Remembrance of Things Past

[vovat]

rockinlibrarian made a post about memories from childhood, both of dreams and real life. This post is mostly going to be stuff I said in a comment on that entry, but with a few things added for the purposes of clarity, or just because I thought of some other points.

Amy said she'd read in a book that dreams of kids prior to age seven or so are usually just static images, and don't really have narratives. I can't really buy that, because I can remember some from before that age. Granted, I don't know how much narrative there was in them, but I'm pretty sure they weren't just still images. The earliest one I can actually remember having was from when I was five or younger (I know because I was living in the house that I moved out of when I was five), and it involved reading a poem that ended with the line, "And he slept so fast, he slept right into midnight." I also remember telling my mom about a dream in which my baby sister was struck by lightning, but I can't actually recall having the dream itself, which kind of makes me wonder whether that was an actual dream from when I was asleep, or just a scary thought I had. I know I was terrified of lightning when I was a kid. Another fear-related dream that I can sort of remember involved being bitten by a dog, except I think the dog actually ate me in the dream. I also feel I should mention the dream where Grimace (from the McDonald's commercials) wanted to eat me (being devoured was a recurring theme in my childhood dreams, I guess), but I think that was well into the age when I was supposed to be having narrative dreams.

As for real-life memories, the earliest ones I know of were from around when my sister was born, which was not long before I turned four. Most of them are just brief memories without any real context, though. I remember a birthday cake with a Matchbox bulldozer on top, getting Pac-Man popsicles at a local convenience store, eating fish cakes with my mom and deciding they were terrible, and various other things. (And no, they don't all involve food, even though those three I mentioned do. {g}) On the other hand, my parents also mention things from my childhood of which I have absolutely no recollection. I think three might be my cut-off for remembering anything, but there might be earlier stuff in the recesses of my mind, probably without context.

As for whether being read to has anything to do with the vividness of dreams (which is something that Amy suggested in her post), I think that's possible. Granted, a lot of kids are read to, but I don't think they're all equally interested in what they're hearing. I know my parents said I started reading at three, so I was probably already thinking in narrative structure by then.

Comments

[travspence.livejournal.com]

I don't buy that bit about kids dreaming in static images either. I recall some very vivid, full-motion dreams from my childhood. And how would the researchers know? Do they have some sort of Dream-o-Scope or something? Or are they relying on a five year old to give an accurate retelling?

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Apparently it was something like They woke kids up when they were in REM sleep and asked them if they dreamed anything, and apparently only like 35% of kids under the age of 5 answered anything at all and then it was always a short answer like "I saw a dog." But really, what if they just couldn't EXPRESS what it was that they dreamed? :P

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I would think it's more likely that the five-year-olds wouldn't be able to accurately describe their dreams. Dreams, at least in my own experience, generally reflect real life to a certain extent, and real life doesn't contain that many still images. If the kid dreamed about a dog, wouldn't it be more likely that the dog was acting like dogs do in real life, rather than just being a picture?

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Ah, I've got the book I was reading here now (because I'm back at the library) and this is the section-- it's even worse than I implied!:

"Sleep researcher David Foulkes has made a career of studying children's dreams." [so yeah, you'd think he'd know. Maybe he's not good at talking to kids?] "True dreaming, he says, starts between ages seven and nine. Before that, 'dreams' are probably fanciful reports of real-life experiences or fears." -- 101 Questions about Sleep and Dreams, Faith Hickman Brynie, p. 140.

It goes on to describe the experiments, pretty much what I said above, except that "before the age of NINE" [emphasis mine] "children reported dreams in only 20 to 30 percent of REM awakenings... the three-to five-year-olds he interviewed usually reported no dreams at all. Occasionally, they mentioned an animal, such as a bird, or a body state, such as feeling hungry, but they didn't tell stories. The images in dreams did not move, and Foulkes believes that very young children are unable to imagine activity. Beginning at age 5, dreams of simple events begin. People and animals move and interact, but the stories are not well developed. Children do not see themselves in their own dreams or percieve themselves as being part of a dream." Well, if that's the case, who's to say they even understood the QUESTION?

[vovat.livejournal.com]

To assume that anyone who can imagine activity can also describe it strikes me as a pretty big leap of logic. Maybe the kids just think the activity is so obvious as not to merit mention. You'd think that this guy would know better, so I guess there are plenty of people who make a living doing things they're not really that good at. To give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe his area of expertise is older children's dreams, and he's trying to branch out and study those of the younger kids as well.

"True dreaming, he says, starts between ages seven and nine. Before that, 'dreams' are probably fanciful reports of real-life experiences or fears."

Well, like I said, I can remember telling some dreams to my mom but not actually dreaming them, so maybe that's true. But I think I'd be more willing to chalk it up to gaps in my memory than to not having had dreams back then.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I think my biggest problem with this is the statement that these things NEVER happen. I could go with kids dream LESS often then, or they RARELY have narrative dreams, (it makes sense, I only remember 3 dreams from before I moved and I'm pretty sure I was at least 4 before I had the first one), but not that they NEVER have dreams. And maybe his research methods were faulty in that the kids weren't sleeping at home in their own beds-- maybe it was enough of a change that the kids had enough to worry about and they need to be more at ease before they dream, or something like that.

[yosef.livejournal.com]

I'm another who remembers dreaming when I was 3 or 4 (certainly before 7!). An early one I remember is a tarantula-sized spider opening my bedroom door (or it pushed it open from the floor at least). I think I was then following it down the stairs. I sometimes wonder if I'm actually remembering the dream or just remembering remembering the dream. I can still see some vague images of this one though. I think about that a lot with other real life memories from childhood... am I remembering the actual event, or am I just remembering the moment of thinking about it later, or remembering photos? I eagerly await the invention of the brain/memory/dream downloader

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Did the spider want you to tap dance?

[yosef.livejournal.com]

that would be terrifying! In the movie version of Prisoner of Azkaban, all of the "riddikulus" spells they cast only made their scary things more horrifying (a giant cobra to a giant jack in the box, for example)

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the jack-in-the-box was definitely a lot worse. I wonder if that was supposed to be ironic.

Which book was it that had a boggart changing into Molly Weasley's friends and family dying? I think that's a lot more reflective of an actual worst fear; the ones that the kids encountered in Prisoner of Azkaban were more along the lines of phobias, which aren't exactly the same thing. Maybe there will be more about how boggarts operate in that encyclopedia Rowling is supposed to be writing, assuming she ever actually does.

[yosef.livejournal.com]

I think that was book 5, because I remember thinking it was missing from the movie version. From what I've read about the encyclopedia, she doesn't plan on writing it for a long while. I'll assume it's when she needs a new wing on her mansion.

[bec-87rb.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting question. Would you say you have, in general, a better than average memory?

Also, you talk about food on LJ all the time! Haha, It makes perfect sense that you'd have a first memory of food.

I have static memories, a few anyway, although one had a *smell* in it. I'll have to ask my father about his earliest memories, because he remembered an incident from when he was three, and he definitely didn't read until he got into school. I'll ask him if it's pictures or more of a movie.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Would you say you have, in general, a better than average memory?

It depends on what sort of memory you're talking about. I'm good at remembering details from things I've read, and certain things that happened (often long ago). On the other hand, I'm always forgetting to bring things, like my lunch.

[arfies.livejournal.com]

According to my mom, I read at two, and I definitely had narrative dreams. IMO, that's bull.