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"ANOTHER LOOK..." is an ongoing column I write for Vital Signs Newsletter, a quarterly publication of the International Association For Near-Death Studies. Each segment will appear here from now on, as well as in the Newsletter. This new feature gives me a format with which to explore varied issues about near-death states. Should you wish to make a comment or want to suggest future topics, please feel free to contact me. I may be able to use your suggestions directly. Thank you. P.M.H. Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.)

ANOTHER LOOK...

"THE EXPERIENCE/THE EXPERIENCER"

Column #16

P.M.H.Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.) P. O. Box 7691 Charlottesville, VA 22906-7691

There were so many incredible speakers vying for spots on the Conference agenda for this July’s Seattle Experience, that a number of important topics had to be cast aside.maybe next year. The second of the two proposals I submitted was one of them. That proposal had to do with our smallest experiencers children and the challenge they face with the aftereffects. I am grateful to the International Association For Near-Studies for the broad- ranging column they have provided me in “Vital Signs.” This gives me space to focus on what I think needs attention, and right now that’s kids. I have yet to hear of a single therapist, counselor, psychologist, or psychiatrist who has caught on to the difference between child and adult experiencers and made allowance for that in his or her practice. The fact is most of us, experiencers included, haven’t a clue. We miss the obvious. Consider this offering a “red €ag,” and I’m waving it as vigorously as possible.

Now, lest anyone misunderstand what my research of child experiencers of near-death states revealed, I want to state that the majority of kids handled their experience in remarkably positive ways. They became more mature afterwards and more knowing, wise, healthier, intuitive and creative, and seemed to lock-step with life’s rhythms as if they knew about A Master Plan and their place in it. Read Children of the New Millennium, especially Chapter 7 “Cases From History.” There is no denying the impact child experiencers can have on their families, their communities, and their nation, if not the world. These quietly intense but knowing ones can often appear as “light years” ahead of their agemates, even though they may have acted “slow” or disinterested or somehow “alien” in school. Adult experiencers usually become more child-like later on, but the kids tend to behave more mature, directed. Both groups often go on to experience vibrant dream states and forms of guidance and knowing that helps them to develop a certain comfort level with futuristic knowledge, creative invention, and a sense of sacredness and purpose. Actually they share a lot in common, but not everything. As near as I can tell, the pattern of aftereffects, psychological and physiological, are the same for near-death experiencers of any age, yet there is a vast difference between how older people handle this versus the very young. And that difference revolves around two major issues:

1. Children tend to compensate, not integrate.

2. Adults have a “before and after.” With the younger ones, what they experienced in their near-death episode becomes their world and that “world” tends to supplant anything else that came before.

Although adult experiencers can go through much confusion in their lives trying to make sense of what happened to them, some are sorely challenged, the average adult “knocks” on enough doors that eventually they either find a book or an IANDS group or a minister or counselor or best friend who not only listens but gives invaluable suggestions. Material is “out there,” lots of it. Today’s experiencers, for the most part, do not have to face the same ridicule and/or silence as did their predecessors just ten years ago. What we have all been doing to spread the word is working!

This shift in public opinion and the greater availability of resources has not impacted kids. Yes, the young are admonished to “shut up” when they attempt to tell their story, or told “it’s just your imagination” or “don’t bother me with such silliness.” That’s true. And this response from parents, relatives, siblings, and friends, not to mention health-care providers and teachers, does indeed have a chilling effect on child experiencers. Put them down often enough, and they’ll clam up. Yes, a way to counter this situation is to get information into the type of magazines and newspapers that parents and relatives and teachers read. But, there’s a stumbling block to educating the public in this manner - one most of us would never think of and that is. . . protective instinct.

Let me give you an example. In the fall of 1999, after my book came out, I contacted our local Barnes & Noble Bookstore and asked about the possibility of a talk and book signing. This large and successful bookstore has always been more than cooperative in the past with my other books, so imagine my surprise when the manager refused to talk to me. I called every month for five months nothing. It wasn’t until The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Near-Death Experiences was launched, and the store graciously allowed me to do a program about it, that I learned why I was denied such an affair for the book about child experiencers. The manager had read it and was absolutely horrified that near-death experiences could happen to children. His is a store with a strong emphasis on families, and he wanted to do everything in his power to protect parents from any such news. He black-listed the book. Melvin Morse’s previous work did not impress him, either. Most adults are instinctively protective of children. Anything that seems a threat either to the child’s welfare or to parental authority is met with resistance. This incident showed me that there’s more involved with educating people about child experiencers and what they might contend with as per aftereffects than we may want to admit.

Just as long as we concentrate on stories, out-of-the-mouth-of-babes renderings that fill us with hope and thrill us with the promise of a heavenly paradise, we, in the research community and throughout the entire field of interest, are safe. We offer what the public wants to hear. But the minute we re-examine the near-death experience through the eyes of children and study what happens to them at their level, suddenly, the topic of conversation changes and we are met with a “brick wall.” The revelatory power of the near-death phenomenon cuts too close. The public’s comfort zone is breached. So researchers like myself are left “holding the bag.” What am I to do with these findings? Of the 277 child experiencers in my research base, 1/3 had serious problems with alcohol within five to eight years of their episode (difficulty socializing and communicating with others); 21% had attempted suicide within about twelve years as a way to get back to The Other Side (these youngsters did not see their act as destructive); 61% regretted ever having had the experience to begin with (common complaint “I lost my childhood”). And that’s just a few of them. What seems reasonable to me is that through this column and any other articles I manage to get published, others will be inspired to do their own research, investigate this area with the idea of seeking ways to make a difference, to educate, inform, cast a new light on all aspects of near-death states not just what is popular or “acceptable.” To this end, I want to say a few more things about therapy and what I have noticed with adult versus child experiencers. Adults deal with changes afterward. They are challenged to find new reference points; to redefine themselves and the living of life from a new perspective. The ability to compare their life and the world around them from the aspect of “before and after” can be both unsettling and tremendously freeing. Children deal with the strangeness that the world around them doesn’t match what they know. They are challenged to recognize the source of their differentness and accept its credibility. What they encountered in their near-death episode is so real that it becomes their entire world. Comparisons have little if any value. Where it takes the average adult experiencer about seven years to integrate his or her experience (this has been borne out in clinical studies conducted in Holland), what I have seen is that it takes anywhere from twenty to thirty years for child experiencers to integrate theirs, if they do at all. I found that children were six times more likely to repress what happened to them than were adults. Very few child experiencers ever underwent therapy or counseling of any kind. Of those who did, only a handful said it was helpful.

I don’t know about you, but this sends off alarm bells in my head. We simply must take another look at this issue, and from various angles. The types of assistance that did seem to work for child experiencers were those that were touch-based or designed around mythological role playing or philosophical debates. I provide details about these in the “Subtext” (which contains the appendices edited out of my book by the publisher because of “space limitations”) as a free download from my website. The address is www.pmhatwater.com. This same material is listed in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Near-Death Experiences. I also discovered that, regardless of the child experiencer’s age, creating a book about his or her experience was immensely comforting and healing. This book could be made of construction paper and ribbon with drawings and words, poetry, or it could be a more elaborate project that the individual paid to have professionally done. No matter. The fact is, there’s something about the child experiencer committing to paper and pen all that occurred, that seems to free the individual to acknowledge and validate a very special world that fashioned his or her growing years with colors and textures others could not relate to. I highly recommend such an activity.

It is my hope that in the coming years, at conferences, in group meetings, and with research, more and more people tackle the conundrum of integration as concerns our smallest experiencers. We’ve done it for the adults. Now, it’s the kids’ turn.

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P.M.H.Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.) is the author of many books concerning near-death states, the latest being FUTURE MEMORY, CHILDREN OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM, and THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO THE NEAR-DEATH EXPERI-ENCE. Check out her website at www.pmhatwater.com for more information about her other books, the Subtext, and her "Brain Shift/ Spirit Shift" model for exploring transformations of consciousness.

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