Children don’t have to be told that we are all psychics in our dreams. They know this, because they have psychic experiences in their dreams all the time. They see into the future, they encounter the departed, they see things happening at a distance and behind doors that are supposedly locked to them. The problem is that very often the adults around them won’t listen, sometimes because they are afraid of what the child may be seeing.

Let’s talk here about how kids see into the future in dreams. Years ago, I led a series of dream classes for sixth-grade school children as part of a “talented and gifted” program in a school district in upstate New York. At the start of each class, one of the questions I put to the kids was, “Has anyone dreamed something that later happened?” On average, nine out of ten kids said they had had this experience. A tough young boy who looked like Rambo in the making shot up his arm, eager to tell his story. “We went on family vacation in Myrtle Beach. I dreamed the whole ride from the airport, turn by turn. I kept trying to tell Dad which way to go but he wouldn’t listen to me. So we spent an hour getting lost and doubling back, because Dad doesn’t believe in dreams.”

My friend Wanda Burch, the author of She Who Dreams, remembers what her son Evan saw in a dream when he was just three years old. Although this is a family of dreamers, the parents did not understand the dream until it began to play out in waking life – at which point the dream prompted the quick action that may have saved mother and child from serious injury. Here’s how Wanda tells the story:

“My son was just a bit over three years old and already sharing great
dreams. He told me he had dreamed about “the dogs,” was terribly
frightened of the dream but seemed unable to express why they terrified
him so much. My husband was working very hard and was really exhausted on the evening of one
of a board meeting, so I offered to drive him the fifteen miles from our home in the Mohawk Valley.

“Just as we closed the
door of the house, Evan began screaming  “THE DOGS, THE DOGS!!!”, pulling on my hands. I had to pick him up to get him in
the car and told him over and over again there were no dogs. He calmed
down. When we dropped off my husband and prepared to drive home, Evan was got agitated again, looking out the back
window and telling me there were growling dogs. We spent a few minutes
discussing nightmares and things he could do with the dream in order to
work with it. I don’t recall what I told him at that time, but he was
usually quite capable of dreaming his own solutions to his nightmares so
I was surprised this one was scaring him so much.
.

“We drove back home. The same scenario began again. I had to carry
Evan into the house. This time he was screaming so hysterically I could
barely pick him up. He calmed down again in the house. Time to pick up my husband. This time, Evan was hysterical, thrashing around in a desperate attempt to avoid getting in the car.

“When we returned to our home with my husband, Evan started screaming.I was struggling to get him from the car to the house. When we were just feet away from the glassed enclosed porch I
heard the most terrifying barking and growling. I turned in that
instant to see a pack of wild dogs coming over a slight rise just yards
away from the cottage. I literally threw Evan into the porch, screaming
at my husband to close the door and stay in the car. I barely made it through
the door to slam it against several of the dogs as their bodies lunged
against the porch. Several crashed against the door and walls of the
enclosed porch before they whirled around and ran off with the pack.

“If I had not been able to throw Evan into the porch and myself after
him, we would have been in serious trouble. At this point, my son was
completely calm, staring out the window at the dogs as they vanished
into the creek bed. He looked at me and said, “The Dogs!” I said to him,
“yes, I got it” 

My son has shared his dreams, big and small, with me all his life – and still
does, now he is in his late thirties. I turned
to him in my darkest moments when I was experiencing doubts about my
ability to heal from a life-threatening illness. I asked him, ‘Am I okay? What are you dreaming?” I’ll never forget his response: ‘You are fine. I am dreaming you into the future.'”

If you have any doubts about our ability to dream the future – and to use our night previews of possible future events to make better choices and change things for the better – listen to a young child telling his or her dreams.

————————————————————————————————————————————Graphic: “Divination,” drawing in colored pencil by Michele Ferro. (c) Michele Ferro. Used with permission. Contact the artist: mjferro@earthlink.net

For more information about Wanda Burch and her book She Who Dreams, please visit her website.