The Dangerous Myth of Indigo Children

I was sitting in a therapist's office with my middle daughter when I first consciously heard the term "Indigo Child". We had come to this therapist while in the course of treatment of a life threatening illness. When a member of a family is seriously ill it affects the whole family, and we had been going to family therapy and my daughter to individual therapy, to help us cope with her illness and also to help us all better deal with its emotional side. We switched to a single therapist who would see both the family as a group and my daughter as an individual because our pediatrician thought this would be more effective. And so did I. For my daughter, who is 14, seeing a therapist who knew nothing of our family dynamic was isolating, and then she went into family therapy feeling like the weight of everything was on her shoulders. We went to this new therapist hoping to relieve some of that burden.

And, early on, things seemed much more positive. The therapist asked a little about our family, a little about my daughter's illness and a little about my daughter in general. After 30 minutes, as we were getting up to leave, she mentioned she thought my daughter was an indigo child, and along with the new blood work she wanted our doctor to perform, she also wanted me to read the book The Indigo Child. She said my daughter was a very special person, an 'old soul' who had a lot to offer the world. Of course, I know my daughter has a lot to offer the world, but I had never heard this term indigo child before.

I am a deeply spiritual as well as an intellectual person. My daughter is a lot like me, but also a lot like her father. I am happy to wear my emotions on my sleeve at times and to willingly give myself over to others, regardless they may reject me. My ex husband and my younger daughter are more reserved and protective of their emotions, though my daughter is extremely empathetic and suffers right alongside any stranger in pain. It is in her personal relationships that she can have moments of great reserve.

I dutifully bought the assigned book, only slightly daunted by the reality it was on the shelves of the New Age section of the book store on not on the parenting, psychology or health sections. I read it cover to cover within hours and then went onto the internet and read everything else I could find about the concept. See, this clinician told my daughter she felt she as an indigo and that would impact the therapeutic environment. So, of course, I thought there was a therapeutic basis for the term "Indigo Child". Well, there is not. It was coined by a psychic named Nancy Tappe in the late 1970s. Tappe was very involved in the New Age movement and was a reader of auras. In the late 70s she began to see a new color around a lot of children. The color was indigo. Tappe felt strongly that these children were meant to change the world. They were technologically inclined. Many were mis-diagnosed as ADD or ADHD. They came into the world thinking of themselves as "royalty" according to Tappe. They had difficulty with normal schools, normal ways of learning and did not socialize well with other children who were not also indigos. With children like these, Tappe (and later engineer Lee Carroll and his wife, the former jazz singer and self avowed metaphysic Jan Tabor, in their book, "The Indigo Child", published in 1999) you didn't parent, but cooperated. You helped them tell you what they needed. They had the ability to read minds and they thought in a completely different plane than the rest of us.

Tappe, Carroll, Tabor, none of them are psychiatrists, psychologists, medical doctors, clinicians, or even masters level therapeutic professionals. Tappe reads auras. Carroll heard God talking to him one day and he now channels someone or something named Kryon to write his books. Tabor left the music stage to devote her life to metaphysics. Not to belittle their journeys. After all, Saint Augustine believed he heard the voice of God, turned his life around and became one of my faith's great theologians. Saint Paul was riding off to someplace when he was struck blind before really 'seeing' God. Of course, to the best of my knowledge, neither Augustine nor Paul told us we should stop parenting our children, should refrain from medicating them for medically diagnosed conditions, or that children with certain aural colors could read our minds. St. Luke is said to have historically been a physician, but even in the gospel attributed to him, which I have read in Greek, Aramaic and English, he nowhere seems to be practicing medicine through scripture, but is instead a witness to theology. Jesus Christ, my savior, said "Suffer the little children to come unto me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Good thing, I think, as the kingdom of earth certainly throws them a bunch of loops when they are in need.

Make no mistake, my daughter is facing a life and death medical struggle that includes brain chemical issues. When you begin to waste away your brain doesn't work as it used to and you need to be restored to health to truly think fully clearly again. How marvelous might it be to hear you are an indigo and oyu may be the one to save the world and you can read minds and are a genius we have not yet begun to understand. My daughter is a remarkable human being, ans she is indeed endowed with many, many gifts from God. But, she can't read minds. She can't even read her own mind too clearly right now. Unlike the children described in Tappe's treatise and the Carroll/Tabor books, she has never been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, isn't anti-social, doesn't think the world needs to come aorund to her way of thinking (unless we disagree on something, then she is right and I am wrong, or her teacher is wroong, or her sister is wrong, etc., etc. - like any kid or adult with a strong opinion about something.). She read with me a bit about these indigos and she was greatly troubled. What if mom had bought into all of this? What if we went intot he next therapy session and said, "Thank you so very much for answering the riddle of what to do to get better by saying letting the starving sage tell us"? What if she has been ADD or ADHD and we'd taken her off Ritalin or whatever was prescribed or taken her off the special diet many doctors recommend for such children or stopped seeking therapeutic help to succeed in school and instead started looking at places that would worship this child in her learning? Seriously, we were in a clinical setting. I fully expected when a clinician described a quality or condition she felt my child possessed that such a quality or condition would have some clinical basis, some testing, some studies of like children. None of that exists. There is plenty of literature and clinical study on ADD, ADHD, generalized anxiety disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia, Asperger's Syndrome, Autism - but nothing that says children diagnosed with any or some of these disorders are probably just indigos whose genius remains understood and undernourished.

When I think of how some of my friends have struggled mightily with new treatments and therapies for autism, Aspergers, I am appalled that some say that based upon the reading by a new agers of a bunch of kids auras - that some of these autistic amd mildly autistic children are nothing of the sort and will thrive is their indigo natures are catered to. Granted, I think ADD and ADHD are over-diagnosed today. I think the emphasis on test scores and not leaving children behind has turned schools into mills at times and teachers face incredible pressure to medicate kids to get them to think in confirmity and take tests in confirmity, etc. But calling someone Indigo won't erase real emotional problem, or real psychiatric disorders. Yes, you do have to communicate differently with a child with Asperger's Syndrome than you do with a child who doesn't think and process in that way. Yes, some children with ADD and ADHD can succeed without medication, but they do need remediation. And, finally, no anti-social behavior should not be accepted and fostered as part of some unknown type of genius. All children socialize and develop at different ages and in different ways. but eventually, in order to live in society and thrive, we all have to learn to adapt to accepted social norms. A child who is not otherwise impaired and incapable has to learn to wait in line. Children have to learn to listen as well as speak. They need to acknowledge authority at times, be it parental, educational or social. And parents need to parent. Children do not raise themselves, or if they are forced to it is a long, painful process. Children are individuals, but they are also part of society. They want to fit in some of the time, even if they also want their individuality acknowledged at other times.

Some of the articles on Indigo children said for every child we raise who becomes a lawyer we have lost an artist or a metaphysician. Hooey. You can be both if you are so inclined, and you can be neither if you are not so inclined. Very few children are who they will be at age two or three. They carry part of themselves through life and all along the way they acquie new parts and new dimensions.

My older sister, who is very new age, thinks her 15 year old daughter is an indigo. She never quiets her daughter when the child/nascent adult enters a room and demands everyone's attention. She hasn't helped her child take the right courses in high school to ensure she will graduate. She calls the child a musical genius even though the only instrument the child plays is piano and she does so at the beginer level. She allows the child to behave in an anti-social, self-absorbed manner, even though it is clear this young person would willingly adapt her behaviors to be more socially accepted. Of course, doing that would mean parenting, taking time to develop social and academic skills.

I look at my daughter and her cousin, who are less than two years apart in age. Each has a very genersous soul. Each has high intelligence. One is described as a joy to be around (except by immediate family when she's being disagreeable), to teach, to coach, to have for a friend. The other is called a challenge. Part of that is each of their natures. My daughter is sweet, kind, thoughtful and empathetic; her cousin is demanding, thoughtless at times, self-centered. Part of it is nurture. I expect my daughter to be polite, to work hard, to help others. My sister expects people to accept and help take care of her daughter. Isn't that what the indigo concept really is - enabling? When we fail to set limits, to explore behaviors outside of emotion (because we all feel angry, sad, disappointed, anti-social at times - but we don't ahve to act these out all the time) and to look at ways to adapt our behaviors to reflect a more healthy emotional way of being - we enable bad behavior, failing emotional health. Happiness, stability, is much more altruistic than it is selfish. Children, babies are more self absorbed naturally than adults because their worlds are smaller. The label of indigo is a misguided way to expand the womb, I think. It lets us return to and remain in a time when the world revolved around us and our personal needs. It also contains a great deal of very speculative association - with qualities like the ability to read minds, untapped genius in many areas, etc. You can't know these things in small children unless they truly exhibit them.

The concept of the indigo child is a myth, a childhood fairy tale. All children are imaginative, prone to motion, short to attention, and their intelligence is often quite visible. They are also by nature more naturally empathetic than pragmatic adults. Misreading these graces and fomring them up into a new age package that can hide so many impediments to a child's long term well being is a great disservice. It's one thing for a seer to comment upon an aura, or for an engineer to say he heard the voice of God and he now channels this Kryon thing in his books and they both see indigo children, children with gifts - it's quite another to give that sort of parochial impression any clinical credence. We oftem don't want to hear we need to do more and more work to raise our children healthy. We don't want to hear that they may have some impairment to standardized learning. But we aren't serving the child when we shy away form the known and latch onto the obscure and the ultimately harmful.

What if I went back into the therapist's office the next week and accepted this Indigo concept? What if we put my child in charge at this stage? What if we lauded her mystical gifts and failed to acknowledge the reality her brain isn't always working the way it should. Sure, sometimes she yells at me and says terrible things, but most of the time, when she is rested, nourished, and as her health improves, she will return to being her own self. As her parent I owe her the opportunity to avail herself oh the best medical attention, the best therapeutic support for herself and for her family - so she can heal and grow as she is meant to. What if, unlike my niece, who is not so much being harmed as being hampered by going through life setting her own tune, my daughter's clinical treatment started being directed not by proven medical science, but by whimsical New Age thought? We believe firmly in God's help in these matters, and in being open to His grace in the healing process, but we also know a heart cannot heal, organs cannot heal through mind reading or any other power of the mind. And any clinician who supports taking a child off medication, out of a true therapeutic environment without warning a parent that this is untested, unproven and likely unsuccessful waters, shouldn't be practicing medicine or therapy or anything else.