Sharing special moments with our children is one of the most valuable methods of bonding with them. Research has found that the act of remembering and talking about special moments with our children can have a number of psychological and developmental benefits for them, far beyond simply the emotional satisfaction of discussing shared memories together. Here we’ll outline the three major benefits found in multiple studies, and how you can better incorporate these benefits into your lives.
Author: Sarah-Eva Marchese
and Anna Chard
Kids Talking About Their Own Experiences Strengthens Their Sense of Self
When children talk about their own experiences, they take ownership over them. They recall and process the narratives on their own terms, highlighting what they consider important details and subjectively offering insight into their unique feelings about the moment in question. This kind of agency is positively correlated with extraversion and openness, which one study found to be highly related to positive emotional development. When kids take control over their memories, recounting them to a surrounding community of people, they are granted the opportunity to solidify the value of that memory for themselves. It is theirs, encompassed in their moral, historical, and social understanding, rather belonging to a parental figure or friend. They become far more aware of their own place within the context of the story, and as such demonstrate a degree of self-awareness far beyond their years.
As children enter adolescence, they become increasingly preoccupied with others’ perceptions of them. This awareness persists into early adulthood, through the age of 25, at which point individuals’ sense of self begins to crystalize more completely. However, up until that point, children and young adults’ ability to “autobiographically reason,” to connect their current selves with the person in the past, the subject of their story, is crucially important for psychological well-being. This notion of “self-continuity,” or feeling connected to the younger version of oneself, solidifies children and young adults’ perception of their own agency, of their ability to dictate future outcomes, further solidifying their sense of self (and security in themselves) even beyond young childhood.
It isn’t just the positive, feel-good memories that we should encourage our kids to reflect on, however. One study found that children who reflect on their negative emotions and experiences in particular demonstrate an even greater sense of self, displaying a remarkable ability to process both their peers’ and their own feelings. It is important to note that meaningful memories aren’t necessarily happy memories. Rather, they are teaching moments, moments of impact that provide an opportunity to learn, to think, and to grow. As parents, it is crucial that we don’t shy away from reflecting on these more challenging experiences alongside our children, as they are fantastic chances to foster crucial socio-emotional abilities fundamental to the development of their sense of self.
It is exactly as this sense of self begins to crystalize that sharing and discussing their child’s personal experiences becomes a parent’s most valuable asset; by developing a strong, personal story through memory recollection, children are able to better separate who they are and what they feel from all of the external, overwhelming inputs around them. Ultimately, facilitating this process is a means of helping our children solidify their individuality, reaffirming the value of their independent experiences and allowing these moments—as our children remember them—to shape who they become.
Reminiscing is a Valuable Tool for Childhood Socio-Emotional Development
When children remember important experiences and share them aloud, they are inherently forced to consider how they felt about the experience. They must reflect on how positive or negative the memory is, on who was involved in the memory (and how they feel about the role of each individual in the story), and on their own feelings in the moment that they are recalling. Studies have shown that it is exactly this kind of reminiscing, specifically about past emotional experiences, that is correlated with young children’s socio-emotional development.
Knowing how to tune into your emotions is important. Kids tuning in to their own emotions in this way facilitates their ability to tune into their peers’ emotions. As such, kids who think about how they feel (and how they felt) become more adept at reading how other people feel. As we know, this skillset (which we might colloquially call the ability to read the room) is crucial as kids become teenagers and enter adulthood. By encouraging them to remember how they felt—and to communicate those feelings verbally—we can solidify our kids’ emotional awareness early on.
Reminiscing Facilitates Childhood Linguistic Development
Language skills, particularly the ability to reconstruct and convey a coherent story, are fundamentally crucial for later academic performance. If, from the earliest moments of their adolescence, children are encouraged to form thoughtful, logical recollections of important events, they will enter elementary school with an innate understanding of linguistic patterns and devices, jumpstarting their early grammatical and stylistic proficiency.
As we well know, kids' brains are information sponges. As parents, what we say—and how we say it—holds immense power, as it is what our children will emulate in their own speech. So, if we offer kids the ability to reminisce with us, demonstrating how to talk about our own memories in a thoughtful, well-formulated manner, we can impart our own linguistic abilities unto them. Studies continue to find that conversing with kids profoundly benefits their cognitive development; if we can do so, then, while also allowing our children to communicate their own thoughts and feelings, the sheer act of sharing memories as a family can become an immensely valuable developmental tool.
How to Incorporate Memory-Sharing into Your Family
The stories that we tell ourselves, and the stories we tell eachother, are paramount to the quality of our interpersonal relationships and, as such, to our happiness. Especially for children, how we conceive of ourselves in relationship to the people around us—and how we talk about the moments that we share with them—can be an indicator of our social competence and our understanding of our personal agency. It is remarkably easy to let special moments go, and our task is to preserve them: to keep them alive by reminiscing and retelling. Not only is the process valuable for what it offers us in joy, but our children truly benefit developmentally from remembering the moments that we hold dear, and through recounting them agentically.
Here are some of the easiest ways to start to build more memory-communication into your family:
Ask your children to tell you the story of their day. Instead of asking questions that require a yes or no answer (“Did you eat your lunch?”), ask them in a way that encourages them to tell their stories (What happened at lunch today?”). Let each child tell THEIR version of the events, rather than one child. This will allow them all to begin to see and feel their specific version of memory.
Let children talk about something painful over and over. If a child experiences a hurt from someone at school or a big win, let them tell the story over and over. It can feel easy to move past it, or not put too much emphasis on it, but children are using these stories as tools. Let them repeat the telling again and again so that it becomes their story—and so they develop the emotional, social and language benefits.
If you have a child that is struggling with communication, reverting to tears, or displaying anxiety, use their memories as a way to instill confidence. They will be the least inclined often to speak up, letting a sibling take the lead. Intentionally create space for them and listen attentively so that they feel their stories are heard and powerful.
Memby’s story-capturing feature is a useful tool as your family works to save memories. By allowing your children to record their retelling of what they created in that moment, they will be able to go back and hear themselves retell it again and again. This allows them to feel like their stories matter but also to listen to themselves and iterate on their recounting as they build their social and emotional skills.
As parents, helping our children know how to share their memories is a fundamental way that we can set them up for a lifetime of success. We are providing them with the foundations of their own unique ability to understand the world around them and to feel, independently, like exactly who they are. We can make this stronger simply through a family dynamic that is rich not just in making memories, but in recounting them too.
Learn More Below
Flynn, Erin. Language-Rich Early Childhood Classroom: Simple but Powerful Beginnings. ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303378464_Language-Rich_Early_Childhood_Classroom_Simple_but_Powerful_Beginnings.
Gubrium, Jaber, and James Holstein. Narrative Practice and the Coherence of Personal Stories - Jstor.org. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4121016.pdf.
Harvard Second Generation Study. Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/.
Marshall, Sean, and Elaine Reese. “Growing Memories: Benefits of an Early Childhood Maternal Reminiscing Intervention for Emerging Adults' Turning Point Narratives and Well-Being.” Journal of Research in Personality, Academic Press, 21 June 2022, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656622000757.