by Lee Carroll and Jan Tober

from GreatDreams Website

What is an Indigo Child? And why do we call them Indigo?

First, the definition:

An Indigo child is one who displays a new and unusual set of psychological attributes and shows a pattern of behavior generally undocumented before. This pattern has common unique factors that suggest that those who interact with them (parents, in particular) change their treatment and upbringing of them in order to achieve balance. To ignore these new patterns is to potentially create imbalance and frustration in the mind of this precious new life. The subject of this chapter is to identify, qualify, and validate the attributes of an Indigo Child.

There seems to be several kinds of Indigos, and we will describe them later in this chapter, but in the following list we can give you some of the most common behavioral patterns. Do these fit anyone you know?

The ten most common traits of Indigo Children:

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

Why are these children called Indigo?

Throughout the history of psychology, there have been systems of grouping human behavior. Indeed, often we all seem to fall into "clumps" of behavior patterns, sometimes fun to read about and identify with. These groupings try to identify and correlate human actions in many different ways - undoubtedly searching for some formula that neatly fits everyone into a slot of some kind, helping those who deal with the study of the human mind. Some of these systems are ancient; some are very new.

Validation of this fact is made by Richard Seigle, M.D., a practicing psychiatrist who is also very involved in human and spiritual studies within the Navajo Indian Nation.

Dr. Seigle’s input:

Throughout the history of Western civilization, we have had a strong need to explore, define and judge. As we discover new lands and peoples on Earth, our first thoughts were: "Who is like us and who is not. And what can we take?" Those people who were not like us in terms of color, belief, culture, and language were considered inferior throughout much of our history.

In scientific terms, we tried to categorize people by the shape of their heads, skin color, IQ, and so on. Anthropologists and psychologists have spent years evaluating how we think feel, and act. Here are some examples of various categorization systems:

• Intelligence tests, such as Wechsler (WAIS) and Stanford-Binet Personality

• Personality tests such as MMPI, MCMI, Type A, and Type B

• Projective personality assessments, such as Rorschach, TAT, and SCT

• Memory tests, such as WMS and Bender

Specific psychological factors

Factors such as the following have sometimes been used as a basis for grouping human behavior; family structure and customs; culture; dreams; self-psychology; bonding and attachment; myths; religion; conscious and unconscious motivation and thoughts.

Recognized psychiatric theorists such as the following used various systems of personality typing: Freud, Jung, Adler, Berne, Fromm, Kernberg, Klein, Maslow, Peris, Reich, Rogers, Skinner, and Sullivan.

Gandhi said,

"Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and test of our civilization."

The end of this millennium signals a higher consciousness of love and acceptance of all people - something that we could have learned centuries ago from the native cultures, if only we hadn’t perceived them as inferior.

Besides the traditional ones, there are also the spiritual and metaphysical grouping systems, which try to classify humans based on, for example, their birth attributes (astrology), their life energy, or their sacred animal association (Chinese and American Indian roots). Whatever you think of astrology and some of these seemingly unscientific systems, they have been recognized and identified institutionally as some of oldest sciences, having been found in many of the most ancient texts of human studies.

All of these systems, ancient and current, exist to help humans better understand humans.