Do our children choose us

[Whoneedsthreeloos]

Bit out there, but I was reading some reports of people saying their young children have said things about finding and choosing them to be their mummy. Some were saying the children just said one day that they saw (the mum) doing such and such and decided they wanted her to be their mum, most saying it was before they were born.
I asked my Dd casually if she remembers before she was born and she just laughed and asked what I meant, so I obviously left it there
The only strange thing I ever had was when Dd was maybe 3.5-4 and she told me she had a dream where I was in a garden and had two little girls, sisters who looked just like me, but she wasn’t there 🙁she was quite upset by this,
Dd looks nothing like me (v different colouring etc) I’ve lost two pregnancies before-ectopic & miscarriage, Dd was a miracle baby via I f..hence the pondering about it all.

No. I don't belive that. Who would be picking to be one of 8 in a war torn poverty stricken country? Or in a big family where there is already abuse?

The theory has holes for sure but I like it. To the people saying why would they chose murderers etc, maybe the children can't see the future.
Its similar to the theory I tell myself in difficult parenting moments. That we get the children who can teach us the most. So our children learn from us but actually on a more profound level, they are teaching us life lessons we need to learn to evolve to a higher place. These won't necessarily be comfortable or successful lessons, but the potential is there.
I have certainly learned a lot of very personal lessons from my children that feel like lessons only they could teach me due to their unique personalities.

I honestly think this needs filing alongside 'it was meant to be', 'karma' and anything involving 'the universe' which are all just ways for people to tell themselves their random good fortune is an otherworldly reward for their own merit.

No, I don't believe children choose their parents. I think they say it because it is a theme that comes up in fairy tales and baby books, and because when they repeat it some adults are interested and ask leading questions and reward their answers with attention.

Actually I think it is often not self congratulatory at all. What stands out from many of these posts is that mothers may be seeking comfort and reassurance from the idea that there is some benign plan and explanation for past losses.

I believe it's all woo as well.
Yesterday my youngest told me at least 50 times that he doesn't like me 🙂 (so he definitely didn't choose me ha!)
@BurntOutNurseryNurse said it well. I'm sorry to hear of your struggles 💐

OP@Whoneedsthreeloos if you believe in reincarnation of course it makes sense, the whole point of our lives is to improve ourselves so a soul may “ choose” to be with parents who they will receive particular teachings from or parents who they may teach themselves. If you don’t believe in reincarnation then of course it won’t make sense! Reincarnation makes more sense to me than any of the teachings of the various religions that believe you have only 1 life and then that soul goes somewhere after death.

Exactly. DS had a vividly imagined scenario as a toddler he still remembers bitss of now aged 11, where babies live in Babyland till they ‘zoom down’ to their parents. He had an incredibly detailed scheme of exactly what went on in Babyland (run by senior babies clearly based on Boss Baby) and the selection process. Completely adorable. Completely not true.

Which is understandable. However the premis of being selected by your beloved child to be their mother is self congratulatory, and is an unfortunate one to adopt, given the pain it causes for those women not 'chosen' who have themselves also often suffered loss.

Mine told me that before he was born he used to be a fire engine! 😃

It's a simple game of chance which sperm meets the egg first.

All this choosing is easily dismissed by children who are conceived and born in war zones and in abusive family's.

It's a child's way of telling their parents that they're the best mummy/ daddy in the world.

It's a living thing but not a supernatural one. In my opinion.

It's a simple game of chance which sperm meets the egg first.

Exactly, it's just science.

Otherwise where does the theory end? Larvae choosing which pond to be laid in before they develop into mosquitoes?

As other posters have pointed out, this is a combination of:

Kids not being able to understand that there was a time before they existed. And, to be fair, a lot of adults genuinely find it a bit trippy to think "so my consciousness just...winked into existence by chance, did it?" and make up all sorts of elaborate explanations about souls and stuff. Kids are awesomely self-centred (not a criticism, its genuinely an evolved survival tactic) so being told that things happened "before they were born" prompts them to say "no, I was watching, I saw it happen".

Kids having crazy imaginations.

Kids getting attention for making off-the-cuff pronouncements which the adult shows sudden attention to, and thus encourages them to elaborate. My brother used to make up stories about the adventures he had "when I was inside mummy's tummy" which often included pirates, massive battles, outwitting the baddies from He-Man, etc.

I can see that it feels reassuring/flattering to have been "chosen" as a parent, but the flipside is quite offensive.

This. We are not equipped to know everything.

Kids come out with some mad woo-woo. Their little brains are very susceptible to stories, things they see on tv etc, dreams they had, and they can easily get muddled.
I'm a primary school supply teacher, and one time, not that long ago, I was talking with a little reception boy I'd met maybe once or twice before. Out of the blue, he says, "I saw you before, you know? You were in my living room dancing around... You really liked dancing..."
Needless to say, I've certainly never been dancing in this little boys living room.

Right. This is from the School of Under-Informed Masquerading as Open-Mindedness. This type of poster also thinks quantum physics somehow means their dead auntie really did communicate through a medium to tell them she was watching over them and likes the new kitchen, while knowing nothing about quantum physics.

Agreed.

I bloody love a bit of casual woo but this is cobblers, for all the reasons other OPs have suggested.

That's one of the most insane things I've read on MN, and there have been quite a few over the years.

Depends if you believe in reincarnation or not? An ex colleague of mines grandson, from as soon as he could crawl, was obsessed with the chimney... Once he could talk properly, he said he'd been a "scuffler" before. He was adamant about it, so her daughter did a bit of research and that was the nickname for the kids that were sent up chimneys. Seems odd that neither of them had heard of the term before.

I can remember being a child and trying really hard to remember before I was born.

I did have a religious upbringing though, so knew about death and heaven from small.
My logic was that if dead people went somewhere after death, then they must have also been somewhere before they were born.

My DM probably told me everyone was with god before they were born so maybe I was trying to remember that!
Naturally I couldn't remember anything.

We also face fertility issues and have lost a baby, so I can understand why you'd find it upsetting.

However, I've read about this before, and actually, the woo believe is that we all, as souls, choose the life we want. Many of those lives will be hard, with huge challenges, and some souls chose those lives for their living experience. So technically, if we believe children choose their parents, we also believe our souls chose the life and challenges we have now. So basically, if you believe it, it's not that a child isn't choosing us. It's that we chose a life where fertility would be one of our challenges.

I'm not saying I believe any of it, but I did read up on it once xxx

No just as God doesn't give you just as many children as you can cope with and special children don't go to special parents.

Perhaps she knows something you don't? 🤷‍♀️