Question:

My three year old daughter is suddenly describing an abduction, in enormous detail! My husband and I have thought that we may have been abducted, either individually, or as a family, for quite a while, but it's different when a small child tells you about it.

She says, "We were taken to the porta-see-tay."

I'm not sure about the spelling of this word. I had her repeat it several times, it was the same every time. (And she thought that I was nuts, not remembering it when I had been there with her!) I have ran a search online, and even went as far as to try searching in different languages to see if I could pull anything up, to no avail.<

Have you ever heard of this word? Or something close that a (just turned) three year old could have confused it with during an abduction? The whole part about the "porta-see-tay" went something like this.

My daughter described it as, "They took us to the porta-see-tay. It was in a whole house. And we were eating because I said that I was hungry. And they had a plane and their very own sky. It was like a dragon tales plane, not like a normal one."

"Dragon Tales" is a PBS kids show. I don't know what kind of planes they fly on it. It has been less than a month since she has been on a regular plane though, and made it clear that it wasn't like the ones we had been on.

Then she described, "The sky got dark and dark and then we can see space because we went up and up and up. And the nice guys, that were good ones, said it was time to go home and we went back to bed in our house. And you (Momma) were asleep, and Daddy was asleep, so I went to sleep."

There was much more, about tests and her description of the "spookies" as she called them. I'd really like to talk to someone about this. I wrote down everything she said so 
that I wouldn't embellish, or forget. We are more than a bit confused and concerned about our children right now, and don't know where to go for answers.

--question from Australia

Answer:

It is always fascinating when our children start describing things which we know they would have no knowledge of. It is also scarey as parents. Your daughter's choice of words reflects an abduction to another part of the universe. Do your best to keep her from becoming afraid. Just let her describe what she saw or did without telling her it isn't true. But it sounds like you are handling it this way already.

Other people have reported different alien terminology which is not surprising. Aliens probably speak different languages as we do on Earth.

The reference to the "spookies" sounds like some of the aliens called shadow people. Since posting your message, another reader has suggested maybe your daughter was saying Port City. Maybe "porta see-tay" was "Port City." Write back with further developments.