30–36 Months

Time sensitive. Around age 3, your child will benefit from the emergence of explicit memory, enabling him to contrast the present with the past and the future. Due in part to developments in the hippocampus, he’ll begin to tie memories to specific people and places and talk in terms of past and future events: “We went to the park yesterday. Let’s go again tomorrow.”

References:

Health and Human Services, Understanding the Effects of Maltreatment on Brain Development - How the Brain Develops. Available at: https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/issue_briefs/brain_development/how.cfm

“The Wonder Years: Helping Your Baby and Young Child Successfully Negotiate the Major Developmental Milestones.” by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“Neural changes underlying the development of episodic memory during middle childhood” by Simona Ghettia and Silvia A. Bunge, Dev Cogn Neurosci (2012).