10 Years In The Daycare Business Has Made Me Believe In Reincarnation

Some of these babies are already 30 years old.

I’m not a Buddhist, but I believe in reincarnation and I’ll tell you why

I’ve had a home daycare for almost 10 years now. It’s taught me a lot about how we develop and become who we are, but I feel like it’s also lifted the veil on one particular spiritual mystery.

Anybody with more than one kid will tell you that every kid is totally different. Just because your first potty trained by ten months doesn’t mean your next won’t wait until the week before kindergarten to ditch the diaper.

Humans are a mixed bag of developmental imperatives and environmental cues, but the one thing that anchors these things is personality.

That’s the wild card, and what’s led me to believe that we indeed do have past lives. We bring baggage with us from the past, recognize people we’ve known before and come with lessons — some learned, some yet to be.

Whoever came up with reincarnation must have been watching toddlers because, from my observations, I must concur that we all come into this life with our former lives affecting us.

Humans are a mixed bag of developmental imperatives and environmental cues, but the one thing that anchors these things is personality.

What is reincarnation?

It’s the belief that there’s a part of a person — a spirit or consciousness, a non-physical part of us — that transcends death and lives beyond the physical, returning over and over to live successive lives, fulfilling a divine purpose, learning lessons, becoming wiser and closer to the source energy of the universe.

At least that’s how I understand it.

Some traditions believe that we start in the mineral kingdom, and over millennia, that spirit evolves into the plant, animal, and finally the human realm.

Some of the many belief systems that buy into this belief are The Ageless Wisdom, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. It’s a concept that’s been around for a very long time.

Believe me, I’m no expert, so try this link if you want to read up about it more.

I’d never really given this stuff much thought before I started observing toddlers in close quarters daily. But some time after my first year of business, I began to notice something strange.

Some of these tiny babies had unexplainable emotional baggage, and some had love stories and friendships that made no sense.

Some kids have come to me with unique challenges, and others I’ve known to have dysfunctional families. I’ve even had a child or two come to me from a previous daycare where abuse or neglect was suspected. For these children, their behavior has an explanation.

But some behaviors are inexplicable, especially when weighed against my intimate understanding of each family. I observe the families as seriously as the children. It helps me understand what to expect from them behaviourally and make game plans to address issues.

So even after accounting for the obvious factors that make sense, there have still been many anomalies in the babies’ and toddlers’ personalities and relationships.

Here are a few stories that have made me believe in reincarnation (all names have been changed):

Some of these tiny babies had unexplainable emotional baggage, and some had love stories and friendships that made no sense.

Max:

Max came to me just after his first birthday and spent his first six weeks running around, flailing his arms in the air and screaming — literally just running around screaming.

His nickname was MadMax.

I’d seen kids have trouble adjusting, so this was nothing new. Many babies get separation anxiety. It’s a phase they go through right at the age when most people put their kids in daycare (about one year), so it’s nothing new to me. It doesn’t phase me because I know it’ll pass, and everything will be fine.

I’d just had a baby come to me whose mother had never put her down. She told me that in the year since her birth, she’d never not been held. That baby took a long time to settle, and it was painful for her, but she adjusted. She cried for many days, and then one day just stopped. Her sense of security kicked in, and everything was fine.

But for Max, even though he had a pretty run-of-the-mill family life — first-child, nice parents, good extended family, nothing out of the ordinary or concerning — any time he wasn’t sleeping, he was screaming. Week after week, I waited for his sense of security to kick in. Meanwhile, I noticed a few things about him that were interesting.

He was fiercely independent.

His mother told me he hated mealtime. He’d scream and scream at her when she tried to feed him. He also did this with me.

One day as I was feeding him, I put the spoon down on his highchair to attend to another child. Suddenly his screaming stopped.

When I turned back around, I saw he’d grabbed the spoon and was happily feeding himself.

He hadn’t been screaming because he hated mealtime. He just wanted to feed himself.

This, in and of itself, isn’t a big deal. Babies have a biological imperative towards independence, and some are more driven than others, but this felt different.

It was like he already knew what he was supposed to be doing rather than being driven to learn. Like the act of trying to maneuver his baby body was frustrating him. Like he knew what he should be doing, but just couldn’t do it.

It was like he was offended that everyone was treating him like a baby.

At about the 6-week mark, just as I was preparing to tell his mother I didn’t’ think it was working out, that possibly my style of care was working for him, Max just stopped screaming.

One morning he came in, and it was like he realized where he was, and it just ended.

He spent about another 6 months nervous and anxious, but he never screamed again.

One day, long after, I discussed this with his mother, and she jokingly mentioned that everyone in their family thinks Max is the reincarnation of his father’s uncle, who died in a motorcycle crash.

This was my first venture into belief.

This kid never seemed like a baby to me. He always seemed like a 30-year-old trapped in a baby’s body.

This child’s family life was happy and stable, so there wasn’t really an environmental explanation for his behavior. I have one of his siblings in my care now, so I still see this child regularly. His brother adjusted quicker than most.

Max is a musical prodigy, who picked up the guitar at about the age of 6, and just taught himself how to play, and now he’s taking drum lessons at the age of 7. After only a few classes, he’s picked it up quickly and can play simple patterns easily. His uncle, who died, was also a musician.

He’s also had an obsession with the Beatles for years. I have to admit that in my teens, so did I. But I wasn’t obsessed with them when I was five. His obsession is strange, like how can he even relate to who the Beatles were? He has a very deep connection not only with the music but with the Beatles as people.

He’s definitely an interesting kid. One of my all-time favorites and someone who sometimes gives me Deja Vu.

Babies have a biological imperative towards independence, and some are more driven than others, but this felt different.

Max and Sandy:

At about the same time as Max, a little girl called Sandy also started.

Sandy was another baby that was never a baby.

From the minute those two met, they only had eyes for each other. It was bizarre. They bonded instantly. It really seemed like they “recognized” each other. Max followed her around starstruck, and she was always especially sweet to him, except when she was employing the old “treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen,” on him. Either way, it didn’t matter, he never stopped adoring her.

Even her mother told me this when we met. Sandy held a grudge for about six weeks when she started daycare. She was pissed that she had to go out of her house and be with a new lady.

Sandy was like an edgy 40-year-old divorcee in a baby’s body and the only person who softened her up was Max.

She was impatient with the other baby’s antics. She always seemed annoyed by the childish things the other kids did and would look at them with disdain when they couldn’t keep up.

This kid never seemed like a baby to me. He always seemed like a 30-year-old trapped in a baby’s body.

This child was smart, but it was also something more. She had street smarts at one year old.

I constantly had to be on my guard because she was trying to outsmart me. I often caught her being deliberately sneaky when she thought my back was turned.

From day one, she and Max would snuggle on the couch. Max would bring her toys and do whatever she wanted. He’d follow her around with a lovesick look on his face. None of the other children existed for him. Sandy seemed to understand the power she had over him.

Sandy was a sand eater. She’d sit in my sandbox and eat handfuls of the stuff. That’s nothing new. Many kids eat sand, but the amount she ate was alarming, so I tried to put the kibosh on her playground snacking.

One day I’d just given her a talking to about her habit, and I turned around to say something to another child, and when I turned back, there was Max gingerly feeding her spoonfuls of sand and keeping his eye out for me.

I could tell he knew what he was doing was wrong. When I caught him, he looked guilty as hell. But he couldn’t stand to see her unhappy and just wanted to do whatever it took to make her feel better. Those two were inseparable until the day they left my care.

It was a relationship that seemed steeped in history and a deep connection that I could never really understand.

I’ve had one other love story like that — two children who just seemed to gel from the beginning.

It isn’t just love stories that happen like that.

Penny:

I had a baby called Penny who had an inexplicable New York Accent when she was first learning to talk. She was unusually measured and thoughtful for a baby. I had to teach myself to count to ten any time I asked her a question before I reiterated it. It took her that long to process information.

She was an amazing critical thinker and could process information so thoroughly and thoughtfully, some of the things she said shocked me. She was an analytical, perceptive three-year-old.

She’d hoard food at snack time and wrap her arm around her plate and shovel the food into her mouth like it was about to be snatched away.

This was an only child, surrounded by abundance and a wonderful family.

It was strange. I always felt like she was someone who’d experienced great hardship. I felt like maybe she’d lived through a famine or a war.

I’ve had kids who just seem to know each other and play like long lost friends from the second they meet. Others just don’t like each other for no reason.

Some kids come to me really lucid. It’s like they already know what they need to know. They’re just waiting for their little bodies and minds to catch up with their souls. They know what they’re doing and can think two steps ahead.

Some children seem like they’re seeing the world through new eyes. The way you’d expect a baby to be. Like everything is wondrous and fresh.

They take a little longer to get the hang of things and are more “innocent’.

There are even kids who have come to me that I feel like I already know.

Some kids are afraid of things that have nothing to do with the usual fears you’d expect from a toddler. Things like spiders and snakes.

Some children have weird fears that aren’t so easy to explain.

One child is afraid of a giant monkey character on Paw Patrol. He also doesn’t like a particular female villain character. These two disturb him so much that I have to change the episode if one of the two is in it. The monkey is so disturbing that he starts to scream and cry when it comes to the screen.

If your only experience is with your own children or if you don’t get constant ongoing exposure to little children, you’d probably never notice this.

It’s taken me years of observation to notice these patterns.

Most of the babies who come to me are run-of-the-mill babies who fit the stereotype. They cry they play, they poop and do all the things you’d expect them to do in the way you’d pretty much expect them to. But now and again, there is a blip on my radar.

Someone comes to me who is a little different.

Someone who has a look in their eye that seems out of context. A baby with an unnatural chip on their shoulder or spring in their step.

I’d always believed in the idea of reincarnation the same way I believe any type of religious or spiritual dogma before I started doing this job. It seemed interesting and mildly plausible.

I felt right from the beginning, that I somehow knew and loved my husband more deeply than I should. I’ve always felt like we’ve been together before.

Most of the babies who come to me are run-of-the-mill babies who fit the stereotype. They cry they play, they poop, and do all the things you’d expect them to do in the way you’d pretty much expect them to. But now and again, there is a blip on my radar.

But until I started my home daycare, those thoughts were just spiritual suspended disbelief. After having my daycare for many years and caring so intimately for so many children, I’ve decided that it’s probably true.

From what I’ve seen of my little toddlers, there are many anomalies in personality, character, and relationships that could easily be explained by the idea of reincarnation.

As the children get older, this part of them seems to get embedded into their personality and sort of fades. It’s like at around four years, they forget who they were before and become who they are in this life.

I’m not super religious or even spiritual these days. I’m a person who grounds herself in psychology first, and everything else lines up behind that. But there are some things I’ve seen that even psychology and what I’ve learned about development can’t explain.

As the children get older, this part of them seems to get embedded into their personality and sort of fades. It’s like at around four years, they forget who they were before and become who they are in this life.

I guess like the rest of us, they then spend the rest of their lives, making their way back to themselves.

Watching these babies in their first few, most crucial years of development has been more than humbling and enlightening. It’s caused a spiritual awakening I could never have anticipated.

Now, reincarnation is a prominent fixture on the shelf of my beliefs.

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