Age and lucid dreaming

Hey everybody,

I was wondering about this.
Does age have an influencing in Lucid Dreaming?
For example, the chance of LD, the intensity, the dream recall, etc.

I can imagine that a younger person, having a bigger fantasy, can (lucid) dream more easily than older people.
If I think about it, it seems I am remembering less and less dreams as I become older.
In my younger ages I tended to remember my dreams far more often.

What are your opinions about this?

~ElCapuccino

I agree with you, younger people simply have a better imagination. I also read somewhere children (especially 7-10 year olds) dream a lot and can remember their dreams with little effort.

Don’t know if age has something to do with lucid dreaming… just curious, but how old are you now? :razz:

That’s what I thougt! Im 19, but I do remember that when I was around 10 I had lucid dreams every now and then. I don’t remember my last lucid dream when I was a teenager. Anybody knows if there is done research about this?

My opinion is that it’s not so much about age as it is lifestyle and maturation into a culture that doesn’t give much value to dreams. As we get older our responsibilities increase and we have less free time. There are fewer socially acceptable ways for adults to let loose their imaginations. And now, in the 21st century even kids don’t use their imaginations as much as they used to. So many novel toys and gadgets exist to do the work for them.
I’d say age is more of a correlation to DR and LDs than a causation of them. But I can’t point to any studies that confirm me or say otherwise.

Well, the reason why we tend to have more lucid dreams as a child is because there isn’t any “barrier” to lucid dreaming. This “barrier” I’m referring to is the belief that lucid dreaming is “difficult” to achieve. On the other hand children just do it.

I have to agree with eyeswide with regards to it being a product of us becoming more focused on paying for food, water, shelter and all the other things we need or feel we need. We no longer see much use in dreaming, it seems wasteful and doesn’t help with the ‘real problems’ we feel we have, we may still want it, but for most it’s weak and not a real deep ‘need’ which we feel sub-consciously too. We can’t lie to ourselves and make ourselves believe something which we don’t by force. If you don’t feel much use / need to dream, then that sub-conscious belief is what will affect recall and ability to dream, not what you consciously want. If you feel on some level you need to spend your whole dream, contemplating the mundane, then that’s what will happen. For kids that’s boring and stupid, so they don’t do it. It’s possible for us to let go of that need, and bring back the magical worlds in dreams, but you have to really believe it’s ok, even necessary to do that, even at the deepest level.

I’m 22 and my dreams are every bit as vivid, random and creative as they were when I was 10. Just recently I’ve identified a new world which has formed recently and recurred in a number of dreams. This is probably because dreams are still very important to me. Admittedly there may be longish periods where I don’t recall dreams, but this is more through lack of effort on my part (it going into other things in life) than any biological limitation.