Taking Your Kids To Disney? Forget About It…They Will!
By: Halley Purkey Ritscher
Disney World is a magical place where dreams come true, fantasies come to life, you spend your life savings, and your children make memories…that they won’t actually remember. Children cannot actually form concrete memories until three to four years of age, at the earliest (Peterson, Grant, & Boland, 2005). This idea, known as childhood or infantile amnesia, begs the question: why aren’t more people waiting until their kids are older to go to Disney? Are we dressing our daughters up to look like Elsa because they want to see themselves with the actual Elsa? Or is that simply a photo op for our own benefit? Are we paying ridiculous amounts of money to take our toddlers to Space Mountain because they love space? Or do we just want an excuse to ride the roller coaster?
Where Do the Memories Go?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words; this statement holds especially true for pictures that encapsulate these childhood amnesia prone memories. Below is a photo from my first trip to Disney, a trip that I have no concrete memories of.
So what happens to the memories made? Did they ever even exist? Peterson, Grant, and Boland (2005) say yes, but not for long. Preschoolers are able to verbally recall events up to a year later. This shows that those events did make it into the verbally accessible long-term memory storage at some point. This particular study looked at similarities between recollections of earliest childhood memories between children of various ages. They found that children above a certain age (about ten-years-old) had a very similar age of earliest memory. This suggests a somewhat universal starting point for remembering events from childhood. But the question remains… Where did the memories go?
The most likely explanation is that at these young ages the brains of toddlers are growing cognitively at very fast rates. For example, new neurons are being developed in the hippocampus (location for memory storage) which alter already existing neuronal connections, thus tampering with memories that already exist. Additionally, as we age, synaptic pruning takes place.
According to a 2021 article from Healthline, this refers to ridding the brain of old neural pathways that are not utilized or needed anymore and in turn, wiping out memories from early on (Raypole, 2021).
Who Benefits?
Despite the pessimistic prelude, it isn’t completely outside the realm of sanity to want to take your toddler to Disney World. Believe it or not, everyone does benefit in some way. Parents (mine) have no trouble remembering how hilarious it was to watch their two-year-old hiding from Chip and Dale under the table at the Disney breakfast. They also have no trouble remembering the agonizing defeat they felt when they realized their child doesn’t actually like Space Mountain. Moments like these create episodic memories, those of distinct experiences, that lead to bonding between the parent and child. This bonding is crucial to development and mental health later in life (Polcari & Ekwueme, 2014).
On the other hand, kids benefit by learning from the world around them. Although maybe not in the way parents had hoped, they hold onto memories about how the world works. Popular parenting site, Parents.com, discusses this at length in a post about childhood amnesia (Ball, 2019). For example, a trip to Disney may teach them what a roller coaster ride is, what it means to wait in a line, or that they should stay away from people in large, furry costumes.
Is it Worth it?
Despite having no memories of my own trip to Disney World as a toddler, between the photos of the trip and the stories I have heard from my parents, I do feel as though I probably really enjoyed myself. With that being said, I would still rather be able to recall the fun times myself.
So is it worth it? Is it worth the second mortgage you will probably have to take out just to be able to afford a ticket into the park? Is it worth the deafening screams you will likely hear from your kiddo on the plane ride down to Florida? Is it worth it? Debatable.
You are probably better off creating bonding experiences for you and learning experiences for the kids in a cheaper and more easily accessible way. My advice? Head to the playground, waterpark, or zoo. Save the Disney trip for when they are old enough to actually create memories that they won’t grow to forget.
References
Ball, C. (2019, December 19). Childhood Amnesia: Here’s Why Your Child Can’t Remember Being a Baby. Parents. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from
https://www.parents.com/kids/development/
Peterson, C., Grantm V. V., Boland, L. D. (2005). Childhood amnesia in children and adolescents: Their earliest memories. Memory, 13(622-637).
https://doi.org/10.1080/09658210444000278
Polcari, K., & Ekwueme, P. (2014, April 8). Why Play With a Child? Psychology Today. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/moral-landscapes/201404/
Raypole, C. (2021, February 10). Can’t Remember Your Childhood? What Might Be Going On. Healthline. Retrieved June 7, 2022, fromhttps://www.healthline.com/health/