“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Children play at getting killed. They try to imagine what death is like. They imagine what it would be like to fall from a wall like Humpty-Dumpty, or to break their necks. They imagine tragic roles with as much creative abandon as they imagine roles of which adults might approve. They are often quite aware of “willing” themselves sick to get out of difficult situations—and of willing themselves well again (with humor).¹

I’ll also endorse Seth’s statement that children “are often quite aware of willing themselves sick to get out of difficult situations.” I remember very well doing that on certain occasions—usually to avoid some school activity—and that even then I was surprised because my parents didn’t catch on to what I was up to. (Getting well after the danger period had passed was no problem!)

Jane said I’d never told her about getting sick on purpose, although I thought I had. I asked her if she’d ever done that. “Sure,” she said. “I know that sometimes I made myself sick to get out of stuff like diagramming sentences and doing multiplication tables, in Catholic grade school. I was terrified of those things—I think it was in the fourth grade. I think I gave myself the mumps once, too.”