How Parents Accidentally Give Children False Memories

The adults were talking when we kids came into the room.  They saw us and still had something to say, and one of them said, “Look, when Uncle Maxie went to join the circus, it was the family who stopped him.”

I began to have images of Uncle Maxie swinging on a trapeze.  Right now I can see it in my mind.  My Uncle Maxie had run away to join the circus.

It was when I was much older they were talking and didn’t change their mouths when they saw me.  It was then I learned that Uncle Maxie was thinking of leaving his wife for another woman, and the family came to his work place to dissuade him.

It was then I realised that Uncle Maxie never went to join the circus.

Many things parents tell children lead to a visual impression because kids don’t think in words, they think in images.   The child hears the story and cements it into his/her mind.

I used to tell my daughter a make believe story about how we were on a cruise ship and we found a little girl who was lost.  I never was on a cruise ship, nor was my daughter.  Yet, she grew up to take cruises whenever she could with the attitude, even the first time she stepped on a ship, as if she’d been there before, because she ‘remembered’ being on a cruise ship.

Neither of these stories had damaging effects.   It was not like a parent saying terrible things about the other parent.   This will create an image in the child’s mind and the false memory can be born.

“Your father would sell you if anyone would buy you!”  says the angry mother.  The child may start to imagining being sold, especially with all the current stories on slavery and on people being sold in various parts of the world.

“Your mother almost ate you and if I hadn’t been there she might of!”  Says the father angry at his wife’s increasing weight.

And the child becomes afraid of the mother who almost ate her.

Once, a Nanny told a child that he was almost abducted and she had rescued him.  He began to remember it and it wasn’t until he was older that he learned the story was a complete lie.  Yet, he can still see the attempted abduction.

Memory is fluid.  One can create memories.