By Robin M. Strom Mackey
If you’ve ever been around a
small child you’ll probably recall that they chatter all the time. They chatter to their toys, they chatter to
their parents, they make strange noises over and over and over again. It’s necessary to language development of
course, though it may drive you crazy after awhile! But when and if they start chattering to a
friend that only they can see, a parent may start to become uncomfortable.
There are some theories to
suggest that children are more open to paranormal experiences than their often more
cynical parents. Some believe that children
may be more telepathically astute. The mere fact that they haven’t been told that
there is no such thing as telepathy might make them more open to the
experiencing of it.
They may also be more telepathically attune because of their dependence on their parents. The mere survival of a youngster is contingent on the adult caregiver, and thus a telepathic bond with a parent evolves, which may dissipate as the child develops skills and becomes more independent.
It is believed that telepathy is stronger in the
young, dimming with age. This has been
suggested in the study of psychokinesis or poltergeists cases, where the human
conduit is usually an adolescent or young adult, an age when the mix of
swirling hormones and adolescent angst help spur their already innate abilities.
Along those same lines of thinking, does being telepathically more attune also
make children more susceptible to spirit communication? The fact that many children have wonderfully
active imaginations creates another problem. As a parent one begins to wonder,
where does the imaginary end and the dark begin?
In an email recently I received
an inquiry that intrigued me. Lindsey
wrote:
I
have resided in my home for a little over a year now. I have a two-year old
[daughter] and a one-year old [son].
Since we have moved here my daughter has acted a little off. Since she
has grown older she is now carrying on conversations with something only she
can see….
Two
weeks ago it [my emphasis] gained a
name - Jesse. No one we know or interact with has this name. One of my brothers
is named Jesse, but he does not even live in Delaware, and she has never had a
relationship with him.” His name rarely comes up, so it’s odd that she just
randomly started saying that name.
“I
have asked her who Jesse is and where he/she is, and within seconds of me
acknowledging its [my emphasis] name
my dog started growling at something, which has never happened before. My dog
does not have a mean bone in her body.”
She growls only at strangers, and usually only at male strangers.
My son
who is one has now started pointing at things that I believe they see, and I do
not. Toys will go off; singing in their bedroom when no one is in there. It
doesn't seem to be anything violent, but it is becoming more frequent.
And
as any mother would be I am getting a little worried about the intentions of
whatever this spirit may want. I'm just wondering if you have any advice as to
how I can maybe make a connection of this name with someone who may have lived
here in the past or what steps I could take to do so. The property has been in
my family as a rental house for a long time. However my grandmother does not believe in the
paranormal.” She is not open to listening to me or helping in any way (used
with permission).
My first question was, would a child
of two be too young to have developed an imaginary friend? Consulting child development experts suggests
that it was young, but not impossible. According to one source, typically
children develop such friends from three to eight years of age. Yet another
source suggested that children are becoming conscious beings, alert to their
own identity, from the time that they can recognize themselves in a mirror. Further, from the first time onward that a
child makes a Choo Choo noise while playing with a toy train, or holds a doll
and babbles out dialogue it can be assumed that the child has now developed the
ability at abstract play (Turgeon, 2009).
Without any further background
knowledge or an investigation into the property I wrote Lindsey back suggesting
she could consider the situation in two ways, believer or skeptic:
1.
Skeptic: From a skeptic's point
of view we might assume that your daughter has an active imagination and has
created a friend for herself. We may have only heard you mention your
brother Jessie in a telephone call. Or maybe she heard the name on a TV
program. Perhaps she seized onto the name because she liked it. I
remember doing the same when I was a little girl. I had the names of my
sons picked out by the time I was five. Maybe she's created her
make-believe friend because she's lonely? In which case maybe some play
dates with other kids could be tried, something that would let her socialize
with kids her own age more and creating fictional friends less.
My son when he was younger had a
lot of electronic toys. I found they would often start by themselves in
his closet, especially when the batteries were low. Try replacing batteries, or
taking them out entirely if the toy is not used often.
2.
Believer: From the standpoint that you might have an entity trying to
speak with her. Again I would suggest that the same thing. Try to get her
out of her room more and playing with other kids
I wouldn't forbid her talking
about her friend Jessie, but I wouldn't actively encourage the behavior either.
In other words, don’t greet her every morning with the words, “what did the
ghost say to you last night?” I’ve seen parents do this to children, thereby
encouraging their children in the belief that there is a ghost and only they
can communicate with it. Or worse yet,
in the case of children who are easily frightened, scaring the children by
making them believe that there actually
is a ghost in the house, and it’s trying to communicate with them despite
the fact that they want nothing to do with it.
But I also wouldn't take the hard-core
stance that there's “no such thing as ghosts”. This suggests that whatever the
child might have experienced is all in their imagination, and worst case
scenario might suggest to the child that they may be punished or rebuked for
admitting so. It also effectively shuts down the lines of communication. I’ve read accounts by adults who experienced
truly frightening phenomena in their houses as children. When they tried to tell their parents they
were shunned. In some cases these same
children had to endure often terrifying activity in silence. It’s terrible to imagine a child being
victimized in this manner, and even worse to imagine them doing so in isolation.
In-home
Investigation
On the market now are all types
of nifty surveillance cameras and equipment. Many standalone cameras can
connect to a smart phone. I would definitely get one that also has
audio. I would suggest that you set one up in her room so that you could
see and hear what's going on for yourself. That would hopefully give you some
piece of mind.
Motion sensor night lights in
hallways and public spaces might also help you feel a bit more secure. They are
available in both plug-in or battery operated. I've placed them all over my
house.
To find out more about a property
and its history I would start at a local library or historical society -
if you have one in the area. Don't be surprised if you find no mention of a
Jessie, however. I think that's simply the name your daughter gave her
friend. These things rarely work out that neatly.
Paranormal
Hypochondria
A parapsychologist acquaintance
admits that with all the attention the paranormal has gotten in the media of
late that many of us now have developed what he calls paranormal
hypochondria. In every odd situation we
now experience we are programmed to read in paranormal. Lost a loved one, the need becomes even
greater. I once had a conversation with
a woman who wanted me to perform an investigation for her. The conversation started with I lost Dad in
200X and my brother in 200X. She continued, I saw an orb on my surveillance
camera and my toddler walked up the stairs and held his arms up asking
something that I couldn’t see to pick him up and carry him up the stairs. (First of all, don’t get me started on orbs!)
All in all, I told her this was pretty slim pickings in the way of evidence.
The
Third Route
Instead of actively encouraging
or discouraging, I would try the third route.
If the child wants to discuss what they experienced try to calmly and
openly listen to her. Listen attentively
when she talks to you about her new friend, but don’t bring the subject up with
her yourself. That's just giving her the green light that any such
imaginings are just fine with you. Young children are very in tune with
their parent's opinions and will take their cue from your attitude as to how to
feel about the situation. You want to be open to listening and remain calm. Ask
questions and try to make no formal pronouncements.
Lyndsey’s
Experiment
A client of mine, also named
Lyndsey, came up with her own solution to a sticky problem. Lyndsey’s home is
quite active. Our team has actually
investigated the site three times with another investigation tentatively
scheduled for next summer. Every time we
investigate Lyndsey’s house we come away with multiple EVP’s, most often by a
speaker who seems to be a woman. This
corresponds with what Lyndsey has told us.
She has confided that she often feels a matronly personality in the
home, one that appears to be attached in particular with their very young
son. They have a baby monitor in the
child’s room and they often hear the little boy communicating with someone or
something that they cannot see. And they often detect strange sounds through
the monitor. The activity had always been harmonious. However, right after our third investigation
in early November I got a disturbing email from Lyndsey.
She said that the activity in the
boy’s room had taken a turn for the worse.
He had awoken one night screaming that he had seen a ghost, and
demanding to be let out of the room. For
long nights afterward he insisted on sleeping with them in the master bedroom
and refused to enter his own room even during the day. What was she to do? I gave her the same advice that I’ve written
about in this article, suggesting she find some way to speak with the boy
calmly so as not to scare the absolute bejesus out of the tyke. What she did next I thought was brilliant. She made it into a game.
Using one of the pool soakers –
the kind that have the noodle bodies and suck up the water only to shoot it out
in a long stream – she told her son that they were going to play
ghostbusters. Walking through the house
he was to tell her where he had seen ghosts and she would suck them up. He dutifully showed her where he had seen
entities and she sucked them up and took care of them. Incidentally, the boy indicated the same
spots that we had determined to be active in our investigations.
This activity did a number of
things worth noting. First, it pointed
out to a concerned mother where her son was seeing apparitions. The fact that it appeared to correspond with
her experiences and with investigation results is validating. Second, she took her son seriously neither
encouraging him to make things up nor discouraging him from communicating with
her. But third, and I think this is the most important, is that it gave mother
and son the power back. I’m sure they both felt like they were much more in
control after the activity.
Fourth, although some experts in
the paranormal community disagree with me, I think Lyndsey’s exercise was a
good way to communicate with the spirit.
I have always felt that if a spirit is in some way an essence of a
deceased human, than they are bound by the same upbringing and courtesies with
which we were raised. In other words, you
can communicate and attempt to set parameters with an unseen house guest. I think Lyndsey’s game also went a long way
toward doing that, indicating to the spirit that she had been seen, that she
had overstepped the boundaries by frightening the boy and that such behavior
was not acceptable.
It wasn’t immediate, but Lyndsey
eventually got the little tyke sleeping in his own room again, and as far as I
know, peacefully.
Final
Thoughts – Imaginary Friend or Other
Obviously without a lengthy
interview and investigation I can’t say, or even speculate, as to whether
Lindsey’s daughter is simply a very precocious and imaginative two-year old, or
whether something is truly communicating with the child. As I said earlier, it has been theorized
that very young children are more open to telepathic communication with the
spirit world. They may see spirits because they don't know they shouldn't be
able to. The ability decreases with age
This is also an age when children
are developing the ability of imaginative play.
And this is not something to be discouraged. The same child development sources suggested
that imaginative play has some very positive outcomes. Recent studies have
indicated that children who developed imaginary friends weren’t, as had been
speculated, lonely and isolated children, but highly creative. Those that developed these “friends” were
both more creative and socially adept than other children. In language studies
such children were found to use complex sentence structures and developed
advanced vocabularies. Overall, they were more socially adept at getting along
with their classmates. The explanation seems to be that children with a
developed imaginary friend got a chance at role playing both sides of a
conversation. They developed better abstract thinking skills and were better at
creating original ideas. The recently released book, Nurture Shock even cites research that seems to indicate that
children who spent extended time in abstract play often demonstrated leaps in
school achievement (Turgeon, 2009).
Resources
Turgeon,
Heather (2009). Imaginary Friends. Babble.com (A subsidiary of Disney Inc.)
Retrieved November, 27, 2016 from https://www.babble.com/toddler/imaginary-friends-early-child-development-imagination/
