Children’s Past Lives: How Past Life Memories Affect Your Child by Carol Bowman
A Book Review by Pamela Welch, M.A., C.C.Ht.

Children’s Past Lives by Carol Bowman is a book that every parent, hypnotherapist, and family or child therapist needs to read. The personal accounts in the book will make you weep with joy and feel humbled by the extraordinary power of children’s wisdom. It gives you a profound glimpse into the souls of these beings in little bodies, renewing your faith in the journey that all humans make as embodied spirits.

Make no mistake, this is not a “Twilight Zone episode” recounting of past lives. It is a well-documented and researched study. Largely, the parents reporting on the past life experiences of their children did not believe in reincarnation and in many cases even found it contrary to their own religious beliefs. However, as they opened their hearts to the factual and emotionally moving experiences of their children, the parents grew to have a different understanding.

Bowman begins by telling the story of how past life information emerged for both of her own children and the subsequent journey of inquiry and research it led her to. She then gives numerous examples of past lives of children including the scientifically documented case studies of Dr. Ian Stevenson, once head of the department of psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She goes on to describe the many different ways past life phenomena can express itself in children and its relationship to childhood characteristics, quirks, patterns, phobias and physical ailments. For example, a child who died of drowning may fear water or resist being bathed. Bowman’s own son had a case of incurable psoriasis on the wrist, which continued until he remembered being shot in this part of his body during the civil war. In some cases, birthmarks occur right at the site of mortal wounds that the child received in another life.

Although Children’s Past Lives contains more than enough documented proof to convince even the most die hard skeptic of the possibility of reincarnation; this is not Bowman’s emphasis. Rather, she demonstrates the opportunity these experiences provide for healing and soul growth in our children. To assist parents and therapists with this, she includes practical guidelines on how to help a child when and if past life information emerges. She gives useful tips on how to provide supportive communication to the child when they are in the “trance” of the experience, ways to distinguish past life information from fantasy, how to identify the patterns associated with the past life that relate to the child’s current experience, and ways to help the child resolve unfinished issues from another life.

Children’s Past Lives is an uplifting book that will tug at your heartstrings and enable you to see children through new eyes. It is the handbook to reach for when your child says, “My other mommy use to do that too, before I died!”

(For a past life consult for yourself or child, call Pamela Welch, M.A., C.C.Ht. at (303) 988-0499)