Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Toddler hallucinations or visions? Perhaps - OT

Somewhere along the line I thought I read/heard that gifted children had "other" experiences.

DD 23 mos. spent 15 minutes interacting with a tiny, invisible elephant the other night, until it flew away "up, up into the sky." She watched it mostly, and described it as having a beautiful tail (an elephant? really? lol) and said she "startled it" and seemed to feel bad about that. She also said it was drinking water through its nose. She then spent a half hour asking for it to come back.

She didn't have a fever.

I tell you, it was beyond weird.

DD does other things, too. "I see Grandma, she's right there!" What is Grandma doing? "She's in the house." I call Grandma and she has just walked in her door and was picking up the phone to call us. She is 3000 miles away.

Yesterday she said, "I'm riding on the bus with Daddy," while we were in the car. I called DH on the cell phone. His plane had landed across the country and he was in the hotel shuttle bus.

Soooo. Not a gifted topic? Sorry if too far OT.

Hi seablue,

It could be that your daughter is exhibiting imagination overexcitabilities which is not unusual in highly gifted children. I have just written an article on this which explains the research on this kind of difference in gifted children. The article is online at the New South Wales Association for Gifted & Talented Chidlren web site at this url http://nswagtc.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=345&Itemid=80

The examples I dealt with (in terms of advice for parents/students/teachers) was more for emotional intensity than imaginational but at least if you understand the background you will know which terms to use to search for other information and advice.

She sounds like a lot of fun by the way!

regards
Rosie

Does it worry you? Do you think there's something wrong?

I am sooooo not an expert, but I have to say that on the face of it, she just sounds highly imaginative to me, and with really good timing. Her invisible friends just happen to be Dumbo/Tinkerbelle, Daddy and Grandma.



I'd just have fun with it as long as you don't think she's got some medical or psychological problem. It doesn't sound like it to me.

Very interesting! I think the clock is one of her invisible friends, too....she might be aware enough about time of day to have guessed pretty well on your husband's bus ride (they certainly hear/understand more than we usually give them credit for).
The thing about grandma? Who knows?

My dd2.5 is often making up stories about things she sees or has in her hands, balloons, toys. Or the black bear that dh 'saw in the trash' that is often 'going to get her' in order to start a tickle fest.
She is a bit of a fibber already. Uses the word 'secret' correctly, which was a little shocking to me, and loves to switch identities and object names.

I think Kriston's take sounds about right. I am thinking you and I will have our hands *very* full in another 10 years - lol!

Stuff like that happens in my extended family once in a while. Let's just say that if I 'get an urge' to do something out of the ordinary and no one will be dissapointed that I'm not where I'm supposed to be, I've learned to follow it.

I don't have many moments like that nowadays, but before kids I 'just happened to show up' during a friend's difficult labor when they couldn't reach her DH or anyone, and she says it really made a huge difference. ((shake))

I don't think that you have to figure out if it can be 'explained through normal means' or not. We had a saying for DS when he was 6 or so, that if DS says something that sounds like it couldn't possibly be true, then it most likely is.

It always felt 'unscientific' to notice such coincedences, until I decided that it was 'unscientific' to only allow certain kinds of data to 'count.'

My advice is: Enjoy!

Grinity

When I was young, I had a couple of dreams about events that would happen the next day (strange, specific things about classmates that I knew, but were not my friends). A couple of years ago, DS would tell me about the ghosts in our house, sort of obsessively. When I told him he had a wonderful imagination, he insisted the ghosts were real. He had never told a lie before. Finally, i just told him that the ghosts were spirits who just haven't found their way yet, and if he told them to go toward the light they would eventually go away. DS then stopped talking about the ghosts. DS still occasionally talks about the ghosts, but not in an intense sort of way. (thanks steven spielberg...) Last year, someone asked me how we liked our house, which is 125+ years old. She mentioned that the previous owner had an unpleasant experience with a ghost. She said he wouldn't talk about the details. cue twilight zone music...

I have often heard stories of people sensing when family members and friends (like Grinity's) are in danger. And I will think of my mother the instant before the phone rings and it's her (she does call a lot though...) So, while your DD might just have a fabulous imagination, you just never know!

seablue:

The elephant description sounds like a highly imaginative imagination which has been linked to gifted children at a much earlier age than most. My DD is very much like this with invisible objects and animals and babies and etc.

Cute story: We were in a sandwich shop and she saw another little girl with a cookie which of course set her off with mine syndrome. 'I want a cookie mommy.' 'It's mine.' etc. So as she got louder and pointing up in the air I decided to reach up and pluck the cookie out of the sky and hand it to her. The look on her face was priceless. It was a complete realization that her imaginary game had turned to bite her in the a**.

So yes imaginary items are very common in little gifted kiddos. As for the visions: You will get a lot of skeptics and I have been one for many years but my grandmother (who passed away in Jan. of this year) was not. DD was still a little thing (8 or 9 mths) and dazed off into the kitchen questioning Mama Mama? when I was sitting on the couch. We kept getting her attention and saying I was over here and she would look but back into the daze. I never thought anything of it but later found out how much it freak my DG b/c she had a Priest come in to bless the house (She wasn't even Catholic) The Priest was sure she was seeing visions of the Virgin Mary. Not much later she would refuse to go into the back room where she slept. Would have complete meltdowns. (The room was next to the kitchen.) Did she 'see' things? Who knows but it was weird.

And in recent times she tells us that her Nana (my DG who passed) came to see her or is there in the room. For me, the skeptic, if anything is possible in that arena I fully believe that my DG would try to be with her since DD was the love of her life.

She also has weird timing with the phone and talking to daddy right before he calls.

So I get what you are saying but I just roll with it and not question it. It is yet another part of DD that makes her the unique precious kid that she is.

I know that my DS7 tends to have vivid nightmares on the same nights I do. He's spoken of seeing men and young girls in his room. I tend to roll with is as well. I figure if it's good, then there is no point making too big a deal of it. If he's scared, then I don't do him any good by telling him he's scared of nothing. I tend to tell him that he is stronger than any monsters and a friend of mine got him giggling when he was 4 by telling him he should just turn the monsters into pancakes in his head and gobble them up.

I have had a few weird experiences in my family.

At age 3, almost 4, my son said he saw his three year old friend and neighbor in the clouds looking down at him and that he was all fixed up and that he was going home, not to his house, but to God. The little boy had died that day in his backyard swimming pool. I am convinced that he really thought he saw this.

There were lots of times when he seemed to know what someone was thinking, so much so that when he was reading words at two I wondered if there was something else going on, especially when he could identify words that were spelled out for him at 2 1/2. I didn't think it was possible for such a young child to do this so it really kind of creeped me out at first. My husband didn't tell me that his older son had taught himself to read very early. This is when I first started looking for answers online. Before this, I spent very little time online.

I don't know how many times my adult daughter has asked me how he knew something he couldn't possibly have known. When she asks him he just laughs and tells her "I already told you, I'm psychic."

My husband's sister is very intelligent and works as a supervisor. She says she is "sensitive" to things that others are not. She can't really explain it and she knows it sounds crazy so she doesn't tell very many people about it. She says she thinks my son might be this way too. The subject came up when my son refused to go up into the Saint Augustine Lighthouse, which is supposedly haunted, because he thought he saw something weird there.

My mother, who I think was probably gifted, told me that she had a really, really bad feeling about going in for a minor surgery six years ago. She didn't even tell my Dad. It was not the first time she had ever had surgery and she had never worried about having surgery this much before. I told her she should talk to her doctor if she was worried about it, but I was sure she would be fine. She wasn't. Doctors couldn't tell us for sure what happened. Maybe mini-strokes, maybe a lack of oxygen, they didn't know, but many years worth of memories were wiped out forever and her short term memory was gone forever. She would never again be able to learn another thing, when reading and learning had been her favorite things to do in life and she would also be unable to take care of herself for the rest of her life.

Abraham Lincoln had a premonition about his own death.

I listen to my gut feeling a little more than I used to and I would probably listen to my son if he had a really bad feeling about something.

I firmly believe there is more to this world than meets the eye. I don't make too much of a childs' vivid imagination, one way or another. But I think we need to listen to that inner voice when we hear it. Personally, I avoided T-boning a car that backed out of a driveway that was hidden by hedges. Something said, 'slow down', I did and that was enough for me to have room to come to a stop when the car backed out suddenly. I knew a drive was there, but the car was completely hidden from view by the hedge.
A couple years ago, almost to this date, I was getting into my car to go to work. It was cold, blustery, & dark. We had two car seats for the granddaughters when they rode with us but both were in my husbands truck. I felt compelled to get them out of his truck and put them in my car. I argued with myself, it was cold, I'd be late, and that if our daughter needed help that maybe my husband would need the carseats. I compromised and took one, only one GD was required to be in the seat anyway. My daughter unexpectantly went to the hospital that afternoon, she called me at work and asked me to get the GD's at the hospital across the street from where I work. If I hadn't tossed that carseat in my car I would have had to drive 50 miles round trip to get the carseat before I picked up the GD's.
I listen to my gut feelings.

GS9 had an imaginary friend, Jakelo, that came to live with us when GS9 came to us permanently. He was so 'real' that it was a bit unsettling at times, but I didn't see it doing any harm. Jakelo 'moved out' a couple years ago, he would 'visit' for a while but I don't think he's been around for a while.

Then there was the time GS9 told me about how he stored things in the bookshelves in his mind. He was very descriptive about how he'd take a book off the shelf and look at the memory stored there. That was a bit weird to hear a 5 year old talk about it like that.