There are some really cool perks when you have kids, like creating people who will love you no matter what (if you do it right) and having family holidays and getting to watch human beings develop, bottom to top.
There are less cool things, like the way they never sleep and they ruin all of your things and everything is twice as hard as it was before. It’s a balance.
I’m not sure where to put the fact that they sometimes utter completely spooky, eerie crap, some of which sounds like it actually might have happened to them in a past life.
If this has happened to you and you’d like to have company feeling weirded out, good news – these 14 parents have some stories to tell.
14. Of course the PTSD carries over.
When I was about 4 my family and I were moving house. We went to view this house in a rural village that was right by an airfield that had been very important during WW2, and there were still disused Anderson shelters in the garden and fields behind.
Apparently the minute I saw them I ran to my mum, clung to her arm and asked “Are there going to be more bombs?”, and got really agitated. Nobody ever spoke about the war, this was in the 90s, and we didn’t even have a tv.
My mum was really spooked by the whole thing.
13. I mean my kid learns all kinds of words on YouTube.
When my son was 3, he told his mom that he was a cosmonaut the last time he was a grown-up. Not an __astro__naut, the Russian version.
We’re 99% certain he hadn’t heard the word before.
12. Definitely would have freaked me out.
I was the child in this case. I don’t remember any of this, but when I was 4 we travelled to Ireland to visit my dads grandparents. We were walking through a shopping area when I started yelling about wanting to see the train and ran into a shop.
My parents ran in after me as I was going nuts about some train. There was no train, it was a clothing store. The woman working there asked my parents what I was doing as I was just running around frantically. I finally yelled “the train!”.
I had found, in the back of the store, a framed newspaper clipping from the 1940s of the front window of this shop when it was a toy store and there was a big model train scene set up.
11. Makes you believe in ghosts.
When my daughter was 3 and starting to talk clearer was talking to someone and concerned I walked into the bedroom and no one was there. Initially I thought it was her playing with her toys. Days later the same scenario but this time I asked who she was talking yo and she replied “your grandma.”
I thought she meant my mom who had recently passed so I showed a pic of her and asked is this her? “No your grandma” was the reply. I found a picture of my grandma and she with a big smile said “yes, her”.
I was shocked since I don’t have pictures of my grandma displayed and she died 1991 and my daughter born 2015.
10. My heart is hurting but smiling.
In 2006 my best friend Nick was KIA in Iraq. We used to wrestle/fight until one of us submitted. These sessions would start randomly and always be initiated by “showing your fangs”. This involved pointing your pointer and middle finger down in front of your mouth while growling at the other person.
A couple of weeks after his death some family from the other side of the country that we only see every 5 years or so was visiting. My cousins’s son who was about 5 and who I never met prior to this visit comes over. He gives me the fangs and smiles. I asked him “where did you learn that?”
He says “Your friend says hi” and runs away. I went to my room and cried for a bit.
9. Time to ruminate.
Sort of along these lines. I am 60 years of age never having biological children but am the proud grandfather of several wonderful children (I am the adopted one). My lady and I have been together for 28years and her children have children now.
One day my grandaughter is around the age of 4 years old and she went to her mother and asked “What happened to Pa Pa’s babies? There was two of them but they’re dead now”
It so happened that when I was 13 or 14 my girlfriend at the time got pregnant. There was an abortion. My girlfriend always said they were twins…I never really believed her…and never argued the point.
I think of this a lot now in my old age.
8. Grandma lives on.
Not a parent but apparently i look like the male version of my mom’s grandmother. But creepier is apparently I act just like her and talk like her…and think just like her. She died 10 years before I was born I think. Maybe even before that. And lived far far away.
The creepy part is none of this feedback comes from family members. It comes from random old people who knew her. The creepiest example is: As a teenager we went to Disney in Florida and was chatting with an older couple with their grandkids. After a bit the woman said I look and act just like her neighbor when she was growing up. Immediately, For no reason what so ever I blurted out “soy yo, Marisol”. At that point the woman never said her name was Marisol, I had no idea she spoke spanish (nor did she know I spoke Spanish). She responded dead pan “Dora (last name)? De Calle ___ en Buenos Aires?” I snapped back to myself and stammered I was her great grandson meanwhile my mom had shivers down her spine and started to tear up.
I’ve also had several people with Dementia who knew her call me by her name and try to play the “remember when…” game. And some of those things they would bring up give me strong senses of deja vu. At my grandfathers funeral this happened dozens of times from people I’ve never met.
One day I plan to go back to her home town to visit if that’s ever possible. She grew up outside of what was then Grudno, Poland (now Hrodna, Belarus) before moving to Buenos Aires during the Holocaust. I know traveling to Belarus isn’t very common and sometimes not easy, but I wonder if I’ll have some weird past life vibes being there
7. Some kids do it a lot.
When my daughter was about 3 years old she would say the word “Specs” all the time…like constantly.
I’m thinking this is so bizarre why would a child randomly start saying this. Then my wife told me that her grandfather used to work for a company called “Specs”.
The grandfather has been deceased quite a long time and was never even alive since my daughter was born.
She used to say things to me all the time like “when I was an adult I used to do xyz…”
6. Some people have the gift (or curse).
Not exactly the same thing, but my 5 year old daughter has been saying things like “when I look in mirrors there are a lot of people in here,” and “why were so many people in my room last night?” For like 2 years.
Update: it had been a while since she said anything like the above, but yesterday at dinner she turned around and looked behind her, then said “sometimes I hear voices behind me, but when I look back, no one is there…”
5. All the chills.
My youngest (4-5) would tell about how warm and “cozy” she was in my belly, how cold and scary it was to be born.
And how the hardest part was that she “used to know everything” but now she “doesn’t know anything.”
I would give her space to talk. Her frustration at almost being able to remember “everything” was almost palpable.
4. Bless is heart.
My daughter, when she was 3, used to talk about her imaginary friend all the time. Said he was big and fun, and spent alot of time playing with her. One day I was scanning old photos and had a photo of my father on my desk and she said, “hey how did you get a photo if my friend?”
I instantly got shivers down my spine. My father died in the house ~15 years previously, and she played in a room that used to be his office.
I cautiously asked her to tell me more about her friend, and without hesitating she told me he talked funny. The chills stopped me dead in my tracks because dad was an Aussie who never lost his accent.
3. This is an amazing story.
Not a parent, I remember telling my mom when I was a about 3 about my “royal family” I still have this cryptic memory of standing in a desert with a dark shallow pool, the sun was setting, and my younger brother reaches down and splashes the water in the pool, and everyone got very upset. There was something sacred about this pool.
It has always been a lasting memory for me. I met someone when I was 16, and we stayed friends and when we were 18 we talked about reincarnation, and he told me the exact same story only from the brothers perspective. I had never told him about my memory. Still freaks me out to this day.
2. I want to know who she was!
Apparently used to have rather frequent bouts of nightmares back when I was 4. And it always began with me screaming the name Sarah, then calling for help loudly (which would wake pretty much everyone in the house up), and ending with me just blubbering out “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry” over and over and over again, all the while crying and sobbing. When I would wake up in the morning, I’d have no recollection about any of this.
My parents had no idea what caused it, given that they knew no one named Sarah that I had interacted with, we had no TV or anything of the sort, I hadn’t begun going to preschool yet, and didn’t know how to read beyond a few simple words. Nothing they did seemed able to stop it either.
The whole thing went on for a good long while (almost a year) until one day, it just sort of stopped. Mom apparently tried asking me once about it, and kid me said something to the effect of, “Sarah doesn’t want to see me crying anymore. So I won’t.”
Didn’t actually know any of this happened until some years back when I got to talking to my parents about how I always found the name Sarah to be beautiful.
1. I have additional questions.
The following conversation happened between my wife and our youngest when she was 3 or 4.
Daughter: “I remember my old mommy”
Wife: “Uh what?”
Daughter: “Like I was born, and then I was really cold. But then I woke up and you were my new mommy” and laid her head on my wife.
My kids have not said anything like this yet, but I’m waiting for it to happen.
If yours have, please regale us with the story in the comments!