To think children may see things we can’t?

[Opal93]

My son is autistic and his language is disordered so it’s very hard to ask him what he actually means when he tells us something, but lately there have been a few instances where he has said things that have spooked us out a bit! Tonight he was at my mums, and he said “goodnight nana Marlene” (my mums mum who died when he was one) and started singing her favourite Doris Day song, word for word which he has never heard before and I didn’t know of the song until my mum told me today he started singing it and she has no idea how he knew it. My dad died when I was 16 and my son knows his photo. We were in a park the other week and my son pointed behind me and said “it’s grandad Stephen!” And I looked behind me thinking he probably saw a man that looked like the photo but there was nobody there. Another time, he started talking to my husbands dad about “nanny Margaret.” I didn’t realise he even had a nanny Margaret but apparently it was my husbands dads mums name. Then he said nanny Margaret has a big belly, and my FIL looked freaked out then and said she had a massive hernia that ruptured and killed her. I wouldn’t say I’m a believer in ghosts or life after death but it does make me wonder. Any other experiences of kids sensing things?

We - especially Brits - have an odd attitude towards death. It's like we are terrified of talking about it, as if it's unnatural or offensive. I noticed this when my dad died, people were frightened when I would talk about his death. It's an awkward subject, which is weird because it's the only guarantee for us ALL in life.

I think the whole fascination with ghosts/afterlife/the sense a loved one has 'visited' us/the sense we are being watched down on is part of the fabric of an unhealthy/scared attitude towards death. Maybe if we talked about it more, we're less afraid of it we wouldn't feel the need to connect with loved one who are gone 'beyond the grave'?

@FastFood

If a baby crawls in my flat, they will probably be able to see under my sofa, and that won't be pretty.

And possibly crammed full of spirits, of the bottled variety.

No, it's absolute bollocks.

Not that it matters, but I'm autistic and I have a staggeringly good memory, particularly for what most people would think of as 'tertiary' events, such as overheard conversations.

I can replay scenes/conversations verbatim from several decades ago.

It's not 'woo' or a superpower: it's just something I'm good at, in the same way other people are good at, I don't know, calligraphy or trampolining.

When my son was a tot I was kissing him goodnight in his cot and he was looking over my shoulder at something and started giggling like mad, I said 'what's funny' he said 'the lady' I looked round and obviously there wasn't anything there so I said 'what lady' and he said ' the lady! There!! The lady! 😮

Aldous Huxley likened the brain to a reducing valve, limiting conscious awareness. He thought the brain couldn’t cope with reality in all its weirdness. It’s certainly true that there are many inhibitory processes going on in it.

Children think differently to adults. They are more dependent on their right hemispheres which develop faster than the left side of the brain. The right gives you broad awareness of your surroundings. The left provides attentional focus. For this reason children are actually better at picking up on more diffuse aspects of the environment than adults who are more ‘blinkered’ and better able to blot out what they are not concentrating on.

But that’s still normal perception.

And the question here is about being aware of things through channels other than the normal senses, I presume, since children’s senses operate in the same manner as those of an adult. I am unaware of a mechanism that would allow this. However we know so little of the world, limited first by our sensory apparatus, and then by the filtering of sensory data by the brain, that it’s hard to be definitive about much.

@punnetofgrapes

my DS (then aged 2) asked by mum who Norman was, her father was Norman William (always known as Willy). She was freaked out

But the chances are that she just heard someone talking about Norman, whether in general conversation or on the TV or something. Or indeed that she misheard "normal".

"We don't really understand anything about the world or where we came from or what else is out there*

We do though

Very arrogant to think that we know or understand everything about the world or what else is out there!

Self evidently, contradicting a statement that we don't know anything about the world etc is not a statement that we know everything. However, we do know enough to know that no-one has ever produced any proof of the existence of ghosts, despite hundreds of years of trying.

Another yes there. We’re not the most woo or religious family out there but when both DD’s were babies and toddlers they would wave and chatter to people who weren’t there. It was always at mine and DH’s parents houses.

When older they would describe who they saw and the description usually resembled someone who had passed many years before.

Spooky!

@WoolieLiberal

Another yes there. We’re not the most woo or religious family out there but when both DD’s were babies and toddlers they would wave and chatter to people who weren’t there. It was always at mine and DH’s parents houses.

When older they would describe who they saw and the description usually resembled someone who had passed many years before.

Spooky!

So you’re taking the babbling of two babies/toddlers, and their later memories of their imaginary friends’ appearance, as proof of the existence of the afterlife?

I always struggle with threads like this. People have different views and those who go down the scientific "proof" ( proof in " " as you cant prove anything scientifically only disprove it) often like on this thread become frankly rude in their manner and I dont get it.

I am somewhere in the middle in that I am open to both possibilities. Because we do not know everything. Bright people in this world believe stuff I think is insanity personally. However if I were to converse with them I would do so without putting the down and without swearing and talking low.

For me personally I dont think we will ever know. Recently scientists discovered a possible light that may suggest there is another universe further afield than we believed until now. So things are possible we do not yet know. I am open minded to that and due to that also open minded to the idea that actually gbosts and paranormal could exist. Personally I have not seen one nor do I wish to.

However if I were to speak with someone who believed they had I hope to be able to do so respectfully and nicely without putting the down whilst still keeping my own opinion.

However perhaps I am capable of doing this as I am willing to entertain both directions.

Just to say @ENKO I second every thing you've written in your eloquent post.
I am actually taken aback by some of the rudeness on this thread.

We don't really understand anything about the world or where we came from or what else is out there

No. YOU don't understand those things, so you fill the many gaps with nonsense and superstition, as humans have done since the dawn of time. You have less excuse though, the science is readily available.

People have different views

Yes, but the issue is your pretence that those views are equal. It's like anti-vaxxers saying "I have my opinion too, you have to listen to it". Well no, we don't. Some opinions are plain wrong.

Some opinions are plain wrong.

Luckily, YOU always have the correct opinions and can just tell when other opinions aren't even worth listening to.

Thank goodness for you.

@Enko

The posts just after you have nicely proven your point. :(:(

@beastlyslumber

Some opinions are plain wrong.

Luckily, YOU always have the correct opinions and can just tell when other opinions aren't even worth listening to.

Thank goodness for you.

Yawn. If you want to pretend some opinions ARE NOT just plain wrong, go ahead, without the personal jab at me which is hardly necessary

We sold my parents' house to a lovely family a few years ago after they had both died. My family had lived there for generations. A year or so after they moved in they found some things of ours in the attic and I popped to collect them. The Dad was saying how happy they were etc. and that all the neighbours talked about my Mum and he felt he knew her but had never even seen a photo of her. I happened to have one on my phone and showed it to him, at which point his 4 year old daughter came in and glanced at it and said,
" Daddy why have you got Auntie *Sarah's photo on your phone"? It turns out 'Auntie Sarah' sometimes sings her to sleep at night and plays with her in the garden.

• not the real name

@Wishingwell75

Just to say *@ENKO* I second every thing you've written in your eloquent post. I am actually taken aback by some of the rudeness on this thread.

I always wonder about posts like this. Do you really live in a bubble where no one ever tells you your unfounded views about something are completely ridiculous?

I am the least woo person but when our DS was a toddler, he used to scream the house down every time we went to a certain cafe which was in an old victualling yard. It was slightly awkward as it was a nice cafe and he was generally a pretty placid toddler.... Anyway, out of interest we investigated what the building used to be, and it was the abattoir.

That proves absolutely nothing, I'm aware, but I found it interesting at the time.

I have a vivid memory of visiting my great grandmother in the house she moved out of before I was born. I could describe aspects which would never have been in any photos.

I assume I overheard conversation some time before, had a realistic dream about the place I'd heard described, and then years later remembered the dream as being real. Either that or everyone is wrong about the date when she moved out.

Sounds unlikely? Far more likely than any woo explanation!

Yawn. If you want to pretend some opinions ARE NOT just plain wrong, go ahead, without the personal jab at me which is hardly necessary

There was no personal jab there, just sarcasm. Sorry, I wasn't aware that along with your objectively-factual-and-better-than-everyone-else's opinions, you also require people to fawn over you and accept your superiority without question. My apologies.

@WoolieLiberal

Another yes there. We’re not the most woo or religious family out there but when both DD’s were babies and toddlers they would wave and chatter to people who weren’t there. It was always at mine and DH’s parents houses.

When older they would describe who they saw and the description usually resembled someone who had passed many years before.

Spooky!

I really don't believe this. Who the hell remembers anything that happened when they were a baby, let alone be in a position to describe people they allegedly saw? My DS used to chatter to Thomas the Tank Engine even when there was no model or picture of T the T in the room, I somehow don't believe he was seeing a ghostly train.

For me personally I dont think we will ever know. Recently scientists discovered a possible light that may suggest there is another universe further afield than we believed until now. So things are possible we do not yet know. I am open minded to that and due to that also open minded to the idea that actually gbosts and paranormal could exist. Personally I have not seen one nor do I wish to.

I think we're dealing with two different things here. Sure, there are likely to be aspects of the universe that we don't know about just because science hasn't got that far, just as 250 years ago we had no concept of motorised vehicles, planes, the internet etc. But the difference is that those are things that just weren't conceived of, and any future developments are likewise going to be things that we have little or no inkling of now.

That is not the same as concepts like ghosts, spirits etc which have been around forever and were originally made up by people essentially as superstitions and/or explanations for things that are perfectly rationally explicable now - e.g. if someone was able to cure someone of a serious condition it might have been attributed to witchcraft rather than, perhaps, the fact that herbs they used actually did have some scientific efficacy. People have been investigating them for centuries and have never been able to find proof despite their very best efforts. There is no real reason to believe that something we don't know about will miraculously come to light at some point in the future whereupon we will all proclaim that all these ghost/spirit sightings must universally have been real.

Other issues apart, many of the ghost sightings people talk about seem just so irrational. Why on earth would, say, someone's spirit spend eternity walking through one particular wall and then disappearing? If you have the power to come back, surely it would make more sense to do something that is actually useful. And why are spirits allegedly so selective about who they come back to? Why, for instance, make yourself visible to a baby who will never remember a thing about it rather than to their parent?

Agreed, @Terhou. I distinctly remember someone posting on here about seeing an army of ghost horses passing down Oxford St at dawn and how she’d had a sense of time slipping or eerie foreboding or something, and then getting very cross when someone quite kindly pointed out that one of the Household Cavalry Regiments often goes that way after exercising in Hyde Park in the early morning.

Always the same in these types of threads and those regarding faith and belief in 'gods'.

Incredulity at the willingness of some apparently intelligent people to believe in something despite it running contrary to common sense, requiring the abandonment of logic and reason, AND having not a single iota of anything tangible to suggest it is in any way real = being rude

It's not rudeness, it's utter incredulity. It's 2021 and some people still indulge in baseless, medieval superstitious nonsense like ghosts, spirits, gods etc. I despair.