Near-Death Experiences
Children’s Exceptional Experiences Out of Time and Self
Research is starting to show how extra-sensory experiences emerge for children.
Updated February 4, 2025 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Key points
- The feeling of timelessness is commonly reported in altered states of consciousness.
- Donna Thomas is one of the very few researchers who is studying altered states of consciousness in children.
- Children have spontaneous unexplained experiences in daily life or after cardiac arrest.
- Extra-sensory experiences emerge naturally and to exceptionally positive or negative circumstances.
“To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.”—Henri Poincaré
The feeling of timelessness is commonly reported in altered states of consciousness (ASC), whether during meditation in experienced meditators, through the intake of psychedelics, or during near-death experiences (NDEs). It involves a sense of unity with the surroundings, the collapse of past and future into the present, or the perception that time ceases to exist. Studying these extreme states can provide insights into the structure and processes of consciousness, which remain unexplained.
After life-threatening events like heart attacks or near-drowning, survivors sometimes report near-death experiences—striking altered states of consciousness occurring during apparent unconsciousness. Research on near-death highlights common themes, including seeing a light or tunnel, out-of-body experiences, and experiencing deep calm. Most prominent are reports on a loss of time. Our study conducted in 2017 (Wittmann and colleagues, 2017), where we used the near-death experience scale developed by Bruce Greyson, found that 65 percent of individuals with these experiences reported a change in subjective time; 94 percent of those mentioned a feeling of timelessness.
Donna Maria Thomas, Ph.D., from the University of Central Lancashire, in the United Kingdom, is one of the very few researchers who is studying ASC in children. In her recently published book on Children’s Unexplained Experiences in a Post-Materialist World she summarizes her research conducted over the last years, where she studied children who have had spontaneous unexplained experiences or, sadly, after a cardiac arrest when they were treated in a hospital. Donna Thomas uses different methods such as drawing, creative play, or storytelling to explore what children perceive. Children talk about telepathic experiences, such as having emotional connections with siblings or with the mother who is not present, having out-of-body experiences, past-life memories, or premonitions.
For some, it is hard to believe that those children should have true anomalous perceptions, which are out of time and space, transcending the here and now. But without doubt, these experiences do occur and have to be studied. They are experiences children have to live with. Here are some of her thoughts.
Do children have extra-sensory experiences?
I have conducted several research studies over the past eight years, with children, young people, and families. These studies show how children commonly have extra-sensory experiences. These are experiences that tend to go beyond our typical notions of personhood, time, and space. If we can learn more from children themselves about the emergence, nature, or meaning of these experiences, we can inform services that support children and families.
Children report on three senses of self—a conceptual self, a transpersonal self, and a knowing I—that are correlated with certain types of experiences. They can report their typical individual identity dissolving into unity with others and the world during a crisis or when in nature. We refer to this as the knowing I, as children will describe their selves in these moments as: "I don’t know, I just know this is the real me.“ Children report a transpersonal self, where their identities can merge with their close peers or family members. Experiences correlated with a transpersonal sense of self are extra-sensory modes of knowing, such as empathy, feeling their friends’ headaches, or knowing their thoughts.
What happens when children share their experiences?
For younger children, these experiences seem normal: “Doesn’t everyone do this?” asked one 5-year-old. For older children and young people, they are painfully aware of the risks of sharing their experiences with adults or other peers. Some teenagers have reported how their parents have suggested they have schizophrenia when they have shared how they hear voices. At times, these voices bring information to other people, such as family members. Despite knowing so little about these experiences, children can be quickly diagnosed, and their experiences are labeled as disorders or illnesses, despite children reporting healing and well-being effects from their experiences (Thomas, 2021).
What does research say about this phenomenon?
The research is starting to show that these extra-sensory experiences may emerge frequently and naturally for children, in response to activities (play or creativity) and to exceptionally positive or negative circumstances. Our research with children in a UK paediatric intensive care unit identifies how children report experiences during death and resuscitation. Children report moving through tunnels toward bright lights, seeing their operations from the ceiling, or visiting strange cities (Thomas and O’Connor, 2023).
These experiences reported by children are provocative as they challenge our mainstream view of reality as material and of humans as biological machines. They are experiences that may be considered fantasy or imagination, especially when reported by children. There is a history of excluding children from research due to the assumption that children move along a fixed developmental continuum, always becoming adults. But children are beings in their own right with sets of intelligence, knowledge, and capacities to theorise, philosophise, and sometimes analyse, their own experiences.
Are there other explanations?
Other scholars have also argued for natural explanations for, what are considered unnatural experiences. In the 1970s, Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst Jan Ehrenwald (a student of Freud) studied telepathic relationships between mothers and babies. Ehrenwald’s research suggested that infants use extra-sensory perception for survival and other needs. Younger children will naturally extend their cognitive capacities, to compensate for any absent cognitive or motor functions. One perhaps controversial example from Ehrenwald includes an example of children‘s premonitions, viewed as the reversal of typical memory functioning.
There may be intersections between children with certain medical conditions that affect regions of the brain, causing neural impairments (Pans/Pandas, epilepsy, cerebral palsy) and an increase in extra-sensory experiencing. If we consider this with studies in psychedelic research, we find interesting links between children’s extra-sensory experiences and the role of the brain. Findings published in a 2012 study by Carhart-Harris and colleagues show how psilocybin caused decreased activity and connectivity in the brain’s key connecter hubs, enabling a state of unconstrained cognition or rich conscious experiences. Psychologist Alison Gopnik (2020) suggests psychedelic studies, which show a deactivation in the pre-frontal cortex systems, can mirror young children's brains, in terms of plasticity, flexibility, and design for experience. Gopnik argues that consciousness becomes narrowed with age, with adults "knowing more but seeing less." If reduction in brain activity can activate unconstrained cognition, it may follow that any children with conditions that affect neural activity might have a higher incidence of extra sensory experiencing (Thomas, 2023). These findings may also challenge the mainstream idea that the brain is the producer of consciousness. As one child exclaimed in a recent study, "My mind is not in my brain.“
Does science need to challenge itself?
Science and academia are informed by a physicalist or material model of human beings and the world. In this framework, these kinds of experiences are not possible. In typical science, the brain is seen as the producer of consciousness or our subjective experiences. Yet, there is no evidence for this assumption. Scholars, researchers, and scientists across different fields are recognising the issues of materialism and are challenging the mainstream narrative. Evidence collected through the experiential authority of children, young people, and adults challenges this typical materialist view. Children, not as conditioned as adults, may provide stronger evidence for a reality that is not material. Children, like the ancient mystics, may easily access dimensions of human experience that, as adults, we have forgotten.
This year, Donna Thomas is starting the prestigious Perrot-Warrick position administered by Trinity College in Cambridge, United Kingdom, coming with a research grant that is only offered once every five years. She will conduct more funded research into children and adult extra-sensory experiences within the context of human development. More fascinating insights on what children experience are to come.
References
Carhart-Harris, R. L., Erritzoe, D., Williams, T., Stone, J. M., Reed, L. J., Colasanti, A., ... & Nutt, D. J. (2012). Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(6), 2138-2143.
Ehrenwald, J. (1971). Mother-child symbiosis: Cradle of ESP. Psychoanalytic Review, 58, 455-466.
Gopnik, A. (2020). Why Babies are more Conscious than we are? BrainMind Summitt, Stanford University, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtG7hn9Mr3g
Thomas, D. (2021) A participatory research study to explore the healing potential of children's anomalous experiences. Explore, 18(5), 551-558.
Thomas, D. M. (2023). Children's Unexplained Experiences in a Post Materialist World: What Children Can Teach Us about the Mystery of Being Human. John Hunt Publishing.
Thomas, D., & O'Connor, G. (2023). Exploring near death experiences with children post intensive care: A case series. EXPLORE, 20(3), 443-449.
Wittmann, M., Neumaier, L., Evrard, R., Weibel, A., & Schmied-Knittel, I. (2017). Subjective time distortion during near-death experiences: an analysis of reports. Zeitschrift für Anomalistik, 17(2017), 309-320.