One of my guilty pleasures is watching ghost hunting shows. I know that a lot of what they do is faked. And I know that the shows that get the most advertisements and air play are the most extreme and the most over the top. But they remind me of a simpler time – when I was a tween and teen, and reading books on ESP and Crystal Skulls because I knew that I was psychic, I had spoken to spirits, but I was unable to find other resources to guide me, and no one in my life believed me except my best friend.

I recently found that there’s a reboot of the show, “Psychic Kids.” Watching it now, as a more experienced parent (my kids were toddlers when the original aired) has left me with mixed feelings and a lot of questions.

The original show brought adult psychics and psychologists to the homes of families who had children that were troubled by spirits, taught them how to better manage their psychic abilities, and then brought the 2 kids in each episode together to explore a location that was “haunted” in order to show them there were other kids like them and they weren’t alone.

This version brings young adults who were on the first version of the show to mentor the kids in this version. The kids don’t get together, but each episode, the mentor takes the child to a place to explore their powers.

One of the things that I wonder when watching this is, “why is it that all of these kids live in homes with malevolent spirits?” Is it that kids with psychic abilities are more likely to have issues if they live somewhere with bad energy? Is it that kids with psychic abilities who have parents who don’t are less likely to be taught basic ground/center/shield type rituals, and thus they bring stuff home with them? (I actually think this isn’t it, one of the cases on the new show is a kid who has a parent who is a professional psychic who took the child to house cleansings, where a dark spirit came home with him – either the parent isn’t paying attention, or the parent isn’t all that competent as a psychic.) Is it that in families where these sorts of skills and abilities are more common, the house is already cleansed and has regular energetic cleansing?

While I agree that a few days of work can give anyone with psychic abilities a better handle on what they’re doing and how to be in control, I also feel like longer term work is hugely important for the level of exploration some of these kids are doing. I hope that most of you are doing the work with your kids to teach basic energetic hygeine, no matter how psychic they are, and giving them tools to make it work.