Mr. Mike said:
While not strictly past life related, I remember clearly being 4 and 5 years old and getting incredibly frustrated with how every time I would try to join an adult conversation at a family gathering I would be shuffled down to the basement with my brother. Eventually I just stopped trying because nobody listened to what I had to say. My grandparents, particularly in my fathers side believed very strongly that children should be seen but not heard even though I was a top of the class child back then. I also had a problem with speaking correctly due to partial deafness as a child so it was probably too much effort to listen as well.
That sounds like my childhood for the most part. I found it very frustrating that somehow kids would be relegated to the kids table or "the adults are talking" :grr: However in my mom's large Italian family, kids were always welcome.
I think largely that issues like reincarnation have a bad rep in western culture for a couple of reasons. The first I think gets handed down from the post war, atomic age in that there's an egg head for the complicated stuff and the average work a day Joe doesn't know anything. I think too in that changing world, people fell back on their rank and file religion with the same expectation, that the experts are in charge.
The second is that in the cultures that do believe in reincarnation, they tend to be so different from our own, there's so much culture shock that it's hard to not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
The other thing though that may make children's speech difficult to interpret as being indicative of a past life is that it may also not be obvious as such either. Many things have the potential to be overlooked without knowing the larger context. Without them, a child may simply appear to have a natural ability, a fear, or just an active imagination.
For instance my son excels at math, art and building things out of legos and stuff. I could easily sit back and play the proud parent without giving it a second thought. But I know better since I have a copy of a newspaper article in which my son in his former life said he really wished he had been something more useful in life like an engineer.
To answer the original question though, I think sadly, that it may be viewed much like within our culture here. A majority of people won't give it any recognition other than a vague sense of cultural acceptance. I think few if any, just like here, have stand out cases. Those that do, have such for a reason, but the difference there may be that there is more help available to them in the form of tribal elders and spiritual leaders where as here in contrast, we regard it as a pseudo science and fringe, carnival-esque side show.
