When your adult kid remembers something totally different from how you remember

[Ginevra]

Keeping this light, but isn’t this the most fascinating thing? (It can also happen with your siblings, but I think it’s more remarkable when one is an adult.)
 

So, you may have had this experience. Like, in my family, one of my kids said once, “oh, Mom was dead-set against us ever chewing gum.” And I wonder where they came up with this. It is true I did not usually chew gum, buy gum or offer gum to the kids, but I wasn’t philosophically “dead-set against it.” It just always seemed like an unnecessary thing to spend money on. 
 

How about you? 

Edited August 6, 2021 by Quill

[Melissa Louise]

Memory is bizarre. 

My kids truly believe that all they ever did during homeschooling as littlies was go for nature walks ( which we did once a week).

In their memories, nature walks loom extremely large, overshadowing things like daily maths.

For whatever reason ( maybe they didn't like nature walks, or maybe my nature lessons were just so good 🙂) those memories are salient in away other memories aren't. 

The biggest ( and saddest for me) mismatch in memories is around read alouds. I used to read to those kids for a couple of hours each day. I only stopped reading to ds 4.5 yes ago! I have so many read aloud memories! 

The kids? Vague memories of certain books. Zero memories of others. So sad. And it wasn't as if they hated read alouds or anything - they enjoyed them, requested them! 

 

[Kassia]

I think some of this is addressed in Lisa Genova's book, Remember.  I highly recommend it.  Short but very thought-provoking and informative. 

[Pawz4me]

I have no stories to add, but wanted to say that the older I get and the more time I spend really observing people -- I do think everyone lives in their own unique version of reality.

[Kassia]

2 minutes ago, Pawz4me said:

I have no stories to add, but wanted to say that the older I get and the more time I spend really observing people -- I do think everyone lives in their own unique version of reality.

Yes, I absolutely agree!  

[Carrie12345]

This can be so hard for me. And I know it’s meant to be kept light, and I know it’s mostly normal. But, since my big kids spent a lot of time with a raging narcissist, even the cute and silly ones trigger me. (With my kids, not with other people’s tame stories, lol.)

[pinball]

I am very close to 2 siblings. 
 

one tells horrific stories of her mom hitting them, screaming at them, breaking down crying unexpectedly, staying in her room for days at a  time…the other says she doesn’t remember any of that. She remembers some stuff, but nothing to the extent her sister does. 
 

they are a year apart in age, if that matters. They were basically raised like twins.
 

the one with the memories is an alcoholic with other serious mental health problem.

the one without…doesn’t drink and is mentally stable.

It’s heartbreaking. I believe both of them. I think the one sister was somehow able to block out the abuse and the other one wasn’t and ended up medicating herself with alcohol.

 

[Tanaqui]

Human memory is not much like a vcr. It's colored by our emotions at the time and in the present, and also it gets overwritten by our experience of remembering. So if today you think about your first grade teacher, most of what you're remembering is other times you've remembered your first grade teacher. Errors have accumulated between your memory and reality.

Even things you'd swear people would remember forever change. After 9/11, literally within a week, there were studies done on human memory where participants were asked to record where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. As little as a year later, many people had memories of 9/11 that were totally different from what they wrote down, and would swear that their memory of the event itself was accurate and that for some reason that they couldn't quite recall they must have lied a year earlier and just forgotten lying.

[SKL]

Recently my kids have been complaining about the clothes I "made them wear" in elementary school.

Funny thing is, I bought the clothes they liked.  I actually put a lot of effort into outfitting each of them in the style they preferred.  One of mine hated to show her bare legs for years, so I provided many pairs of leggings to wear under her skirts.  (She had skirts because she hated pants.)  Now history has been rewritten such that I am Amish and didn't allow my one kid to show her legs.  (Don't ask me why the other kid was apparently "allowed" to.)

This, of course, is just one example ....

[Annie G]

Youngest daughter swears that when she was in high school I made her write a 500 word essay every day. 
 

Son believes that once I MADE him wear slippers to a science class at a children’s museum because he had no shoes that fit. What really happened is I didn’t notice he was wearing slippers until I let the kids out for the class. Then I ran and bought him some shoes during class because we had several other errands to run before we trekked the hour back home. 
 

One of my favorite childhood memories is being on a car ferry with my family and my sisters and mom stayed in the car but Dad and I stood at the railing and enjoyed the view and the breeze as we crossed.  It never happened. We never took a car ferry, or any other kind of ferry. I’m still clinging to the faint hope that *MY* memory is right and the other four members of my family are wrong. 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, SKL said:

Recently my kids have been complaining about the clothes I "made them wear" in elementary school.

Funny thing is, I bought the clothes they liked.  I actually put a lot of effort into outfitting each of them in the style they preferred.  One of mine hated to show her bare legs for years, so I provided many pairs of leggings to wear under her skirts.  (She had skirts because she hated pants.)  Now history has been rewritten such that I am Amish and didn't allow my one kid to show her legs.  (Don't ask me why the other kid was apparently "allowed" to.)

This, of course, is just one example ....

OMG, my daughter (now 24) just did this, too. She complained about “how I dressed her” when she was, I don’t know, say 6-10 years old. But she PICKED these clothes! I was open to her choosing the clothes she liked. Also, she seems not to realize that things now deemed hideous were in style at the time. So if boot cut jeans are now a huge fashion “don’t”, they were totally the style at the time. 
 

Same with her bangs. She now thinks it’s awful that I kept her hair in those fluffy, uncool bangs. 🙄

[Terabith]

My oldest kid was so excited to go to Catholic school.  They sang a song about how much they loved their school.  They talked often and for years about how much they loved their school.  Before they started school (in fourth grade), we visited a bunch of different schools, and they had significant input on where we decided to go.  When they started middle school, I again asked explicitly if they wanted to continue going to Catholic school or switch to public, and they said definitively that they wanted to stay at Catholic.  They seemed cheerful, happy, enthusiastic, and engaged while they were in Catholic school.

Now, they are fairly resentful that I made them go to this school and talk about how miserable they were at Catholic school.  

[ktgrok]

With some of mine  the memories warp way faster than that. 

We went to a petting zoo once and DD11 was about 4 at the time. She BEGGED to see the rabbits. They were down at the end, so we were looking at other stuff first, and she whined the whole dang time about seeing the rabbits. Finally we took her. There was a HUGE line. She waited in line, then it was her turn and she decided she was scared of the rabbits and didn't want to go in after all. 

An hour later we were on the way home in the car and I asked what was her favorite part. Without missing a beat, she said, "The rabbits!!!"

You know, the ones she never saw. 

[Not_a_Number]

25 minutes ago, Quill said:

OMG, my daughter (now 24) just did this, too. She complained about “how I dressed her” when she was, I don’t know, say 6-10 years old. But she PICKED these clothes! I was open to her choosing the clothes she liked. Also, she seems not to realize that things now deemed hideous were in style at the time. So if boot cut jeans are now a huge fashion “don’t”, they were totally the style at the time. 
 

Same with her bangs. She now thinks it’s awful that I kept her hair in those fluffy, uncool bangs. 🙄

OK, that makes me worry about what DD9 is going to remember!! How in the world did she come up with this complaint?? Why does she think you dressed her? 

[athena1277]

Sometimes parents just don’t fully know what their kids thoughts are at the time.  My mom has mentioned a few times about a period of time when I was in elementary school and liked to wear skirts to school.  Being an adult now, I had to explain to her that it wasn’t that I liked skirts.  Because it was chilly in the mornings, she wouldn’t let me wear shorts to school and I would get hot on the playground later in the day.  However, she would let me wear a skirt about the same length as a skirt.  So I wore skirts.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

OK, that makes me worry about what DD9 is going to remember!! How in the world did she come up with this complaint?? Why does she think you dressed her? 

🤷🏻‍♀️ Your guess is as good as mine! 

[Melissa Louise]

1 hour ago, athena1277 said:

Sometimes parents just don’t fully know what their kids thoughts are at the time. 

This is so true. 

When dd1 attended preschool, she would refuse to go into the music room for song time. The director tried everything she could to entice DD in - we even thought it was maybe hearing related and had her hearing checked. All ok. It was baffling - she loved song time in other contexts. We kind of gave up - dd1 finished the year never going in the music room. 

About five years later, it came up in conversation and DD told us it was because preschool sometimes sang a song about peanuts. She knew I was allergic, and did not go near peanuts, so she thought she should stay out of the music room in case she was allergic too. 

Why it took her till nine to be able to explain, I don't know. 

I definitely had no idea of what was in her head!

[J-rap]

Memories are fascinating!  One of my dd's used to swear that I made all of our children sit on the living room couch without eating for an entire day until one of them fessed up to stealing something from a store.  😏  I've asked her, knowing me now that she's an adult, does she really think I'd do that?   Of course she knows I'd never do that in a million years!   ...but we're both still fascinated realizing that in her memory, it felt like an entire day, and not the five or less brief minutes that it probably was. 

[GracieJane]

Memory changes as you age; for instance, a lot of childhood memories are „reinterpreted“ when adults become parents themselves. There was a study done on new mothers once that determined women often „remember“ their fathers differently based on their partner’s parenting qualities. Oddly enough, women evaluated their father‘s parenting worse when they were unhappy with their own partner. Maybe it’s an unconscious defense against the guilt of feeling like you picked a bad partner, but it’s very clear that people generally „remember“ differently as their own life circumstances change.

[J-rap]

1 minute ago, GracieJane said:

Memory changes as you age; for instance, a lot of childhood memories are „reinterpreted“ when adults become parents themselves. There was a study done on new mothers once that determined women often „remember“ their fathers differently based on their partner’s parenting qualities. Oddly enough, women evaluated their father‘s parenting worse when they were unhappy with their own partner. Maybe it’s an unconscious defense against the guilt of feeling like you picked a bad partner, but it’s very clear that people generally „remember“ differently as their own life circumstances change.

I think this is fascinating and true.  As we know more through living and maturity, our memories are interpreted differently.  

[Starr]

I just watched this with my sil and his parents this week. Dsil and his father had a different memory than mom did. She smiled , held her ground, and said, "I don't remember it that way." I'm thinking she was probably right. My sister and my daughter remember a lot of detail. I don't give either of them 100% accuracy . lol
 

[Resilient]

The house my son grew up in which we left in his senior year was recently re-sold.  He and I and his GF went to the open house (for 2 hours) and it was fascinating the stories he told about his memories and the remembrances I brought forward for him.  Almost completely different sets of memories...which I am sure is not completely true, because we didn't discuss 15 years of memories in 2 hours.  The good part was that they were mostly positive on both sides.  The best part was that we agreed on what the interim owners had done to the house, re: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

[SKL]

Also apparently I never allowed my kids to have treats, pretty much their whole lives.  Nothing but tasteless organic healthy whole food that they hated.  Amazing that they didn't die of starvation.  (And once again, I actually bought food they liked at the time.  And yes it did include treats.  :P)

[gardenmom5]

Sometimes it's a different perspective.  I've heard my sister complain about things our mother/grandparents did that she perceived one way.  I understand why she saw them that way - but there was another perspective that informed by their life experiences (not attitudes, actual first person experiences) that had a bearing on why they acted the way/said they things they did.

[kiwik]

12 hours ago, Annie G said:

Youngest daughter swears that when she was in high school I made her write a 500 word essay every day. 
 

Son believes that once I MADE him wear slippers to a science class at a children’s museum because he had no shoes that fit. What really happened is I didn’t notice he was wearing slippers until I let the kids out for the class. Then I ran and bought him some shoes during class because we had several other errands to run before we trekked the hour back home. 
 

One of my favorite childhood memories is being on a car ferry with my family and my sisters and mom stayed in the car but Dad and I stood at the railing and enjoyed the view and the breeze as we crossed.  It never happened. We never took a car ferry, or any other kind of ferry. I’m still clinging to the faint hope that *MY* memory is right and the other four members of my family are wrong. 

Did you ever see a ferry from the shore while with your dad?

[Annie G]

2 hours ago, kiwik said:

Did you ever see a ferry from the shore while with your dad?

He said no. I’m guessing I saw a movie with a scene like that in it and put myself in it.  I don’t have more than a handful of positive memories w dad- it was the 60’s and he worked and mom raised us. So I probably did imagine it…though it was shocking when I was in my 40’s and we were all together reminiscing and I told the story and found out it never happened. So very weird. I have THREE good memories with my dad and only 2 ever happened! (The other two did for sure, and were both forced by my mom, so not as fun)

[lauraw4321]

I once heard my MIL fondly reminiscing about going to the library during the summer and how the kids would participate in the summer reading program. 
 

My husband was halfway overhearing and said “ugh, summer reading program. I’d always claim to read the same books every year. Meanwhile the librarians practically had a shrine to [younger sister]. [mocking tone] Oh [younger sister]!  You’re here!  Our favorite child!  How many books have you read now?! A thousand?!?’”

My shocked MIL laughed and said “oh no, I thought you loved going to the library!”

Then another brother walked in. MIL asked him whether he remembered going to the library in the summer. 
 

“Of course! You’d say ‘let’s go to the library’ and I’d think ‘here we go!  Guaranteed spanking!’”

Youngest brother then walked in and MIL asked him if he remembered summer library trips. 
 

his response: Ugh, yes. I hated that place.

😂

[sassenach]

16 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

 

The biggest ( and saddest for me) mismatch in memories is around read alouds. I used to read to those kids for a couple of hours each day. I only stopped reading to ds 4.5 yes ago! I have so many read aloud memories! 

The kids? Vague memories of certain books. Zero memories of others. So sad. And it wasn't as if they hated read alouds or anything - they enjoyed them, requested them! 

 

OMG!! My kids did that to me, too! They can only remember like 3 books that I read to them and I was like, are you kidding me?!  I read to you for a decade! My vocal cords will never recover. 

15 hours ago, Terabith said:

My oldest kid was so excited to go to Catholic school.  They sang a song about how much they loved their school.  They talked often and for years about how much they loved their school.  Before they started school (in fourth grade), we visited a bunch of different schools, and they had significant input on where we decided to go.  When they started middle school, I again asked explicitly if they wanted to continue going to Catholic school or switch to public, and they said definitively that they wanted to stay at Catholic.  They seemed cheerful, happy, enthusiastic, and engaged while they were in Catholic school.

Now, they are fairly resentful that I made them go to this school and talk about how miserable they were at Catholic school.  

My eldest had the choice between a public high school, which had kids who had bullied her a ton in middle school, or a private Christian school. She chose the private Christian school and now she has nothing but bad things to say about the school that we "made" her go to. She resents that my younger two have gotten to go to public high school. It's exhausting. 

[Hyacinth]

20 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

The biggest ( and saddest for me) mismatch in memories is around read alouds. I used to read to those kids for a couple of hours each day. I only stopped reading to ds 4.5 yes ago! I have so many read aloud memories! 

The kids? Vague memories of certain books. Zero memories of others. So sad. And it wasn't as if they hated read alouds or anything - they enjoyed them, requested them! 

 

 

3 hours ago, sassenach said:

OMG!! My kids did that to me, too! They can only remember like 3 books that I read to them and I was like, are you kidding me?!  I read to you for a decade! My vocal cords will never recover. 

YES! I was telling my boys that I’m sure that my death bed memories will be of “couch time” and the three of us snuggled under a blanket with a stack of picture books and chapter books and giggles and snuggles. Then I started listing the books. Papa Piccolo, Frog and Toad, The Turnip... I’m getting all weepy at the memories.

But them? Blank looks.

Finally, one says he remembers that after reading, I used to let them watch a few episodes of Kid History on YouTube. Then they started quoting them. “Fact!” “Oceanology!” “Do you get it now?”* This they remember. Hours upon hours sharing classic, beautiful literature? Eh, not so much.

*If you know, you know  

 

Edited August 7, 2021 by Hyacinth

[sassenach]

LOL @Hyacinthwe totally remember those videos! They were quoted all the time in our house. FaCT.

[MEmama]

It goes the other way too, parents having memories of things that never happened.

My mother recently went on an extremely detailed rant about older women who endlessly scolded me at the park for letting DS play in dirt piles. It was crazy how much detail she went into. The problem is that my son has never voluntarily gotten dirt on his hands or played in dirt or sand for fun; at the age she was imagining, he had some serious sensory stuff going on and was so dirt averse it was like ocd. Like, maybe this happened to another kid she saw at a park, but I couldn’t help but laugh at the image of it being *my* kid. Just no. Lol.
 

I have zero idea where she came up with such a notion/“memory”.
 

Edited August 7, 2021 by MEmama

[Janeway]

23 hours ago, Quill said:

Keeping this light, but isn’t this the most fascinating thing? (It can also happen with your siblings, but I think it’s more remarkable when one is an adult.)
 

So, you may have had this experience. Like, in my family, one of my kids said once, “oh, Mom was dead-set against us ever chewing gum.” And I wonder where they came up with this. It is true I did not usually chew gum, buy gum or offer gum to the kids, but I wasn’t philosophically “dead-set against it.” It just always seemed like an unnecessary thing to spend money on. 
 

How about you? 

I am dead set against chewing gum. I am tired of it ending up in the carpet and such. 
 

I don’t know about adult kids, but my own kids have memories of things that never happened. For example, my daughter has wonderful memories of being in the Nutcracker (she has never been in it but has gone to see it) and playing in the snow with her little brother (this was before last year, when she never saw snow). There are other things and with other kids. 
 

[SKL]

I have a memory where I was falling out of a very very tall old building, and my parents caught me.

They say it must have been a dream.

I think that it's possible I put together things the way I understood them at the time.  We probably did go up and look out the window of the tallest old building in our city, when I was a tot.  I probably tried to climb for a better view and scared my folks.  My mom has a habit of talking in hyperbole, and may have said something like "SKL was falling out the window and I had to catch her."  I would have heard that and took it more literally than anyone knew.

I also think sometimes little kids get so immersed in movies and radio songs that they feel like they are living what they are seeing/hearing.  Or they may remember a dream so vividly that they think it really happened.

[kbutton]

15 minutes ago, SKL said:

I have a memory where I was falling out of a very very tall old building, and my parents caught me.

They say it must have been a dream.

I think that it's possible I put together things the way I understood them at the time.  We probably did go up and look out the window of the tallest old building in our city, when I was a tot.  I probably tried to climb for a better view and scared my folks.  My mom has a habit of talking in hyperbole, and may have said something like "SKL was falling out the window and I had to catch her."  I would have heard that and took it more literally than anyone knew.

I also think sometimes little kids get so immersed in movies and radio songs that they feel like they are living what they are seeing/hearing.  Or they may remember a dream so vividly that they think it really happened.

I have one of these sorts of dreams, but I knew even as a kid that it wasn't quite right and must've been from multiple memories smooshed. I was two, and I think I was able to get confirmation that part of it was true. 

22 hours ago, athena1277 said:

Sometimes parents just don’t fully know what their kids thoughts are at the time. 

Yes! And don't underestimate what little kids picked up from big kids who were trying to have one over on them. I can't tell you how many times big kids told me crazy stuff, and my parents had no idea and didn't realize how that fed into other stuff that was inconsistent with how they remember it. I was fortunate to often be able to connect those dots later to explain. Bigger kids can be stinkers, lol! 

I also think that people who tend to warp memories tend to do it quite often and people who don't are typically spot on in their memories. When they are not, there is usually some kind of misunderstanding vs. the memory being totally warped. There are certain people in our family that we basically do not count as reliable narrators, but we do take what they say and try to glean *why* they might think what they do because it can sometimes be helpful. 

On 8/6/2021 at 7:21 PM, Annie G said:

One of my favorite childhood memories is being on a car ferry with my family and my sisters and mom stayed in the car but Dad and I stood at the railing and enjoyed the view and the breeze as we crossed.  It never happened. We never took a car ferry, or any other kind of ferry. I’m still clinging to the faint hope that *MY* memory is right and the other four members of my family are wrong. 

Don't give up, lol!!!

I had a memory of being at an A frame house when I was a kid. Shortly after that, a relative had an A frame house built. I knew these were different houses, and I knew that my fascination with the one being built had been fueled by seeing that first house. I remember being at the build and eating a meal there, and I remember what we ate. The build and meal were readily confirmed by my family (and they were astonished I remembered all the details because I was about 3). I spent decades remembering this house and trying to figure out where I'd seen it. I would ask people if they remembered, and they didn't.

Well, fast forward until about 3 years ago. We were with extended family, including a few relatives no one had seen since I was about three. See where this is going, lol? Well, someone had pictures out, and there was no A frame in the picture (which was of several people who are now all dead sitting in picnic chairs in front of a barn that looks like every other barn in the county), but I KNEW when I saw that picture that I had seen the A frame at that event. I started asking if there was an A frame on the property. No, there wasn't, etc. But then the couple who hadn't been around for 40 or so years said, "We lived in an A frame just down the road from that farm." Lol!!! Apparently we'd briefly either walked or driven to their house, or maybe parked there and walked over the main event. 

What's funny is that my parents knew I remembered stuff correctly from that age in vivid detail, but everyone doubted this particular memory. I had been proven right multiple times over the years with things I pulled out of my brain, but they were sure this one was someone wrong.

Anyway, I remember all kinds of things that I "shouldn't," and those memories are scarily reliable. One of my kids is like this as well. He does forget things now and then from very early on, but he has clear and accurate memories from way back when he was in diapers! 

I chalk some of the memory thing up to the fact that I never moved until I moved into my college dorm, so I had a lot of visual support to reinforce memories. My parents still live in that same house. We also pulled out photos all the time and looked at them when I was growing up, which reinforced a lot of stuff. 

I forget a LOT more now than I ever did. It's kind of scary after remembering details all my life. 

[KungFuPanda]

I'm glad it's not just my kids.  I'm clinging to the hope that my adult memory was better developed than their little kid memories.  DS has distinct memories of being pulled from story time in preschool, being put in time out, and made to write.  It was occupational therapy and he didn't SAY anything until he was out of preschool for a good decade!

[Excelsior! Academy]

2 hours ago, kbutton said:

I have one of these sorts of dreams, but I knew even as a kid that it wasn't quite right and must've been from multiple memories smooshed. I was two, and I think I was able to get confirmation that part of it was true. 

Yes! And don't underestimate what little kids picked up from big kids who were trying to have one over on them. I can't tell you how many times big kids told me crazy stuff, and my parents had no idea and didn't realize how that fed into other stuff that was inconsistent with how they remember it. I was fortunate to often be able to connect those dots later to explain. Bigger kids can be stinkers, lol! 

I also think that people who tend to warp memories tend to do it quite often and people who don't are typically spot on in their memories. When they are not, there is usually some kind of misunderstanding vs. the memory being totally warped. There are certain people in our family that we basically do not count as reliable narrators, but we do take what they say and try to glean *why* they might think what they do because it can sometimes be helpful. 

Don't give up, lol!!!

I had a memory of being at an A frame house when I was a kid. Shortly after that, a relative had an A frame house built. I knew these were different houses, and I knew that my fascination with the one being built had been fueled by seeing that first house. I remember being at the build and eating a meal there, and I remember what we ate. The build and meal were readily confirmed by my family (and they were astonished I remembered all the details because I was about 3). I spent decades remembering this house and trying to figure out where I'd seen it. I would ask people if they remembered, and they didn't.

Well, fast forward until about 3 years ago. We were with extended family, including a few relatives no one had seen since I was about three. See where this is going, lol? Well, someone had pictures out, and there was no A frame in the picture (which was of several people who are now all dead sitting in picnic chairs in front of a barn that looks like every other barn in the county), but I KNEW when I saw that picture that I had seen the A frame at that event. I started asking if there was an A frame on the property. No, there wasn't, etc. But then the couple who hadn't been around for 40 or so years said, "We lived in an A frame just down the road from that farm." Lol!!! Apparently we'd briefly either walked or driven to their house, or maybe parked there and walked over the main event. 

What's funny is that my parents knew I remembered stuff correctly from that age in vivid detail, but everyone doubted this particular memory. I had been proven right multiple times over the years with things I pulled out of my brain, but they were sure this one was someone wrong.

Anyway, I remember all kinds of things that I "shouldn't," and those memories are scarily reliable. One of my kids is like this as well. He does forget things now and then from very early on, but he has clear and accurate memories from way back when he was in diapers! 

I chalk some of the memory thing up to the fact that I never moved until I moved into my college dorm, so I had a lot of visual support to reinforce memories. My parents still live in that same house. We also pulled out photos all the time and looked at them when I was growing up, which reinforced a lot of stuff. 

I forget a LOT more now than I ever did. It's kind of scary after remembering details all my life. 

I am very much like this.  I used to have scarily crazy detailed memories that others didn't remember then I was proven correct.    

Now, not so much.  Maybe mom brain?  Maybe age?  I forget silly things now, like the color of a spine on a book. I can send a kiddo to the bookshelf for a tall, skinny, green book and the child will look and look.  Then I go find the red, short, thick book of the same title.  It's annoying!

[Frances]

Not exactly related to the OP, but I had my son keep a journal in elementary school as a way to practice writing. It was more for him, I didn’t read it unless he invited me to read an entry. One night when we were having dinner with friends he mentioned in the course of conversation that for quite awhile he had been writing every day in his journal that he had hot chocolate before he went to bed because he had read about a child doing that in a book. He thought it sounded fun and cozy and would be nice to read about when he was older and went back through his journals.

But, he had never asked to have hot chocolate before bed. He didn’t even particularly like hot chocolate because he doesn’t really like sweets. And because he had the bladder of a giant and was super skinny, I actually would have let him have hot chocolate every night before bed had he simply asked. And of course after that when I started offering him hot chocolate before bed, he always politely declined.

[SKL]

On 8/6/2021 at 7:13 PM, SKL said:

Recently my kids have been complaining about the clothes I "made them wear" in elementary school.

Funny thing is, I bought the clothes they liked.  I actually put a lot of effort into outfitting each of them in the style they preferred.  One of mine hated to show her bare legs for years, so I provided many pairs of leggings to wear under her skirts.  (She had skirts because she hated pants.)  Now history has been rewritten such that I am Amish and didn't allow my one kid to show her legs.  (Don't ask me why the other kid was apparently "allowed" to.)

This, of course, is just one example ....

I should add that I recently discovered that the "Amish clothes" topic came up when my kids and their friends were reminiscing about elementary school.  One or two friends made a  judgmental comment about my kids dressing conservatively, and I guess that was the first time they thought, why did we dress that way?  Must have been Mom's fault, LOL.  (Because what isn't Mom's fault?)

[Halftime Hope]

We've had two instances recently in which dh remembers something entirely differently than I do, and it has been very disconcerting because I'm usually the one with the poor memory.  In both cases, I knew exactly what I had done (I had proof of it) and it was nothing like what he "remembered".  It's twice as bad, I think, when the one with the "reliable" memory concocts something.  

 

[HomeAgain]

4 minutes ago, Halftime Hope said:

We've had two instances recently in which dh remembers something entirely differently than I do, and it has been very disconcerting because I'm usually the one with the poor memory.  In both cases, I knew exactly what I had done (I had proof of it) and it was nothing like what he "remembered".  It's twice as bad, I think, when the one with the "reliable" memory concocts something.  

 

This is us.

BUT, I'm the person who has alzheimer's and dementia in her family, so I take a thousand pictures of the mundane.  Most people go to Disney and have lovely pictures of themselves posing and doing things.  Our pictures are filled with things like the bird that followed us around, the breakfast we had, the fast passes, our itinerary and total expenditure....😄 But these are the things we will want to remember later, I think.  I want to remember what my house key looked like, or how we walked to get ice cream or the garden this year. 
Later on, they become part of the full memory and little aids to help us all remember what the days were like.

[kbutton]

35 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

BUT, I'm the person who has alzheimer's and dementia in her family, so I take a thousand pictures of the mundane.  Most people go to Disney and have lovely pictures of themselves posing and doing things.  Our pictures are filled with things like the bird that followed us around, the breakfast we had, the fast passes, our itinerary and total expenditure....😄 But these are the things we will want to remember later, I think.  I want to remember what my house key looked like, or how we walked to get ice cream or the garden this year. 
Later on, they become part of the full memory and little aids to help us all remember what the days were like.

That's how my DH documents things too. It's fun, though I hope he does remember to take some people and places pictures too. It's hit or miss, depending on the event.

[MEmama]

1 hour ago, HomeAgain said:

This is us.

BUT, I'm the person who has alzheimer's and dementia in her family, so I take a thousand pictures of the mundane.  Most people go to Disney and have lovely pictures of themselves posing and doing things.  Our pictures are filled with things like the bird that followed us around, the breakfast we had, the fast passes, our itinerary and total expenditure....😄 But these are the things we will want to remember later, I think.  I want to remember what my house key looked like, or how we walked to get ice cream or the garden this year. 
Later on, they become part of the full memory and little aids to help us all remember what the days were like.

This is me. I have few photos of birthdays or holidays, preferring to focus on the everyday. I do a yearly project where I take—and print—a photo a day, give or take. My books are a testament to our messy, beautiful, mundane and very real lives. 

[SKL]

Anyone else wish they remembered all the good things as clearly as they "remember" the ridiculous things?  😛

[Tree Frog]

My adult siblings and I have talked about this. We all remember 2 of the 3 of us being in the same room at the hospital having tonsils removed. 2 of us remember visiting the other 2 in the hospital. Only one of us can be right. Lol. Who remembers correctly is easily proven, since of the 3 of us, I'm the only one with tonsils. (The third one remembers being in the hospital and eating lots of banana popsicles, which were apparently his favorite at the time.) Our mom remembered the wrong 2 in the hospital, too.

Memories are very fickle. I also remember being about 6 or 7 and carrying myself, in a seated position with my hands under my thighs, from inside the house to the car out front. I have no idea why I have that memory because, clearly, it can't be real.

[Shoeless]

My sister has a memory of our cousin pushing her, which caused her to fall, land on her arm funny, and break her wrist. She swears this is true, but it isn't because...I was the one that pushed her!  My cousin also broke his arm falling off his bike around then, and I think my sister is mixing bits of memories into one story in her mind. 

[4everHis]

This whole thread is so interesting. I have never journaled but I did, for 20ish years, write significant stuff on the calendar. Just enough info that I can go back & tell you dates, appointments, if someone was sick or at a friend's house or someone said something funny. 27 years ago dh spent 5 weeks out of state with his mom when she went into hospice care. He came home and was home for almost a week when she passed. I knew this to be true because he went to my office Christmas party and back to work.  I recently heard him tell someone with great sorrow, "Yeah, I was with my mom, then I flew home and she died the next morning."😳 He has given himself a wrong memory that tortures him. 

[Strawberry C]

On 8/6/2021 at 11:49 PM, SKL said:

Also apparently I never allowed my kids to have treats, pretty much their whole lives.  Nothing but tasteless organic healthy whole food that they hated.  Amazing that they didn't die of starvation.  (And once again, I actually bought food they liked at the time.  And yes it did include treats.  :P)

Thank you all for these comments. I just had an encounter with my adult child and needed to hear this. I'd think I was going crazy otherwise.

According to my DD23 now, as we are trying to figure out how to get to a museum together and I'm trying to determine the logistics, she asked me if this meant she wasn't going. I asked no, I'm just trying to figure it out.  And she says, Ok, because for the entirety of my life, if you said you had to figure it out, it meant I wasn't going.

WHAT?  I just took this kid to Disney world, The Renaissance Festival, and a HUGE convention in the past year, yet its always a no if I had to figure out how to get there?  I played it off but I'm STUNNED.

As a point of reference, my kid is autistic and has several disabilities that make her brain not work well, but she says stuff like this a lot that makes me sound like a monster, because she recalls one time when something happened and it becomes something that happened every time. I have to tell myself they have brain issues and are misremembering. That I'm not crazy, but it's hard.