Unfortunately not true. Babies who experience trauma may never be able to tell you about it, but they will remember it the same way they remember that their parents are safe people: it shows up in their emotions, their nervous system, their reactions to stimuli that seem innocuous.
In other words “there appears to be a reorganization of cognitive and memory functions such that narrative memory for events prior to age three or four are difficult to access later in life. These two points have led to the pervasive, inaccurate and destructive view that infants do not recall traumatic experience…”
And if their parents aren't safe people, they remember that too.
I experienced feeling truly, deeply, completely safe for the first time in my thirties. It rocked my world. Things almost didn't seem real immediately afterward, like I was dreaming. I compare it to visiting France when I could speak Spanish, but not French. My brain wanted to reply to people in "not English," so kept trying to spit out Spanish responses to French questions. My brain didn't have a context for "safe" other than "not real life," so it tried to react like I was dreaming.
I don't want to go into all the details about what it's like to try to teach your parasympathetic nervous system how to come fully online when you're this far into adulthood, but I recommend making sure children do have somewhere they can practice coming down from stress way before they're my age.
My sister died very suddenly, apparently fine one minute and irrecoverably dead the next. I know I'm never completely safe.
Maybe the better term in this case is "protected," but I'm not sure. "This person, here with me, is not a threat to me, and I know that in my bones. Further, he would interpose himself between me and any threat that should arise in this moment." That's the feeling.
Most people experience that as infants. Parents are supposed to love their children this way. And it's important for the neurological development of the parasympathetic nervous system. I just didn't get to until my thirties.
On second thought, of course there is plenty of trauma you can give a two yr old, my brain happily didn't go there during my earlier reply. I meant by actions of a parent with good intentions.
In other words “there appears to be a reorganization of cognitive and memory functions such that narrative memory for events prior to age three or four are difficult to access later in life. These two points have led to the pervasive, inaccurate and destructive view that infants do not recall traumatic experience…”
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law...