Parenting a child with past-life memories

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Parenting a child with past-life memories

Parenting a child with past-life memories

June 26, 2024 by KM Wehrstein - 0 Comments

Note: this text is informational only, not intended to replace professional advice.

Has your preschool-age child talked about having died, having been big, missing their family and wishing to go “home” to a place other than yours? Does your child know facts or have skills that they can’t possibly have learned? Does she or he talk about having died or about being big? Does he or she outright insist on having had a previous life?

If any of these things are true, your family may be one of the up-to-6% of families who have a child aged between three and ten who is talking about a past life.

Here is what you need to know:

Useful Facts

Average Age
The average age for a child who remembers a past life to start talking about it is around three, though in some cases a child’s very first words relate to a past life.
Retainment
Most often, children forget past lives between the ages of five and eight, and past-life-related behaviours tend to fade at the same time, but some retain both memories and behaviours into adulthood.
Intelligence
Children who remember past lives tend to be bright and early to speak.
Recency Factor
Children most often remember their most recent past life, but can sometimes remember a life further back in time, and sometimes more than one life.
Behavioural Signs
Children who remember past lives often behave in ways related to their past lives, e.g., play that re-enacts their previous occupation, creating art with past-life scenes, pursuing interests more typical of adults, yearning to be with past-life families or associates, displaying knowledge or showing skills they did not learn in this life, having a phobia that would result from a specific trauma despite not having one, and, more rarely, speaking or understanding a foreign language.
Cultural Variance
Children with past-life memories can be born into any family, anywhere in the world, in any culture or religion, reincarnationist or not.
Trauma Symptoms
It is common for children who remember past lives to recall violent or abrupt deaths, which can be a source of distress.
Identity Crises
Past-life memories can cause identity crises in children who remember them very well. Here it is important for parents to explain that the sense of identity from the past life does come from the past, a different time in the child’s existence–in other words, that they don’t have two identities simultaneously, but have had two social identities in different times–and it’s part of the wonder of who they are.

The four typical signs for distinguishing past-life memories from normal imaginative play and fantasizing – per Carol Bowman

Matter-of-fact tone
Consistency over time
Knowledge beyond experience
Corresponding behaviour and traits

Not all children show all four signs, but it’s rarely less than two. Bowman recommends that parents in particular look for them in their own children, because they require good knowledge of the child and observation over time.

Matter of fact tone: Children with past-life memories can say things that to parents are shocking or at least surprising in the most calm, casual, matter-of-fact and direct way, e.g. “I died in a car crash” or “I miss my other mother.” They’re stating it as known fact because it is known to them, and they don’t see why it shouldn’t be to you. They also might sound hauntingly adult. Children fantasizing, on the other hand, tend to make it dramatic, as they are seeking attention, reactions or catharsis.

Consistency over time: Children engaging in fantasy play constantly change the situations and scenarios to explore concepts and alleviate boredom; they might never revisit the same fantasy twice. The events of past-life memory they will repeatedly revisit and the story, white it might be added to, will not alter much.

Knowledge beyond experience tends to be the most convincing evidence. When a child talks knowledgeably about, say, World War II aviation or life on a farm, despite having absolutely no experience of it and not yet being literate, it’s hard to find any other explanation–though be careful of spoken information derived from the Internet if they have access to it. Knowledge beyond experience can be very helpful in checking the accuracy of the memories through research.

Corresponding behaviour and traits: children with explicit past-life memories often show past-life related behaviours as described above, and the behaviours will fit with the memories, e.g. a child who recalls dying by drowning might be terrified of water.