10 Tell-Tale Signs A Changeling Has Replaced Your Child

**Kazimiera** · 01-09-2018, 03:48 PM

10 Tell-Tale Signs A Changeling Has Replaced Your Child

Source: https://www.ranker.com/list/signs-yo...lectionId=2139

Changeling stories have existed for ages. According to legends, a changeling is a fairy child left in a human child's place as the human is whisked away. These changeling children were reportedly sickly, mischievous, or aggressive children who needed to be left out in the wilderness or even tortured in order to get the real child back. That means that true stories of changelings - or those stories that were believed to be true - often resulted in the death or mistreatment of a child.

What may have started as a means to explain sickly or misbehaving children became a real concern. Signs your child is a changeling vary from legend to legend, but typically include strange behaviors or illnesses. When we look at changeling signs today, we encounter superstitions and misunderstandings of conditions such as autism, but for the people who lived during this particular time period, these concerns were very real and worthy of investigation.

Your Baby Has Unusual Features Or Birthmarks

Nowadays, we know a great deal more about birthmarks and disabilities than we did in the days when changeling stories were considered true and disfigurement could mean a death sentence. Physical deformation was often reason enough to believe that a child was a changeling, as is shown in the story "The Maiden Without Hands." Unfortunately, this meant that children who did not look the way their parents wanted them to were suspected to be changelings, and the ways that these parents tried to get their real children back were often cruel. In light of what we know today, children who might have been seen as changelings could have had conditions such as Down syndrome or spina bifida, making stories of the abusive treatment of children thought to be changelings all the more horrifying.

Your Child Has An Aversion To Iron

Iron has long been recognized as being anti-magic, including for fairies. Some stories suggested that desperate parents leave iron shears open in the crib to get rid of a changeling in a sort of double-whammy effect - not only would iron repel a fairy, but shears left open would also form a cross. That's, of course, ignoring the fact that open shears are a hazard, particularly to the young children who were far more likely to be in the crib than a fairy.

Your Child Is Left Handed

We live in a right-handed world, with left-handed people still being somewhat suspect to a large majority of the population. In the time of changeling stories, however, that stigma was even worse. Because left handedness is uncommon - only around 10% of the population is left-hand dominant - it was often considered to be yet another sign of a changeling child. Like the various medical conditions that may cause a parent to believe that their child is a changeling, left handedness likely led to terrible consequences for the child, including torture, drowning, or poisoning, in an attempt to get the human child back.

You Have A Sudden String Of Bad Luck

Between a changeling's negative traits and the fact that their beloved child has been swapped with a fairy, parents have plenty of bad luck to deal with. But a visit from a fairy child can have even more consequences, as some stories describe how changelings can suck good fortune right out of a household, and even blaming changelings for a family's poverty, making the idea of getting rid of them even more attractive.

Your Baby Cries All The Time

At one time or another, all parents have experienced the feeling that their child never stops crying. In changeling stories, though, it's not just a feeling - these fairy children may in fact always be crying, whether it's because they're from the fairy realm and missing their home or because they're simply troublesome. According to one Swedish story, a particular changeling child exhibited incessant crying along with other telling symptoms, making it impossible for the poor mother and father to care for the child. Thankfully, unlike in some stories, this mother only threatened to do the baby harm rather than actually doing it, and the fairy mother returned the real baby before any harm was done.

Your Child Won't Stop Eating

A young child naturally needs to eat a lot, but a changeling child seems to be unable to do anything but devour everything in sight, often to the detriment of its poverty-stricken mother and father. A child who suddenly developed an increased appetite was even more suspect - in some stories, a mother would notice that something was different about her child precisely because it suddenly gained a ravenous appetite. By responding to a child's voracious eating with trickery, such as cooking in eggshells to provoke a baby's laugher, some mothers would be able to expose the changeling and get their own baby back.

Your Child Starts Misbehaving

Numerous changeling stories describe how a child would have a sudden change in personality - where a once thriving, good-natured child became a terror overnight, demanding extra food or simply misbehaving. Of course, all children misbehave from time to time, though some more frequently than others. Changeling children, however, were said to delight in the misfortune of others and to purposefully cause it themselves, making parents all the more keen to get rid of them.

Your Child Is Unusually Intelligent

Though a child who didn't physically develop properly was the most common sign of a changeling, a child who learned too quickly was another sign that they might have been swapped with a fairy. Though this particular symptom of being a fairy usually accompanied several others, it was still a tell-tale sign in itself. In one story, after being told that her children were not in fact her own, a mother was instructed to listen to her children talking to each other to see if they spoke about things they were too young to know about. Too much adult knowledge can reveal that a child is an immortal fairy, making it a good trap to expose the fairy swap.

Your Child Is Aggressive Or Mean

Not all children are perfect little angels, but changelings in particular have a reputation for being mean, and even cruel. In one changeling story, the fairy in question was prone to making mean faces and taunting people for no apparent reason. In addition to the other symptoms, fairy changelings tend to be rude - perhaps because they don't see the need to be polite to humans.

Your Child Is Unusually Withdrawn

Children are expected to be playful and lively, so when one is particularly quiet or withdrawn it can be a cause for concern. Today, we have medical diagnoses for children who have trouble in social situations - such as autism, Asperger syndrome, or obsessive-compulsive disorder. When changeling stories were popular, however, these symptoms were said to be signs of a changeling child. This connection may have also led to the prevalent myth that spilling seeds could be used to trap fairies, who wouldn't be able to resist coming out of hiding to count them. As with the other changeling signs that can now be attributed to common medical conditions, these myths shed a terrible light on how children with conditions like autism and Asperger syndrome were treated.