When we think about what we leave behind as grandparents, we hope we will have transmitted lessons about kindness, justice, strength and confidence, the boundless nature of love.
Psychologists I’ve been talking to about kids and “autobiographical memory” — the recall of specific events of personal relevance — tell me that we retain very little of what happened before we turn 3. Childhood amnesia, Freud called it.
“Young children form memories early in life,” explained Patricia Bauer, a cognitive developmental psychologist at Emory University. “But they forget them so quickly, more quickly than adults, that they don’t hold onto them.”
When we think about legacy, what we leave behind as grandparents, probably values top the list: We hope we will have transmitted lessons about kindness, justice, strength and confidence, the boundless nature of love.
Reblogged this on Madison Elizabeth Baylis.
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