I'm slightly set off by the term "indigo children". I feel it's an empty label coined by parents who cannot really appreciate their chidlren for who they are, so they have to make them out to be something "special" like this - as if any child whatsoever wasn't special in the first place.
Most of the children called "indigo" seem to be either just gifted or mildly autistic (or schizoid). All of these have been around since the beginning of time, and I don't see how they connect to the notion of some "newly emerging consciousness".
That, or these could be ordinary children (if there ever is such a thing) who are simply curious, which is perfectly natural for any child, and who have access to all the information they want and have been absorbing it to their heart's content. Nowadays information on just about anything is increasingly easy to find, what with the Internet and with the ready availiability of books (for those who still do read them), so a child who is interested in a subject can freely learn about it. And, of course, if he or she is talkative and enthusiastic enough, he/she will go about sharing the facts they have learned and amazing the adults around them who will think extraordinary. There's also such a thing as acceleration; while remaining immature in some ways and dependent on their parents for a longer time, in other aspects children mature much faster than they used to a century or even fifty years ago, again thanks to the Internet and lack of social taboos. So the majority of them will learn about things like social issues, sexuality etc. at a far earlier age and will naturally seem more experienced and have less of the "innocence" that one usually expects to see in childen. All this is due to the development of society, not to the fact that there is a whole generation of "different" children being born.
I can also see how a child whose parents have had a bit too much of Madame Blavatskaya may claim (s)he used to be a priest in Atlantis in a past life. If the parents obsess over esoteric and/or New Age subjects - and there is plenty such parents around nowadays - and give the child the same books to read and do their best to fill him/her up with the facts they find important, of course the child is likely to pick up on their obsession. And if the child also happens to be AS or schizoid? It's pretty predictable.
Ultimately, what lies at the root of the "indigo" label seems somewhat unsettling. I remember watching a program on indigo children and the new consciousness, and there were parents and tutors, serious, mature people one would think, saying things like "you cannot just tell an indigo child what to do, you have to explain why they have to do it" or "you must take their own wishes and feelings into account and allow them to make their own decisions, they already have a marked personality you can't avoid counting with, so all you can do is be there for them and help them develop, but you can't really force them into doing anything" etc. They sounded so surprised saying this, too. I was listening and thinking - you are this old, and you have only just made the remarkable discovery that a child has a personality and that the job of a parent is to help it develop, not to mold the child in whatever image they happen to like?
I've come across the same attitude in many popular books on parenting indigo children, too. It sounds as if all the other so-called ordinary children were nonpersons, and in order to treat one's child as an individual and not an object to be fed, clothed and commanded about, one needs a label like "indigo". It's disturbing.
01 Oct 2007, 6:03 am
