youth and lucid dreaming

I read that as you get older it becomes harder to have a lucid dream. Does anyone know why this is? What makes children more able to have lucid dreams?

If this is true at all (I’m willing to doubt it is) then it can only be true for people who have lucid dreams on accident. It’s probably because as a child you are more willing to question your reality and whether or not the rules are actually set. whereas as you get older, these rules are fairly concrete in your mind (kind of like how most people are sure they almost never/never dream until they actually start keeping a record of their dreams). Also a subject like lucid dreaming is probably much more likely to interest children than adults, provoking more lucid dreams. Though, as I said to begin with, I doubt this is true in any way at all except that children have much more tendency to remember their dreams than adults and therefore will more likely remember lucid dreams.

Ever since I was in kindergarten, I somewhat tried to lucid dream. I would try to go to sleep playing a scene in my mind so that I could dream about it. Then during grade 6-7 I had a about 3 random LDs, not knowing what really happened I got really interested. Then last year during august I was randomly reading a Wikipedia article on the mind when I fell upon lucid dreaming. I recognized it as what I experienced a few years back. After my first 3 days of reading I had an LD. During my first month I had around 15-20 lds. Since then, I have had many a lucid dream.

I can vouch for this and say it has gotten harder for me as I’ve gotten older. I had some of my best LDs as a little kid (before I even knew what they were).

sigh I’m an old fogey now…

It doesn’t get any harder to lucid dream, as far as I’m aware, it’s just that there is virtually no chance of having a lucid dream by accident after about 12. I, for one, had many lucid dreams as a child, but they were all on accident. It wasn’t until about 7th grade that one of my friends mentioned LD4all and I realized what they were. If you try though, you can get as many as you want.

You are more likely to have LDs near the end of the sleep cycle, so it stands to reason that Children are more susceptible, they require a lot more sleep than an adult.

*  Infants need 14 hours.
* Toddlers need 12 - 14 hours.
* Preschoolers need 11 - 13 hours.
* School-aged kids need 10 - 11 hours.
* Teens need 8.5 - 9.25 hours.
* Adults need 7-9 hours of sleep.

As you can see, toddlers and preschoolers are getting up to 5hrs more sleep than the average adult, so it is understandable that they get more LDs.

As someone who often stays in bed at the week end for several extra hours, I also find I am more likely to get LD’s in the extra few hours of sleep I get.

I find that I can get lucid more easily when I am seeking answers. Kids will question everything, and I try to encourage it as much as I can because I see alot of people loose that as they get older. Maybe its the wonderment of the world and the beauty they can see wherever adults may miss it. They don’t forget that theres so much more out there and it shows in their dreams.

The extra sleep definitely helps, like mohegan said; I also tend to go lucid when I sleep more. The sleep, I’ve noticed will improve all dream recall too.

Ive had random Lucid dreams after I was 12 and before I knew what they were.

I think I had the only half-lucid dream when I was about seven. I only remember running through a rough, dirt street leading to my grandma’s in a beautiful wedding dress (that one was pretty crazy :tongue: ). A black sedan was chasing me, and I was yelling to “stop all that craziness, I know it’s just a dream”. However, I didn’t gain lucidity then and I saw everything from TPP view.

Yeah, I’ve noticed that most, if not all of my LDs have occurred between 8:30 and 9:30 inthe morning. Unfortunately that’s after my usual waking time. But when I was younger I would randomly realise I was dreaming sometimes (always in nightmares) and wake myself up. I never realised the full potential of this until, well, a few weeks ago when I found LD4All and such, and since then I’ve had 11 without really putting any effort into techniques. (I’m 17 by the way). So, youth may well be a factor in randomly occurring lucid dreams, but knowing that it is possible is a much greater factor which can oveerride that, I think.

I remember having one very real LD located within a mall when I was 11-12. I was so stoked with the realism. Before August 07 whenever I ran it would always feels if I was running in water. And I had alot of ‘’ Oh no I’m in my underwear!’’ dreams. Ever since my first lucid dream after being informed about it , I haven’t had one water running dream or underwear dream. The first lucid dream was actually initiated by me sprinting the fastest I ever have in a ND, I was breaking my limits.

I have read also that it is more difficult to LD in your teenage years, but I was 15 when I learned to LD, and i did it with great succes.

I believe this is due to the fact that as you grow older, you become less prone to accept new ideas.

Young people are more likely to be idealists and are more open to new ways of thinking, whereas adults and/or older people tend to discard new concepts and are more conservative.

This has a big impact on one’s ability to dream lucidly, because, as far as lucid dreaming is concerned, believing is doing.

Older people become psyhcologically more rigid because of working stress, unhappy love stories etc. In the shamanic way of thinking this means the losing of spiritual parts of the soul that are important for dreaming.

Adults also have less free time to these things.

When you’re young you’re excited about the world because there are so many new things to explore, much like your dreams. As you get older life ceases to be an adventure and the daily grind takes over, killing any enthusiasm and creativity that you once had. Thats my theory anyway.