DD seems to know all about my past. Very, very odd.

[FredQuimby]

This has been going on for ages, but I've only just really had the nerve to post about it. >Deep breath<

DD (four years old), says some very odd things. She tells me about my life and these are things she couldn't possibly know. For example, "Do you remember when you used to walk along the little lane and saw the pony and the heron?" - something that used to happen regularly to me when I was about six years old, walking to school with my mum and brother (it was a real horse and a plastic heron!). Also, things like we'll go to a car boot sale and she'll say it's like the jumble sales in the church when uncle >name< was a little boy and he bought a great big Mr Tickle jigsaw but some pieces were missing. This is again something that happened to me as a child. She told everyone in her Nursery that I'd fallen in the kitchen and had stitches in my head. She told them that the doctor was weaing a turban. Again, that happened when I was tiny and she would never have known about it. Another thing is that she identified a distant relative in a photo "Uncle >name

This is fascinating.

I have a very rational, no- nonsense friend whose eldest son used to talk about his "previous life", with lots of detail about the name of the street where he lived, his wife's name, and his journey on a boat across the Atlantic. It started as soon as he could talk, and stopped at around 4 years old. At 2 years, he was describing things that he couldn't possibly have been told - real historical detail.

Your last post strengthens my thoughts about it being to do with your dad.

I think it's nice.

What does your DH say about all this?

I dont know about your DD's ability, maybe she just has a strong connection to you.

But when we were children my younger (by 5 years) brother had an imaginary friend, he talked about this friend pretty much from the time he could talk and would play with and behave as if this friend was a completely real person,
I vividly remember how upset he would get if someone insisted that he wasn't real or they couldn't see him.

That in its self is nothing really unusual, but that was just the tip of it.
DBro's 'friend' was called Tun, and he would tell Dbro all sorts of strange and interesting stories, which quite a lot of the time involved things that he could not possibly know anything about.
The most shocking/scary one was about Tun's job, DBro said Tun told he that he fixed airplane engines and was going to/flew planes in the war.
Tun told DBro all sorts of things about planes and plane engines, DBro was obsessed, he talked about it constantly, always drawing pictures of them and making models, always wanting parts and toys of them.
We never thought much of it.
Then when DBro was about 5ish our DF became friends with a exRAF engineer, and he spent a lot of time at our house with his family. He was fascinated by DBros knowledge of engines and they would sit and talk about specific plane engines for hours.
He told us that everything DBro said was spot on and even his drawing and things were very accurate.
There is no way DBro learned about planes or engines from anyone else or books, he had been talking about them since he could talk, it was very bizarre.
But when asked DBro always just said Tun told him, as if that was completely logical.

I think it freaked out my parents a bit and they researched quit a bit about other things he had talked about, and it turned out that pretty much everything that they could check was 100% true, and there was no way DBro could have known it.

Then one day DBro was out playing in the garden with Tun and he came inside quite upset, and when DM asked what was wrong he said that it was Tun's time to go, because his family were waiting for him, but that DBro wasn't to be sad because he would always watch out for him and he would look forward to the day when they would meet again.
DBro said he was happy that Tun was going to be with his family because he knew that he missed them, and he wasn't sad that Tun was leaving, just because he was going to miss him.

He was about 7 at the time, and never really spoke of Tun again.

When we asked DBro about it growing up (and still even now) he had memories of Tun, and I think part of him genuinely believes that he was a real person and that we are all just pulling his leg when we say he was not real.

I don't know if it was a ghost/spirit or something, I don't even really believe in that kind of thing, but DBro still has fond memories of Tun, and I know that he made his childhood very happy.

DH think it's really, really odd. At first he thought it was funny because she was using words she wouldn't really understand, but as she's said things to my relatives that they know about and I can't remember, he's convinced there's "summat up". He's not worried though, but he doesn't tell anyone either. He and DD are very close too, but she hasn't said anything about his life.

I am the biggest skeptic going but my 3 year old daughter does the odd thing like this and although a little spooked I just put it down to co-incidence. For example, my dad died a long time a go and we don't really talk about him very much. On the anniversary of his death this year (which DH had forgotten and I had not mentioned) I was sitting at the kitchen table thinking about my dad and she walked in to the kitchen and said "don't be sad mummy your daddy still loves you very much". Bizzare!

Your dad doesn't know anything about DH's life unfortunately.

This is your dads way of looking out for you :)

If you are ever speaking to dd about your dad, why not say something like 'I wonder what your grandad would think of you in your pretty dress/on your new bike/insert as appropriate' See what she says....

Do you speak to your dd about your father much?

My DD aged about 4 at the time, sat on our kitchen counter once just as I was preparing to make some cupcakes. DD said 'i already know how to make cupcakes, nana showed me' and when I asked her when nana showed her, she said 'when you were little I was sat on her counter in the big kitchen with red painted walls and she let me lick the bowl clean afterwards, I was with you mama'.

my mother is dead, died when DD was a baby.

She also said to me once when I was feeling sad and missing my mum, but did not tell her so 'don't be sad mama, nana is ok you know'.

She also said to DH, whose dad is also dead, and never met DD, she said when aged 2-3 'grandad can come ice skating with us now daddy as his leg is better but we have to wait for him as he is far away' his dad had a leg he could not use well due to polio as a child, apparantly DH always wanted him to go ice skating with him but he refused. And I did not know that myself until DD said this to DH, who went white as a sheet, then skirted over it.

DS "saw" people for a long time when he was younger. he said they spoke words but not the same as us but he could understand. he often described them in detail and would repeat the detail accurately if asked at a later date. he called them "spirit people" and often got annoyed because they kept him awake at night. he liked the lady withe the green dress and yellow hair who sat on his bed because she was kind but didn't lile the boy with the red hair who was "mean".

Peacelove - what a lovely story. Made me shiver.

Dd3 has all sorts of mannerisms of my Nanna who died 3 years before she was born. Some of these are my Nannas ones that she adapted to after her stroke.

Dd2 used to refuse to go in certain places. Various tour guides have then confirmed suspected hauntings of these rooms. Interestingly she was fine at Muncaster castle which has a v high rate of hauntings.she refused to go into part of Caernafon (sp?) castle as its 'full of people'. This was an empty corridor which later on we read about a battle in that part.
Dd2 stopped these when she was about 6.

Record them all now in case they go.

The SelfishGene by Richard Dawkins. A book which discusses inherited memory through genes. Very scientific and totally against any form of past life etc

Marking place as fascinated. Agree with the others who say record all the details now. :)

Blimey this is really fascinating and maybe not as uncommon as I would have thought given the amount of posters on here who have experienced similar things.

from the moment my youngest DD could string a sentence together, she used to talk about her 'other mummy' or when her name was Penny. It was never a big deal to her and she would often just drop it into conversation as if she had been reminded of something.

For intstance, being on a train going past some sandhills and DD announced ' I came here before when I was Penny but you weren't my mummy then'

She did this regularly between the ages of 2 til she was about 4.5 and has never done it since - weird ....but fascinating!

I'm so glad that others have experienced similar. :)

I agree you should definitly make a note of at least some of the thing, even just for yourself.

My parents were very good and kept a lot of DBro's drawings and made notes of a lot of the important things that happened and were said, DBro still now keeps these things as fond memories of his childhood friend.

Quite often DS will say something starting with "When I was big/When I was a Daddy and you were a little girl" but then I think he's actually confused about what happens when you grow up, because he will recount something that happened between him and DP!

Fascinating Fred - I can't think of an explanantion.

Peace I loved the story about Tun

I was very cynical too Fred. Until my friend hassled me into going to see someone to try contact her dad. We saw 3 different ladies, all on recommendation. The last one was AMAZING. Her dad said stop going from medium to medium trying to contact me!! I also had a weird moment. I had an ex Boyf who died in a motorbike accident at 21. I don't think about him very much. And he just suddenly popped into my head, and a split second later she went into the details of his death. Very spooky! Since then, i can feel when he or my grandmother come to me. Anyways, I'm sure this is ur dad letting u know he's there. This mite sound crazy, but find a time u don't feel silly. When uve just got into bed, or having a bath, and just tell him some of the things u don't want him to tell ur dd. He'll know u remember anyway. I bet she'll never come out with them!! Xx

Just marking my spot to come back and read in the morning.

What an interesting thread! I'm too tired to read it properly right now, so hope it'll be nice & long when I get up tomorrow ...

I've known ever such a lot of small children do this, Fred, no need to worry about feeling weird. They usually seem to have grown out of it by around 8 or 9.

I am not remotely woo, even a sliver. I will point out (as others must have done) that memories are hereditary in a manner of speaking, or else how would we have evolved to know the stuff we do; how are we born with certain talents? Your brain isn't a blank slate when you're born, it's a huge mass of unconnected 'wires' - far more brain power than you'll ever have again. Learning is about connecting the 'wires' to form useful circuits.

It's not unreasonable to suppose your child was born with brain cells that mimic yours. As she grows up, she'll form circuits (synapses) of her own and those cells copied from yours will either get blended into some of hers - maybe she'll always have a thing for fake herons! - or fade away. AFAIK, it's not possible to investigate much about what happens in babies' brains but I do know this is a legitimate line of neuroscientific thought.

It's rather lovely, really :)

... one of the examples often given when discussing this is the way children eat apples. Most leave the core, but some kids instinctively eat the core as well. If the parents & other family members are core-leavers, you'll generally find there was a grandparent who ate apple cores!
Not woo. Heredity.

Fred whether it be inherited memories or your Dad letting you know he's near, I think it's very special and very lovely.

My dad died when I was 4 and oh, how I yearn for a sign from him that he's around and that he's at peace, that I make him proud. Not a day goes by that i don't think of him. Even at my lowest points where I silently begged for a sign, any sign, which didn't come. I try/want it too much I think :(

My (half) sister on the other hand, has had a couple of "visits" from our Nan, via dreams.

Wow Fred this is so interesting, so glad you told us :)

Another theory about why DDs memories stop when your dad died is that something in you changed at that point in your life... too tired to articulate it properly but didn't want to forget the thought.

sorry that was really rubbish. I mean that rather than DD being connected to your dad, she might be connected to you but that the event of your dad's death changed something important in you (obv) that stops the connection. There. X