A few weeks ago my pal, mamachameleon , asked the following question:

What are your thoughts on Indigo Children? Is this a phenomena that actually exists, or is it a coping mechanism for parents of children diagnosed with ADD, Autism, or other spectrum disorders?

It took me a long while to think of a response. 

As a rule, I'm very leary about any claims the New Age movement makes because most of what these people profess is pure psuedo-science or science-fantasy.  You'd say to me, "Val, you're a Witch, I thought all you occult types supported the beliefs of each other!"  Um, not true.  You can't loop all of us unconventionals onto one string and think we'll all sway the same way.  I have an open mind, but shut it tightly closed when it sniffs bullshit.  And, needless to say, before you start inviting me over to watch The Secret, better stop right there or be prepared for a lecture on magico-religion (a form of proto-science or psudeoscience used as a form of religious practice to influence the forces of Nature and the Paranormal to do your bidding).  Both science and religion can agree on the same thing, but explain it in different ways; yet it is religion that is more closed-minded because once something is believed to be caused by a supernatural force, it tends to become sacred and therefore the scientific claim becomes a threat to the religious thought.  The New Age movement was started to sort of bridge the gap between science and religion, but doesn't do a good enough job.  Like some Christians who will use a Biblical scripture to justify their behavior, New Agers will borrow a magical belief and use superificial science fact to justify a fantastic or imaginative claim about human nature.  But that's another issue.  Today I want to talk about the theory of Indigo Children.  First let me explain what it's all about:

The concept of Indigo Children originated with the book "Understanding Your Life Through Color," by Nancy Ann Tappe.  Tappe was a self-professed psychic who percieved the auras of other people and came to understand how color effects people emotionally and spiritually.  An aura is the field of multi-colored radiation attributed to a person's soul or spirit and may reflect an individual's mood or personality.  Currently there is no scientific evidence to support that auras are real or that they can be percieved by the naked eye, but many psychics claim to see colors surrounding people in an egg-like shape over their physical bodies and that these colors have something to say about the personality of the individual.  Nancy Ann Tappe began to percieve more and more children born with an indigo aura.  The color indigo in someone's aura is supposed to indicate a more "magical" personality that has a higher intelligence, greater perception, and a strong sense of destiny.  According to Tappe, "today she estimates that 97 percent of children under ten, and 70 percent of those age 15 to 25, are "Indigo."   The idea of Indigo Children was further popularized by the 1998 book "The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived", written by the husband-and-wife team of Lee Carroll and Jan Tober who based a large amount of their knowledge via channeling an angelic entity known as Kryon.  Like something out of a science-fiction novel, Kryon was sent to Earth to speak to Carroll (a former audio engineer) and through his teachings lead human kind to ascend to a higher vibrational state of being.

See where this gets a tad surreal?  New Agers have this tendency to base many of their claims on flimsy fantastic footing -- any outrageous claim is backed up with just enough common sense to make it seem real, but then they hit you over the head with a claim that they are channelling some out-of-this-world force and then sell what they are preaching to fund their philosophical movement.  Hence why I don't like documentaries like The Secret that use psuedo-science to back up superficial means to assist people in their endeavors to lead a successful life.  It is simply a gimmick loosely based on ancient religion and folklore, mixed with Judeo-Christian philosophy and magico-religious teachings from various neo-Pagan sources.  It is nothing new, is no big secret, only scratches the surface of science, and does nothing to validate the deeper message of the ancient mystery religions that many people today are attempting to revive.

Indigo children are supposed to represent the next stage of human evolution.  The abilities of these children vary between what believers consider paranormal abilities or just a greater compacity for empathy and creativity.  A dangerous belief amongst those who support the theory of Indigo Children is that kids who exhibit attention deficit disorder (ADD) or ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) represent "a new kind of evolution of humanity" and shouldn't be given drugs or traditional therapy to treat their disorders because they are not really mentally ill.  They believe that such children should be given special care and training.  The reason why this belief is dangerous is because the child then grows up rather arrogant and spoiled, they become more disruptive towards others, and with their parents believing that they are "more special" than other kids, tend to often talk back, and in other cases, such children can become violent and pushy.  Without truly helpful therapy and medicine, the child suffers and there is a tendency for that child to later become a dysfunctional adult with a host of other personality disorders and illnesses.  

I can see why some parents would not want their kids to be labelled as mentally defective because it implies that their kid is not perfect or that they are to blame for their kid's failures in life.  Every sane parent not only wants their kid to be special, they already believe their child is special, and so believing that their child has that magical Indigo aura is a friendly and wonderful concept to embrace.  According to the National Institute of Mental Health, ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed childhood disorder and with so many children diagnosed, there is bound to be a lot of cases of misdiagnosis.  Yet instead of researching scientific studies, people are more prone to listen to claims reported on Oprah.  It's more interesting to blame a child's behavior on something magical than on something realistic.  We want to believe that, with each new generation, we are getting smarter or better.  But evolution does NOT happen over night.  Evolution takes thousands of years.  We may be headed for an Age of Aquarius, but we may never see vast human changes tomorrow.

How can you recognize your child as Indigo? 

According to the highly problematic teachings of Kryon, here is a list of traits (from the Indigo Child website): 

• They come into the world with a feeling of royalty (and often act like it)
• They have a feeling of "deserving to be here," and are surprised when others don't share that.
• Self-worth is not a big issue. They often tell the parents "who they are."
• They have difficulty with absolute authority (authority without explanation or choice).
• They simply will not do certain things; for example, waiting in line is difficult for them.
• They get frustrated with systems that are ritually oriented and don't require creative thought.
• They often see better ways of doing things, both at home and in school, which makes them seem like "system busters" (nonconforming to any system).
• They seem antisocial unless they are with their own kind. If there are no others of like consciousness around them, they often turn inward, feeling like no other human understands them.
• School is often extremely difficult for them socially.
• They will not respond to "guilt" discipline ("Wait till your father gets home and finds out what you did").
• They are not shy in letting you know what they need.

These are all symptoms of a child, or even an adult, with ADD.  These kids get alienated because they don't fit in, but they are really just like everyone else and shouldn't be treated as "emissaries from Heaven".  They are kids with special needs, not special abilities.  Sure, it's grand to believe that the next generations are going to be better than us, but the New Age claims of Indigo children are out of control.  Besides seeing "spirits" and being able to communicate telepathically, they are believed to be the reincarnation of wizards and priests who will further change human kind by later developing the ability to levitate, manipulate time, and manifest miracles.  According to Doreen Virtue, famous spiritual clairvoyant and angelogist, "Many of them will live to be 300 and even 1,000 years old. It's in their spiritual contract." In an article called "Brood Indigo" from Beliefnet.com by John D. Spalding, Virtue goes on to say that "Their mission is "to help usher in the New Age of Peace," and of course this is such a nice, hopeful way to look forward to the future.  But truth is, once you get to be an adult with ADD, you're not ushering in a New Age of Peace, you're stuck in a world that will not accept you, that you will find difficulty living in because you operate outside of the "cattle-herd-like mind set" that the rest of humanity seems to belong to.

After this explantion and exploration, my answer to my friend's question is I don't believe in the hype and hysteria perpetuated by the New Age movement about Indigo Children.  What I do believe in is that our children are simply the sum of their parents; they are human. 

I have ADD, dyslexia, am bi-polar, and suffered from misdiagnosis.  I was born an over-imaginative, even considered a "psychic" child.  I went through Hell.  My brother had the same problems, but more pronounced.  We got bored with homework.  We hated school but excelled in college.  We dropped out as often as we occasionally fit in.  But we were held back from progress, brought up with restrictions based on fantatical Christian beliefs, and were isolated from other children not just because we may have been more intelligent or talented, but because our mother was a missionary and we were never in the same city for longer than a few months at times.  I consider myself a survivor of religious emotional abuse.  I believe that my brother and I would've fared much better if we had a childhood where we were allowed to use our imaginations and encouraged to think outside of the fundamentalist Christian conventions forced upon us.  But then I think of how the New Age parents are treating their kids, what if we had been brought up on the opposite side of the coin?  What if we were taught to believe we were born having signed this spiritual contract to become the next generation's miracle-workers?  I can imagine that late in life we would grow to resent New Age parents as much as we would our Penecostal ones.  If we're taught to believe we are better than everyone else, we'd probably grow to resent the rest of huamnity, too, and may be more inclined to destroy it than to save it, wouldn't you think? 

I think that the real, so-called Indigo kids are those who are allowed to be creative, they are encouraged to explore their world and make up their own minds about what is true.  They aren't hindered by religious restriction or racial prejudice.  They are uncomfortable with traditional and conservative thought because it just doesn't make sense to them.  I believe that it's the parents who are becoming more and more aware that children are very conscious about the world, more so than previous generations did.  In earlier times, children were considered not just innocent, but ignorant, and that ignorance was encouraged and protected, that it was an adult's duty to educate, not guide, children into the ways of the world.  When these previous generations grew up, they realized what their parents did wrong and became determined to not bring up their children the same way. 

It can only be expected that the next generation, freed from the prejudice of the previous generations, will only get smarter and reap the benefits of having that higher intelligence.  This is a blessing as wonderful as magic, but it's more down-to-earth and real.  You can tell who these children are today.  They're the ones who beam with an enthusiastic attitude towards life.  They are kind and forgiving.  They love to get their hands dirty and make some art.  And they can see past the bullshit force fed them by those who seek to repeat the out-dated educational patterns of the past.  They have parents who are just as defiant against convention and they have a healthy skepticism, quick to protest against what isn't fair and more than happy to tell a fantastic story.  But best of all, they give us hope for the future.  That's what they do best.  No wonder some people are prone to think of them as supernaturally gifted.  It's really tempting to believe that, but let's not forget that they are human and subject to all the flaws that go with that.