Kids say the darndest things. Sometimes they make absolutely no sense, but sometimes they make entirely too much sense. So much sense that there almost has to be another explanation…
This piece is based on an AskReddit thread. Link on the last page.
My daughter, just before she turned 5, was in our hall in the middle of the night, asleep on the ground, whimpering and crying. I got her to come lay down with me, and when I asked her what the dream was, she got very upset and said “it wasn’t a dream, it was a memory. She told me she remembered when she was a bad dog, and they made her go to sleep.
I asked her about it again later and she got very upset, said she was a bad dog and started crying saying she didn’t want to remember it again.
She has no idea what it means to put a dog down, let alone that it is what happens to “bad dogs.
LeatherandLead
He literally told me. He was 3 and pretending to run over his lego men. When asked to stop he said,
“That’s how I died isn’t it?”
“No, you’ve never died.”
“Yes I have! When I was 2 last time. The car hit me, my other mummy cried then I came to you.”
“… … …”
He’s a teen now, doesn’t remember a thing about it.
NodgenodgeWinkwink
My Mom loves to tell the story when little me was with her driving past the cemetery, and I announced loudly “That’s where they put you when you commit treason against the king!”
drfunbags
My friend had a miscarriage before she had her first daughter. A few years ago when her daughter was about 4 a group of us were at a party and her daughter was sitting on her lap and said something pretty spooky.
It was along the lines of “I’m sorry I left you before mommy. I was hurting really bad and I wasn’t ready.” My friend asked her what she meant and her daughter said she left her before she was born but came back. Super creepy. Daughter doesn’t remember this conversation and still doesn’t know about the miscarriage.
workbidness
Our family went on a trip to see our old neighborhood. We drove by a house where, about 15 years earlier, a little girl was hit by a car and died. My cousin, who was about 4 at the time, never had been in the neighborhood, and never heard this tragic story, stopped what she was doing and said, “Oh, that’s where I died, isn’t it?” She then resumed playing with her dolls.
westsideHK
When I was young, I really wanted to learn Russian, so they got me into a class. In general, Russian was very easy to pick-up and use. It sort of “made sense” and I could construct complex sentences. The teacher told my mother that it was spooky, because I could speak it in a way that they hadn’t been teaching me (I could figure-out colloquial phrases). To this day, I still have it and haven’t lost my Russian.
PippenRedux
My 3-year-old niece, in a hotel near her home “I’ve been here. I used to sit in this chair and knit.” Wouldn’t say anything else when pressed further.
Another time in an antique shop, we looked at an old school desk with a flip-top lid when she, bemused, said: “Where’s the inkwell?” It just seemed strange that she’d expect there to be one.
blinky84
My kids are all pretty deep thinkers. I was at one of those new mother playgroup things hating my life, and this woman was talking about the beautiful experience her son recalled to her, about being in the womb. Think like, warmth, love, light all those kinds of things. So I turn to my son, was 4, and I ask if he remembers mamas belly?
My son goes “YEAH, IT HAD SOME PRETTY COOL TOYS, BUT I GOT BORED SO I OPENED UP YOUR BUM AND SAID MOMMY, I WANT TO COME OUT NOW.
So he was obviously a comedian in another life.
bookwitchx
While chatting with my 4-year-old son, he started going into vivid descriptions of being a friendly old man who his neighbors were fond of. He gave a description of what he used to look like and then how he died, how he felt once he died, and how he woke up again while being born.
The way he talked made it seem like he was recalling going to the zoo the previous weekend. He was so casual about it that when he looked at my expression on my face he said “What? What’s wrong?”
I don’t believe in past lives but that was strange.
wokeupsoaked
I have a few, all the same kid.
First, when my son was 3, he told me that he was once kidnapped and the police accidentally shot and killed him when they were trying to rescue him.
When he turned five he told me he had never made it this far.
Also when he was five, we drove past my grandparents old house (they have been gone 16 & 18 years now) he told me “I used to play in that house with Pappy (my dad) when I was little, except the house used to be white.
The house did indeed use to be white and it had been painted an ugly gray. My dad also had 9 siblings, three of which died in infancy.
fortheloveoffibre
My son went for over a year talking about his other mommy and daddy, with a completely straight and serious face. We have a blended family, so he has me (Mom) and at his father’s house his Dad, Stepmom, and brother. He said he had 2 fake mommies and a fake daddy and then a set of real ones.
When trying to get clarification thinking he was having trouble adapting to new family roles, he informed us that we were the fakes and that his real parents were much older, lived far away on a farm, with his older brother.
He perked up, looked at the door, and goes, “That sounded like my real Mommy’s voice!” He was very excited and animated about it (my kid is usually pretty deadpan, so that was off too). I decided to just ride it out, but admittedly it did freak me out at first. He hasn’t done it in awhile.
SerenityNutravils
When my daughter was little (younger than 4) not only did she never get mad once, she loved to put on bathrobes and sit Indian style and close her eyes and meditate, with no knowledge of the practice that we were aware of.
elsewhereelusive
When I was about 3, I used to tell my mom stories of being a little Chinese girl. Apparently, I lived at the bottom of a hill with my grandmother, and I died in a flood. When I was 6 or 7, I came home from school upset that I’d been surrounded by a group of boys, and I cried to my mom that it was like when the soldiers on horses came to take us away.
the_procrastinata
So I was raised Roman Catholic. My son was raised Roman Catholic. But I was dating a Muslim man who would play prayers constantly (that were on YouTube). This particular day my boyfriend was playing a prayer that’s supposed to protect you from jinn. That was when my son said something unexpected.
My three-year-old son looked up from his coloring book said clear as day “now they will be gone for 1000 days” my boyfriend looked him dead in the eye and was like “how do you know that?” My son smiled shrugged and continued to color.
I don’t know if this is true but my boyfriend explained that if you recited that specific prayer it was supposed to banish evil spirits for 1000 days. To this day I still get chills when I think about it.My mother was also super freaked cause I told her “daddy used to be my baby, but I drowned when he was my size.” I was 4. My grandfather drowned when my dad was 4.
foufinha
It was in the early afternoon of Halloween. This is a rough time of year for me because my first child was stillborn near this day. I was sitting in a chair in the den, my husband was at the desk on the opposite side of the room. My two and a half-year-old daughter was moving around the room, not really doing anything. As always happens on this day, my thoughts turn to my stillborn daughter.
Suddenly my daughter plops a book onto my lap.
(Remember, she is two, can’t read yet.) The book was given to me after the stillbirth. It was a pagan book for grieving parents. Startled at the coincidence, I just kind of stared at the book.
My daughter flipped open the book and pointed imperiously to a paragraph. I obeyed, and read the paragraph. It was talking about how a child who dies might reincarnate back into the same family, or somewhere nearby. So I wondered where my child might have reincarnated. My daughter patted my leg and said, “I’m wight heah, Mommy.” Up until those words, nothing had been spoken out loud. It gives me chills every time I remember it.
Perffiath
When my oldest son was three, he used to wake up crying and saying that he wanted to “go home”. Over and over he would repeat it. I would reassure him that everything was okay, he was at home. Happens for many months. We had a huge map of the world in the hallway and one night when he was upset, I took him to the map and showed him where we lived and asked, where his other home was.
He pointed out a small town in Mexico. Day after day he pointed to the same exact place. So, we took him there. It was a beautiful little area and we had a great time. There was nothing profound in any of his reactions.
When we got home he started sleeping through the night and never mentioned it again. We live in California and my husband and and I are both white. However, our son is adopted and although his bio father is technically “unknown”, we were told it is probable that he was Hispanic.
Germanpoetrygeek
When I was younger, I would sleep walk, appearing to be fully conscious, then be lying down and going back to sleep like nothing happened. There have been times my mom caught me opening windows in the middle of the night. Another time she was in the kitchen reading the paper and I walked in, got myself a glass of orange juice, drank it, then went to sleep on the table in front of her.
EBeast99
My 3 year old said, “I was your mom in heaven,” multiple times. When I was six weeks pregnant with her, my mom died unexpectedly the day she found out the secret that I was pregnant at 40 with what would be her last and 21st grandchild. We were going to surprise her on her 75th birthday, two weeks later, but a niece let the secret out.
When my girl was 4, we were looking through picture boxes. I have no family pictures posted in my house. Later that night I realized my girl took three pictures of my mom and put them in her room. She’s never seen pictures of my mom before. I asked her why she took those pictures and she said, “because I’m pretty.”
capnvontrappswhistle
When I was 3 I told my dad I used to live in Ohio before living with him.
All these interesting stories and I’m just that guy from Ohio.
Renegard
My grandmother passed away about 10 years ago. We were very close and my whole life she always told me that she would be my guardian angel after she died.
When my daughter (now 5) was about 3 she had terrible night terrors and would have a hard time going to sleep. I would spend the evenings with her comforting her to help her get to sleep, reading books, talking to her, etc. One night we were talking about what she wanted to be when she grew up. She kept telling me that she used to be a grown up. After praying and asking what she meant, she told me that when she was a grown-up she used to be my grandma. She then told me a story about when I was young, I had an accident and was burned when helping her cook dinner. It’s something that I never told her but did actually happen. It completely creeped me out at first, and she has never really mentioned anything else like that since.
djhankb
I’ve only ever shared this with a few people. My late mother regularly hid a packet of biscuits (usually chocolate digestives) from my brothers and I, so when we had visitors, there was always some biscuits to go with a cup of tea (how it’s done in Britain).
I once caught my daughter stuffing a packet of biscuits in the back of a cupboard behind a big bag of pasta. At the time, I thought “crafty cow wants them for herself” but left them there to see if they’d disappear – maybe for a teaching moment about not being selfish or something. They didn’t disappear but reappeared when some friends came over. She just waltzed out of the kitchen, just as my mother used to, opening a packet of biscuits. She never knew my mother and I’m pretty certain nobody else would have encouraged this pretty specific behavior. I don’t believe she’s the reincarnation of my mother, but I’m just intrigued at her selflessness – she doesn’t get it from me, those biscuits wouldn’t have gotten past a couple cups of coffee with me around. She still does it too – we have a biscuit box in the cupboard, usually with a few packs of biscuits, but when I keep a check on how many packs I’ve bought, there will be one short or I’ll come across a random packet in a cupboard somewhere. And she likes to be the biscuit-bringer when we have visitors.
His_Name_Was_Lola
My son was three at the time. We were at a ceramics place and I was taking a wheel throwing lesson when he said to this lady “I saw you in the fire. Did it hurt when you got burned? I was there but I couldn’t help you.”
She turned white as a sheet and explained to me that when she was a young girl, her house caught fire and she was badly burned. She told me that used to tell her family that she followed a little boy, she’d never seen, out of her room and then out of the burning house.
She is sure that my son is her guardian angel, and that he was sent to tell her this as an older lady to make sure always remembers. We became pretty good friends until we moved away. My son is now 16 and doesn’t remember much about this other than he has faint memories of her.
Qlinkenstein
I asked my son once who he was before he was my son. He was young, maybe 3.
He looked at me sadly and said, ‘It was dark and cold and I wasn’t anything. Just all by myself…’
And then be perked up and said ‘And before that, I had black wings and I flew! And I’d take shiny stuff because all shiny things are MINE!’
And that is how I realized my son was magpie in his past life. And gave me a clue where to find my missing earrings. (He had a hidden cache of jewelry in his room, the little imp).
Froggyloofa
When my sister was 3 she would go on and on about her brother, Brian. We’re all girls, and we don’t know where she would have heard the name. But it was all, Brian does this, Brian and I used to do that, on and on. Thinking Brian was an imaginary friend I asked her where Brian was now. She said “he’s dead, I am, too. The bomb got us and our house is gone.” Very weird.
fridayfridayjones
When my then 2 and a 1/2-year-old daughter heard a loud boom, then jumped into a small low spot in our yard and yelled “Foxhole!” with a terrified look on her face. She had never seen any movies about wars or anything. Definitely had me curious.
Jessabelle98
One time, my mom and dad were watching a World War II documentary late one night. Something about the push into Europe and a massive tank battle (probably Arracourt). I walked downstairs and my parents told me to go back to bed. I said, “I want to watch the battle again.”
Parents said I’ve never seen this documentary. I said, “no, but I remember it. We were in that one. It went boom. Points to a specific tank in the middle ground. I remember the one behind us going boom too.”
Mom puts me to bed, saying I was talking nonsense. Comes back and jokes to my dad. Dad says he’s not so sure, because while she was putting me to bed both tanks exploded. The one in the rear first, followed by the one I pointed out.
EBeast99