Allison DuBois - Don't Kiss Them Good-bye

The unique nature of the message told me that Ariel really had heard from her granddad, so we talked to her about what had happened. Don’t dismiss your child’s encounters. Young people are uninhibited; they are without walls, and thus are easier for the other side to access.

4. Is your child able to describe what he or she sees in great detail? She should be able to cite physical characteristics, objects that may have been important to the individual, possibly even a name. The information should seem clear to the child without the need to ponder it too long. For instance, my six-year-old daughter told me that my great-grandmother had a bathroom she loved, with pink tile and roses. I had to call my grandma Jenee to ask about this, because Grandma Ruth had died when I was thirteen. She confirmed that my daughter had accurately described the bathroom in the house that they had lived in over fifty years ago.

I was a part of my youngest daughter’s first reading. My dad had died about eight months earlier, and she had just turned four. One day she jumped up on my bed with a picture she had drawn of two people.

“Marie, who did you draw a picture of?”

“It’s you, Mommy! And Grandpa Mike! You’re dancing together.”

I wasn’t prepared for that.

“Honey, Grandpa died.”

“No he didn’t, Mommy. He’s still here; he tells me so.”

I realized that—much like me when I was six years old looking at Great-grandpa Johnson—she thought Grandpa Mike was still alive. Of course, in a sense they are, but children know no difference between being alive in spirit and being alive on earth.

Later, out of the blue, Marie started saying, “Cha cha cha, Mom!”

That shocked me.

“Marie, why are you saying that?”

She started dancing around the room, repeating herself.

“Grandpa Mike, that’s why!”

Of course. Silly me. What was I thinking? My dad always said that. I feel so lucky to have three little reminders of my dad. Even if your kids aren’t mediums, you can see those who came before them in the faces and personalities of your children.

Another example: The week after the first anniversary of my father’s death, I was feeling pretty down. I didn’t want to impose my heartache upon my kids, but I had several quiet moments of daydreaming about him. I thought I was pretty good at keeping them to myself. I was sitting at the kitchen table when Bridgett, my second daughter, sneaked up behind me. She leaned toward my ear to tell me a secret:

“Mom, Grandpa Mike says he doesn’t like it when you’re sad, and he says for me to tell you that he loves you.”

Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I hadn’t said a word about my dad. This was so meaningful to me. I get a taste of my own medicine every time one of my girls demonstrates her ability to see the unseen.

5. Does your child describe events that later come to pass? Can he or she sense where something is without traditional clues? The ability to predict events and identify locations is a strong sign of talent. Marie does this frequently. It’s a hard sign to miss, and it’s exciting.

Ariel does it, too. One afternoon Joe and I were preparing to drive to Tucson, which is about two hours away and a place my children have never been. We would be meeting some friends there for dinner. Before we left, Ariel said, “Mommy, look at the picture I drew.”

With a marker on a white erasable board she had drawn a huge picture of an exotic-looking flower with long, very thin petals. She referred to it as the Italian flower. Joe and I praised her work and then left for our drive. We met our dinner companions at the host’s house and then headed for dinner at an Italian restaurant. We walked in, and on the wall hung a huge picture of an exotic flower with long, very thin petals. Joe and I looked at each other in amazement. The picture was identical to the one that Ariel had drawn. That she had called the flower Italian made the occurrence even more significant. Even the length of the stem was the same. It was eerie, but I like that.

I’ll use my four-year-old, Bridgett, as an example for parents with really young psychics. This is not a prediction, just an example of knowing something is there without using your eyes to see. This ties into locating objects psychically.

Bridgett is good at seeing what is hidden. On a trip, our family was in a restaurant, waiting at the counter for our take-out so that we could go back to our hotel room and have a snack. The counter was about a foot higher than the top of Bridgett’s head. Bridgett extended her arm straight up into the air and said, “Mommy, Mommy, can I have a piece of candy?”

Before I could ask her how she knew there was candy on top of the counter, three friendly but perplexed women standing behind us asked her that very question. Without answering, Bridgett looked around, grabbed a box from the side of the counter, pushed it up against the front of the counter, and stood on it. She peered over the edge of the counter, saw the dish of candy, then stepped down and said, “Well, there is a dish of candy up there. See?”

I had taken a good look at the front of the counter. It was solid; there was no glass to peek through. As we left, I asked her how she had known there was candy on the counter without seeing it with her eyes. Bridgett said, “I don’t know, I just know these things.”

A month before the candy dish episode, my mom came over to our house to watch the girls for us while we went to the toy store to buy a gift for a birthday party. While Joe and I were at the toy store, I did something that I never do: I purchased a lollipop to put on top of the gift. When we pulled into our driveway, Bridgett came running up to the car as I opened my door to step out.

“Mommy, give me the lollipop!”

“I didn’t get you a lollipop,” I said.

“Well, I know you have one in the car.” She was right, but how did she know? My husband was still in the car, and no one else knew.

“How did you know I had a lollipop in the car?”

Bridgett was not amused; she just wanted the lollipop. “I don’t know, I just knew.”

This kid is a candy, food, and beverage detector; you can’t hide anything from her. There are too many other instances to share each one, but you get the idea.

Because I get so much e-mail concerning children who have behavior problems or ADD (attention deficit disorder), I felt I must address this. I have seen instances where parents have misread their child’s symptoms and come to the wrong conclusions. This is an area of great controversy, and sometimes there are no easy answers.

Children with ADD are easily distracted and over-stimulated. They have trouble focusing on what they are doing, so their grades often suffer. Their brains are in overdrive. However, this does not mean that the images in their minds are coming from the other side. There is no real correlation between psychic powers and other common problems such as ADD or depression. However, in my opinion, children with such problems are also no less likely to have the gift than other children. It’s important for parents not to rule anything out or jump to any conclusions.

In one case, a child often spoke of suicides, so his family thought that deceased people were coming through to him. But judging by what the family said, I didn’t think the boy appeared mediumistic. Something made me ask the professions of his parents. It turned out that his mother was a police dispatcher.

When parents work in this sort of field, they have to look even more closely at the child’s claims. If a child’s information is something he could have overheard at home, then look further. Children who are truly mediums should not be limited to sensing grim, morbid deaths. They should also be able to contact deceased friends or relatives, those with positive energy. Of course, this doesn’t exclude the possibility of an encounter with dark circumstances, but they shouldn’t be all a child sees.