Teaching little kids?

I'm gonna cut to the chase. I hear a lot about how young children are supposedly superior lucid dreamers, and can pick up the skill more easily. Is it because of brain chemistry, or because of a child's tendency to take things into question as a child? Or any combination of the above?

I'm not trying to go against the whole 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks' mentality. I am aware that we have some well-aged and very capable lucid dreamers on Dreamviews.

Personally, I recall having extremely vivid dreams as a kid. I also had excellent recall. As a kid, I was not a practicing lucid dreamer, I was unaware that it existed. But I also remember being able to 'continue' dreams. In that I would wake up from a dream one day, then, if I found the dream interesting, have it continue the following night. I know for a fact that it is not nearly as easy for me to simply incubate dreams now. Simply reflecting upon the way those dreams felt and behaved, I feel as though they would have been much more easy to become lucid in than the dreams that I experience now. I guess it had something to do with the fact that the dreams felt naturally very vivid and clear. They also felt longer, as if I were remembering better.

So is it true or not?

All kids are different but, generally speaking, I believe dreams tend to interest kids more since tend to be more imaginative and open-minded at that stage. Because of this and scary nightmares, dreams becomes more important to them which makes it easier for them to remember about dreams during their dreams which in turn makes it easier for them to become lucid. As for dream control, again their imagination and open-mindedness allows them to be more capable of dream control than a close-minded adult.

I think the child's level of imagination, open-mindedness, and interest in dreams determines how good of a lucid dreamer they will be.

Thanks, Dolphin :mrgreen:

Yes many reasons, children also have proportionally more/longer REM if I remember correctly. I never LD'd as a child that I remember, but did have occasionally very vivid (especially flying, my favorite) dreams, and I had a repeating nightmare bad guy that would find me and slap me and then all the monsters would come out of the shadows and pile on me.

I think it is the ultimate act of kindness to teach young children to LD. I so wish somebody had told me about it several decades ago.

^^ I'm not sure you can teach a child to LD, at least not in the manner with which we are familiar.

I know from experience that this is something that DV members have no interest in hearing, but here is a caveat I have offered before, and perhaps masochistically feel obliged to mention again:

Be careful not to put too much credence on a child's lucid dreaming skills, because they really do not possess those skills. Nor, I believe, is a child's imagination or open-mindedness at a superior level to an adult's.

LD'ing skills revolve around self-awareness and a conscious interest in becoming self-aware in a dream, which are two qualities that a child by no fault of his own simply hasn't yet developed.

Potentially speaking, a child's imagination is generally inferior to that of an adult, because she lacks the information and experience that drives imagination. If you were to carefully observe what a child is imagining, you will likely notice that his creativity is actually very limited (provided, of course, that you don't confuse imagination with a child's misunderstanding of reality -- for instance, she really does think there are monsters under the bed). A child may appear open-minded because he will believe anything you tell him (and what he tells you, for that matter), and, yes, her brain is absorbing information at a terrific rate, but her worldview is actually quite limited; a child is actually years away from being able to make a conscious decision to be open-minded.

I think the real reason that children seem to have LD's more easily has nothing to do with these things, but with the fact that they view the dream world as just as real a place as their waking world. This incorrect view (which is the opposite of lucidity, BTW) allows them to say, "Hey, this is a dream," and perhaps do something about their nightmares, but they are doing so in what they perceive as reality, and not as what they perceive as a malleable dream. In other words, children are not LD'ing at all, but simply experiencing their dreams with the same mind they use to experience reality.

If you try to teach a child to LD, they will probably just look at you funny, and wonder why you are making such a fuss about their dreamland, which is to their mind nothing more than an extension of waking-life.

Well, then s/child/teen. Even tweens (11) think dreaming is extremely cool. Mid-teens should be really into it I'd think. Still early enough to give them a great head-start.

^^ Okay. Teens, in my mind, are way different (and more developed) than the young children usually referred to on threads like this.

I had these dreams at the age of five which shows that children do have the potential to observe and differentiate reality from dream.
Also, even if a child becomes afraid of something in a dream it doesn't mean they think it is real. It is just scary looking to them.I even do it at this age when i'm lucid. But its more because of the experience i might get from it. However,I also believe that some children are not superior lucid dreamers when compared to adults. Because there are people who learn about it at different times and they may not be used to inducing it or have had more experiences with it. Overall, its important to keep in mind that young children will get interested in dreams at times but than they will forget about it because waking life holds most of their attention. At least until the topic of dreams comes up again.

Dream Ex 1

I appeared in a snow area and could see my father on a white bed. My
family was around him and i was curious as to why they were. I walked up
to the bed than looked at my father. To my surprise there was a green eye
on his leg.I thought about how odd this was and stared at the eye.
Than things began disappearing. As this was happening I was thinking about how
what was happening didn't feel real to me. But that it was the time to watch what would occur.

The next thing I recall is I was running from a monster in the snow.
Heard its voice at first.I went into a nearby house and hid under the bed with a little girl
who was a good friend of mine at the time.Either the monster came in or
something else scary came in.I thought about how I didn't find this hiding spot
as good as the closet but didn't have time to go anywhere else.
Than started to do my best to imagine the house
floor going down like a teleporting elevator or something of the sorts.
When it stopped the girl with me was gone. I knew it was a dream but did not
feel comfortable being alone in it.

So I ran out the house and saw in the distance a field of flowers/greenery. But I was in the snow area and
there was a deep crack in the middle keeping me from reaching the place i wanted to go. I decided that
I was willing to try and jump over and did. But ended up falling down the deep crack. In no way did I think I
was really going to die. I knew I would wake up and was willing to experience what it was like falling down a
deep crack in the dream.

Dream Ex 2

Another dream I recall is watching or being a little girl in a pink kimono with blonde hair.
She sort of looked like a anime character. There was
a pink sky and lots of flowers around.But what caught my attention the most was a butterfly
floating around. But pretty quickly darkness came over and covered everything.

After that the dream changed and I observed as the darkness changed
to a dark lit hallway and moved forward. Out of no where appeared a large picture
on a frame of a anime character that looked like a old man with long white hair.
After that I think that is when i woke up. But all throughout the dream i recall
observing it. Knowing that the man and the places weren't real but it was still
a pretty interesting experience. I feel that perhaps in a way I induced this lucid dream
because i recall looking at the bed where I and my brothers were about to sleep
and thinking about what I was going to dream about and how did I want to act in the dream.
Since I would be by myself in it and my family would be having their own dreams.

Another thing I want to say is that If your going to teach your children about lucid dreaming, don't make a list or long speech of how to become lucid for them. Just talk to them about dreams at times. Like if they get scared you can talk about dreams where you overcome something scary and you can talk about the dreams where you had fun. Lucid or non lucid. That way they recognize that lucidity is something achievable in dreams and if they are curious they will think about it and maybe end up having one. But before they start having lucid dreams they have to know that waking life is different from a dream. I think at age five or six its a good time to talk with your child about dreams. Perhaps they learned about it from a children show,teacher or friend already. Either way don't push it onto them like a class about lucid dreaming and let them decide whether they want to have one or not.

^^ Those are excellent examples, DawnEye, but -- if you were responding to me -- I didn't say a child cannot differentiate between waking life and dreams (at least I didn't mean to); what I said was that both waking-life and dreaming-life are equally real to a young child. It isn't that they don't know they are dreaming, but that they think their dreaming world is just as real as their waking world -- even if they also know they have more "power" in a dream, or that they cannot be hurt in one.

To me this is much different from lucidity, because a child still does not understand the nature of her dream, that her dream is not real, but a creation of her own imagination. A young child is years from developing the self-awareness necessary to know not only that she is dreaming, but to know that she is the source of that dream.

So: Yes, kids are certainly able to know they are dreaming and, as you illustrated, to navigate them. But they are navigating a place that, though much different, is just as real to them as waking-life. That it is just as real to them is what makes it seem to us (either in hearing a child's rendition of his dream or remembering our own) like children are lucid dreaming, but that same sense is what negates lucidity, because their self-awareness is simply not yet up to the task of both saying "This is a dream" and knowing that the dream is not reality.

Also:

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Originally Posted by DawnEye11

Another thing I want to say is that If your going to teach your children about lucid dreaming, don't make a list or long speech of how to become lucid for them. Just talk to them about dreams at times. Like if they get scared you can talk about dreams where you overcome something scary and you can talk about the dreams where you had fun. Lucid or non lucid. That way they recognize that lucidity is something achievable in dreams and if they are curious they will think about it and maybe end up having one. But before they start having lucid dreams they have to know that waking life is different from a dream. I think at age five or six its a good time to talk with your child about dreams. Perhaps they learned about it from a children show,teacher or friend already. Either way don't push it onto them like a class about lucid dreaming and let them decide whether they want to have one or not.

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^^ That is excellent advice, regardless!

:sageous:

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but that they think their dreaming world is just as real as their waking world

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I probably wouldn't have been able to explain how dreams formed but I did not think of it as another world like real life. I thought of it more as a fake world that didn't stay the same.In another dream example i had when i was 5, I was running from the cookie monster and Elmo and could tell that it was my imagination.Would Elmo and the cookie monster really attack me? No. Would I let them eat me even if i knew it was a dream? No,because I was afraid to experience what would happen if i was eaten in the dream. I also had a nightmare about a sun cartoon character that was chasing me.(non lucid) When I woke up my mom calmed me down. Did i think I was transported to another world. Not at all. Why? Because I could recall it being from a commercial I saw on t.v. Who would allow such a ugly monstrous creature to exist in another world anyways!? : P I believe these experiences and others allowed me to distinguish real from fake too.Also,maybe at some point from someone or somewhere I did learn dreams were from the mind. But I don't think I would be able to recall who it was from. As a child we were learning about body parts from what I can remember.

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^^ That is excellent advice, regardless!
:sageous:

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Thanks and sorry I wanted to add a bit more to what I said. ^^" I took out other things I said before on this comment because perhaps it was too much.

I have an 8 year-old son and a 6 year-old daughter. While my daughter rarely remembers any dreams, my son had excellent dream recall from the age of 5 and quite frequent nightmares as well. I gave him advice how to face his nightmares and gradually he managed to turn around negative dreams into positive ones. Apart from that, he frequently listened to me recording my LDs, asked me questions about how to do it and I gave him advice about RCs etch. Now, I am pretty sure he knows his dreams are not real - based on what he says - and he has actually learned to recognize when he is dreaming and navigate his dreams. Recently, soon after he recognized he was dreaming, he summoned a water scooter and enjoyed immensely his ride - and afterwards he flew around in good controll - as he told me in the morning. I don't see why this does not count as a lucid dream - and even if it doesn't, I wish my parents had taught me how to do this when I was a kid...

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Originally Posted by Sageous

I know from experience that this is something that DV members have no interest in hearing, but here is a caveat I have offered before, and perhaps masochistically feel obliged to mention again

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Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't know that talking about this was bad, I just wanted information.

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Another thing I want to say is that If your going to teach your children about lucid dreaming, don't make a list or long speech of how to become lucid for them. Just talk to them about dreams at times. Like if they get scared you can talk about dreams where you overcome something scary and you can talk about the dreams where you had fun. Lucid or non lucid. That way they recognize that lucidity is something achievable in dreams and if they are curious they will think about it and maybe end up having one. But before they start having lucid dreams they have to know that waking life is different from a dream. I think at age five or six its a good time to talk with your child about dreams. Perhaps they learned about it from a children show,teacher or friend already. Either way don't push it onto them like a class about lucid dreaming and let them decide whether they want to have one or not.

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So I guess you could say this is

( •_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)

Sage advice.

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Originally Posted by SearcherTMR

I have an 8 year-old son and a 6 year-old daughter. While my daughter rarely remembers any dreams, my son had excellent dream recall from the age of 5 and quite frequent nightmares as well. I gave him advice how to face his nightmares and gradually he managed to turn around negative dreams into positive ones. Apart from that, he frequently listened to me recording my LDs, asked me questions about how to do it and I gave him advice about RCs etch. Now, I am pretty sure he knows his dreams are not real - based on what he says - and he has actually learned to recognize when he is dreaming and navigate his dreams. Recently, soon after he recognized he was dreaming, he summoned a water scooter and enjoyed immensely his ride - and afterwards he flew around in good control - as he told me in the morning. I don't see why this does not count as a lucid dream - and even if it doesn't, I wish my parents had taught me how to do this when I was a kid...

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I think what you are saying is true. I was only asking how children behaved differently in learning/practicing lucid dreaming. I wasn't saying you should force it down their throats. In the case of your son here, it sounds like he got gradually introduced by you and taken in on his own interest, just like a child would pick up on any other hobby. Because (as horrifying as it may sound to some people.) there are people that simply are not interested in practicing lucid dreaming.

Thanks for your replies, everyone!

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Originally Posted by JadeGreen

Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't know that talking about this was bad, I just wanted information.

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I'm pretty sure I did not say talking about this was bad; I don't know where you got that. Saying what I did usually turns out badly, though, and I'm glad to say that my opinion was treated a bit less negatively than it has in the past, which was nice...of course it was set aside in favor of anecdotal evidence, but that's okay too, I guess, in that this thread isn't about evidence, psychology, or actual child development, but teaching your kids about dreaming.

:cheers:

I just discovered a *Prohibited Link Removed* about a book that introduces little kids to Lucid dreaming - regardless if their experience is not adult-like lucid dreaming. I liked very much the concept and the video-description and have already backed it (bought one copy).