From the Herald’s website, we hear that
[a]ll children are psychic and they’re tuned in to their abilities now more than ever, according to one of Australia’s top intuitives.
Oh, really?
And there’s more:
"We’re starting to see little kids who can see spirits, who can actually validate who it is. It’s different to a child saying, ‘I’ve got a monster on top of my bed’. We know that’s imagination.
And seeing ‘spirits’ isn’t imagination? How does a little kid ‘validate’ who a ‘spirit’ is supposed to be? Often children will have seen photos of various family members (some deceased); how does our Australian ‘intuitive’, Sue Bishop, know that the child is not simply populating the usual childhood imaginary world with faces from those albums? It’s certainly a simpler (& more likely) option than suggesting that the ‘spirits’ are real. And encouraging children to believe otherwise is not exactly helping to develop their critical thinking skills.
(Apparently, the ability to ‘see’ this stuff depends on the state of your skull. No, seriously – we’re told that once the fontanelle atop the skull closes off, kids are cut off from the spirit world.)
Mind you, Ms Bishop also seems to believe in reincarnation:
"I believe that each evolution carnates to bring a new gift, a new awareness to help us grow and expand also to deal with the problems created from the former generation," she says.
Which leads me to the next question – rather than parroting the claims for juvenile psychics, why on earth wasn’t the Herald’s reporter asking these questions? What on earth has happened to investigative journalism, when material like this is given page space with no questions asked?
herr doktor bimler says:
we’re told that once the fontanelle atop the skull closes off, kids are cut off from the spirit world
This is of course why trepanation was invented.
nz herald, what are you *thinking*?
I’m gonna guess “Sales”.
Alison Campbell says:
Yes, trepanning did spring to mind when I read the article. Didn’t mention it in my post as I didn’t want to give the Herald journo any more ideas 🙂
Dr Yvonne Murphy says:
Hello, In your comments there is a remark about believing in re-incarnation…I have been working in healthcare in India and all of the 700 million people who are born and live on the streets in India…beleive they will come back again to a better life..it gives them comfort. Many of the rest of the Indians not living on the streets also believe they will evolve from lower levels of existence to more exhaled states…..My motto is..”If it works, work it!” Warmly Dr Yvonne Murphy
Alison Campbell says:
It may ‘give comfort’ but that doesn’t mean that reincarnation actually exists. Nor does encouraging a belief in reincarnation (as the subject of that post seems to be doing) exactly encourage development of children’s ability to think critically about the world.