a laboratory outside to a sandbox, where they’re told a treasure chest has been buried by a pirate. After digging it up, the child finds that the chest is locked, and is asked by the adult if they have a key. The child says no, and is then taken back inside.
Carole Peterson, a professor of psychology at Newfoundland’s Memorial University, puts it this way: “The farther in the past from age 7, the more likely [childhood memories] are to be forgotten.” By contrast, our rate of memory retention stays more or less constant throughout most of adulthood: Research has found that we have very similar distributions of memories at age 70 compared to age 20.
It’s comforting to remind myself that while the memories themselves seep away, a sort of high-water mark remains, a ghost of happy times that helps shape who my daughter will become. The extra effort does leave something behind.My own mother died when I was just shy of 5 years old. My memories of her amount to very little — only a couple of brief vignettes, and a small piece of conversation so lacking in profundity that I cringe a bit when I think of it.
“If you look at the way parents talk with their children,” Bauer says, “you can identify two different approaches or styles. There’s one style where the parent really is drawing the child into the conversation and following the child’s lead. The parent is suggesting topics and when the child responds with something, the parent follows that child’s lead.” This is what researchers refer to as a “high elaborative” style.
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