Children and Hearing Voices

[a.tamminga]

Hello, I am the mother of a 7 year old daughter who has heard voices for several years now. She copes very well for the most part. She is in the advanced programs at school, loves to socialize, read, and dance. She's very sweet, thoughtful, and emotionally intelligent.

She has two voices in particular - one nice one, and one mean one who tells her to do bad things. Sometimes the voices argue with one another. It only happens when things are quiet, such as at home...or during a test at school. She always wants there to be some type of noise such as a tv, or music so she doesn't have to listen to the voices.

She's an only child, and I know she feels lonely quite often - even though we do socialize a lot. But our home life can be fairly quiet at times because she's an only child.

One of the biggest issues she struggles with is the thought that she is "abnormal" because of these voices. She wishes she could have other children with similar experiences to relate to. If you are the parent of a child who is also hearing voices, I would love to hear from you about your own experience.

 

[Kerome]

Perhaps you might want to get in touch with the Hearing Voices Network, they have regular meeting groups in many places which might be a way for you and your daughter to meet other voice hearers outside of a clinical setting.

In any case, very interesting to hear about your daughter! I wish you all the best.

 

[Eigau]

Hello, I am the mother of a 7 year old daughter who has heard voices for several years now. She copes very well for the most part. She is in the advanced programs at school, loves to socialize, read, and dance. She's very sweet, thoughtful, and emotionally intelligent.

She has two voices in particular - one nice one, and one mean one who tells her to do bad things. Sometimes the voices argue with one another. It only happens when things are quiet, such as at home...or during a test at school. She always wants there to be some type of noise such as a tv, or music so she doesn't have to listen to the voices.

She's an only child, and I know she feels lonely quite often - even though we do socialize a lot. But our home life can be fairly quiet at times because she's an only child.

One of the biggest issues she struggles with is the thought that she is "abnormal" because of these voices. She wishes she could have other children with similar experiences to relate to. If you are the parent of a child who is also hearing voices, I would love to hear from you about your own experience.

Hi and . There are many opinions about hearing voices. In my opinion, it's very important that she and everyone who loves her to accept the voices as a real and natural part of the human experience as much as left-handedness is. This is something that intervoice (the hearing voices movement) suggest as a means of coping with voices. Another view is that voices are not something to be cured nor can they be if they are a natural part of human experience. But the first step is accepting the voices and she must accept that they belong to her.

Having other distractions can be useful a a normal way to cope with voices, this is based upon the notion that the brain can't fully focus on more than one thing at a time and that what we think is multitasking, is really being really good at shifting from one thing to another rather than simultaneous thought processsing. Still, she does need to know that hearing voices is more common than she may think. Some things to ponder:

Does she hear musical voices? Singing? Instruments? If so, try looking up Earworms, Auditory and/ or Echoic Memory, speech and language processing, brocas and wernickes areas of the brain. They're pretty heavy reading so may take time to assimilate but well worth reading up on. Then, there's hypnogia and hypnopompic hallucinations, one's that happen during the transition phases in and out of sleep - some facinating reads there. As well as psychology of voices or auditory hallucinations.

I have thought of making some childrens books about voice hearing which I hope would help all in the family understand voice hearing better. Just some of all the many ideas I have that are "pending" lol. I'm a bit rambly today, sorry about that, take care,

Eigau

 

[ibdawnk]

My son is 13 and hears voices. You are not alone. It sure seems like it though doesn't it? It's lonely over here too.
We saw signs of it when he was only 3 and told us there were monkeys who rubbed his back at night. It continued for years. Then he told us there were voices in the wall talking to him. It was just this year that he started hearing a specific voice telling him to do things that were not good ideas.