Moms know best: Doctors say 'mother's intuition' is real

Tammy Aronson had a bad feeling that day in 1983. And if she hadn't trusted her "mother's intuition," the misery could have lasted much longer.

As another Mother's Day approaches, she is reminded of those days. Aronson needs no convincing that this ability is real, but if she did, a nationally known psychiatrist would back her up. Dr. Judith Orloff not only believes in it, she has made it part of her medical practice.

Back then, Aronson had left an abusive husband in Vermont, she said recently, and had brought their two young children to Florida for a new start.

Her husband followed them and found a place of his own nearby.

Aronson pursued a divorce. On her lawyer's advice, she agreed to take their daughter, age 1 1/2, and son, 3, to visit their father at his apartment on Fort Myers Beach. With the kids content and playing inside, she left for a little while.

After about an hour, the feeling of foreboding she'd had all day intensified. She drove back to the apartment to check on her kids.

"I was freaking out," Aronson recalled. "I knew he was going to do something, and sure enough, everything was cleaned out and they were gone," she said recently while heating ravioli in the kitchen of the Joseph H. Messina Child Care Center, where she is the director. "I didn't know where they were for three months." And then she had a dream.

"I woke up one morning and knew that they were in Indian Something, Massachusetts," Aronson, 54, recalled. She said that the kids were with her in the dream -- "I felt their presence"-- and she saw a sign that read "Indian" and "Massachusetts." So she called the Lee County Sheriff's Office and spoke to deputy Richard Chard, who had been working on her case. Because Aronson had never met her in-laws, she wouldn't have known that they lived in Indian River, Mass. But officers discovered that fact and sent a crew out to check the house. The children were indeed there.

Aronson doesn't know where the information came from. She has no memory of having heard of Indian River, Mass., before that day. It's certainly possible that she had heard of the town before and had no need to remember it until she dredged it up in a dream. She doesn't know how she knew, and it doesn't matter.

She has seen other mothers, including her own, demonstrate this intuitive ability.