Source: Skeptic dictionary.
Indigo child
The term "Indigo Child" comes from psychic and synesthete Nancy Ann Tappe, who classified people's personalities according to the hue of their auras.*
Usually each universal age is accompanied by a preponderance of people with that life color. For instance now most adults are either Blue or Violet, the two colors with the attributes most needed in this the Violet Age of transition. During the next age, the Indigo Age, Indigo colors will be the norm (Understanding Your Life Through Color 1982).
According to Tappe,
The Indigo phenomenon has been recognized as one of the most exciting changes in human nature ever documented in society. The Indigo label describes the energy pattern of human behavior which exists in over 95% of the children born in the last 10 years … This phenomena is happening globally and eventually the Indigos will replace all other colors. As small children, Indigo’s are easy to recognize by their unusually large, clear eyes. Extremely bright, precocious children with an amazing memory and a strong desire to live instinctively, these children of the next millennium are sensitive, gifted souls with an evolved consciousness who have come here to help change the vibrations of our lives and create one land, one globe and one species. They are our bridge to the future.*
According to Peggy Day and Susan Gale, the emergence of the Indigo children was foretold by Edgar Cayce long before Tappe's aura labeling.
The Indigo Children is a book by Lee Carroll, a channeler for an entity he calls Kryon, and his wife Jan Tober.
Carroll was an economics major who ran a technical audio business for 30 years until a visit to a psychic prompted a New Age midlife crisis. He found religion and started traveling around the world giving "self-help" seminars. Accompanying him was Tober, a practitioner of metaphysics and hands-on healing as well as a jazz singer who had toured with Benny Goodman and Fred Astaire (Krider 2002).
Kyron has revealed such important messages as "love is the most powerful force in the entire universe." Carroll and Tober travel the world putting on Kryon seminars. Kryon has many interests, including the Universal Calibration Lattice and EMF Balancing (empowerment through knowledge of your electromagnetic nature, i.e., how to manage your energy field which consist of "fibers of light and energy").
One thesis of The Indigo Children seems to be that many children diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder (ADD) or ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) represent "a new kind of evolution of humanity."* These children don't need drugs like Ritalin, but special care and training. The book consists of dozens of articles by authors from many walks of life. It is, accordingly, inconsistent and uneven in quality of analysis and advice. Nancy Ann Tappe is a contributor. One of the authors is Robert Gerard, Ph.D., whose piece is called "Emissaries from Heaven." He believes his daughter is an Indigo Child. He also thinks "Most Indigos see angels and other beings in the etheric." He runs Oughten House Foundation, Inc., and sells angel cards. Another contributor is Doreen Virtue, an advocate of angel therapy who has found an even further evolved generation of children is now emerging: the Crystal children.
Not all the contributors are on the fringe of New Age metaphysics, however. For example, Dr. Judith Spitler McKee is a former preschool and elementary teacher and retired Eastern Michigan University professor. She spends her time trying to interest children in reading.
how to recognize the Indigo Child
The Indigo Child is recognizable by his or her aura and by certain other traits, according to The Indigo Children website (owned by Kryon Writings).
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.
(For some examples of a few parents in the Houston area who have identified their children as Indigos, see Krider 2002. The children don't necessarily agree with the parents' assessments.)
One can understand why many parents would not want their child to be labeled as ADD or ADHD. The label implies imperfection. Some may even take it to mean the child is "damaged." Specifically, it means your child's behavior is due to a neuro-biological condition. To some, this is the same as having a malfunctioning brain or a mental disorder. Understandably, emotions run high here. Treatment of children with problems is a hot button issue for the mass media, attack lawyers, talk show hosts, columnists, and others not known for their role in clarifying complicated scientific or medical matters. Many jump on the bandwagon and attack the drug industry and psychiatrists for overdrugging our children. Opposition is fruitless, because few will listen to those who would defend those who “abuse” children. Fewer still will bother to investigate to see whether the critics know what they are talking about.
The National Institute of Mental Health says that ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed childhood disorder. It affects some 3 to 5 percent of all school-age children. (David Kaiser says 10% of school-age children have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD and that in some parts of the country 50% of the children are so diagnosed.) With so many children affected, it should be easy to find cases of misdiagnosis, inappropriate treatment, adverse drug reaction, and so on. Anecdotes of abuse, however, should not substitute for scientific studies or clinical observations by the professionals who treat these children on a daily basis. But we all know that an anecdote told on Oprah or Larry King Live by Arianna Huffington or Hilary Clinton is much more powerful than a controlled scientific study. Yet, those scientific studies must be done. Ritalin has been around since 1950, yet there are no long-term studies I am aware of that show it is safe, effective, or better than any alternative. The support for its prescription comes mostly from those in the trenches, the practitioners who treat the millions of children and adults with AD/HD. Support also comes from Ritalin's manufacturer, New Jersey-based Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., which says the drug "has been used safely and effectively in the treatment of millions of ADHD patients for over 40 years," attested by the results of 170 studies (Donohue). However, Novartis is hardly a disinterested party.
In any case, no matter how many long-term studies are done that find nothing spectacularly wrong with Ritalin, there will always be the possibility that the next one will find something horrible. For example, "researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, say their study, tracking ADHD youths into adulthood, has found a connection between Ritalin use and later abuse of tobacco, cocaine and other stimulants" (Donohue 2000). Is the connection strong enough to warrant worry? How can we be sure it wasn't the ADHD, rather than the Ritalin, that was the main basis for the connection?
The hype and near-hysteria surrounding the use of Ritalin has contributed to an atmosphere that makes it possible for a book like Indigo Children to be taken seriously. Given the choice, who wouldn't rather believe their children are special and chosen for some high mission rather than that they have a brain disorder? On the bright side, at least Kryon doesn’t prescribe blue-green algae, a popular “alternative” to Ritalin, even though there are no long-term studies on what effects blue-green algae might have on a developing child’s brain (“The Algae AD/HD Connection: Can Blue Green Algae Be of Help with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder?” by John Taylor, Ph.D.). I take it back: on the links page for the Indigo Children website there is a link to Cell Tech - http://www.celltech.com (page 189) Web site of Cell Tech, the organization that sells Klamath Lake blue-green algae.
See also star child.
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