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• Episodic memories often overlap with other memories and must be retained over time. • We asked how children's episodic memory is affected by overlap, 24hr delay, and age. • 6-year-olds outperformed 4-year-olds; both groups did worse on overlapping pairs. • At delay, nonoverlapping pairs had more cross-context errors in 4- than 6-year-olds. • The delay period affected relational memory differentially in the younger children. Episodic memories typically share overlapping elements in distinctive combinations, and to be valuable for future behavior they need to withstand delays. There is relatively little work on whether children have special difficulty with overlap or withstanding delay. However, Yim, Dennis, and Sloutsky (Psychological Science, 2013, Vol. 24, pp. 2163–2172) suggested that extensive overlap is more problematic for younger children, and Darby and Sloutsky (Psychological Science, 2015, Vol. 26, pp. 1937–1946) reported that a 48-h delay period actually improves children's memory for overlapping pairs of items. In the current study, we asked how children's episodic memory is affected by stimulus overlap, delay, and age using visual stimuli containing either overlapping or unique item pairs. Children aged 4 and 6 years were tested both immediately and after a 24-h delay. As expected, older children performed better than younger children, and both age groups performed worse on overlapping pairs. Surprisingly, the 24-h delay had only a marginal effect on overall accuracy. Although there were no interactions, when errors were examined, there was evidence that delay buffered memory for overlapping pairs against cross-contextual confusion for younger children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]