Indigo Children

[pt_tangles]

In some of the teen message boards I visit, I have been seeing a distressing resurgence in the number of kids who choose to believe that they are 'Indigo Children'.  This whole phenomena bothers me.  It is a scam that people buy into lock, stock and barrel simply because they want to believe that parenting is easy or that their situation in life really is more special than someone else's.

I have read the pages and I have taken the quizes.  If I bought into this line of crap, I could make the claim that I am an Indigo.  I have strong leadership qualities.  I am a dreamer and I am sensitive to other people's moods.  I am also a strong personality and if I had not been raised with manners and boundaries, I could very easily have been the holy terror that Indigo checklists describe.

Parenthood is not easy, people.  Sometimes kids are hard to deal with.  Sometimes they don't want to learn to live in society because being a naked screaming me-me is much more fun.  But just because kids may not want to be a part of society and conform to societal rules is no reason that they should not be equipped to deal with the people around them.  To deny them the knowledge that they need to prosper in modern society is to cripple them for the rest of their lives.

Like it or not we live in places where you have to wait in line sometimes.  Where you can't just take off all your clothes and run naked through the streets whenever you feel like it.  We live in places where you need to have and know some sort of boundaries.  If you cannot operate within those boundaries, how do you ever expect to survive?

The Indigo and Crystal (and now Rainbow) phenomena are frauds.  While everyone may be special in their own way, you are not more evolved or less human than anyone else.  You are going through all the same problems that everyone else has at your age, and you will come through it just like everyone else has.  Being human is not something to be ashamed of.

People use the Indigo thing as a crutch.  It is an excuse to not grow up and deal with real life and it is an excuse to not have to 'be the bad guy' and discipline their kids. The last generation used the excuse of 'wanting to be their kids' friends', this is just the New Age version of lazy parenting.

Real life is hard.  Parenting is hard.  Setting boundaries and living within those boundaries is hard.  It isn't meant to be easy.  It is through the struggle that you come to know yourself, and appreciate the type of person you are.  Everyone is unique.  Everyone thinks that their child is the most special.  That doesn't need to mean that they are anything other than a beautiful person.

If you really want to change the world, live by example.  Be happy and productive and healthy.  People will follow, even if you never see the fruits of your efforts.

--Phae

X-posted to Phae in Space

Comments

[tn-lark.livejournal.com]

Personally I have always used the term "Indigo child" as a code phrase meaning "I can't control my kids".

Rather than spend time parenting, taking time to set limits and enforce them, teaching proper behaviors, and all of the other things that go into raising a child, it is simpler to let them run wild and say you can't curtail their behavior because they are somehow different or special from any of the children who came in all the millions of generations before them. What is it that is driving this trend. Is it that Moms these days grow up apart from their own Mothers and don't have that parental wisdom to draw on in raising their own kids? Is it because in general these days and both parents work and have less time for the kids?? Is it that parenting no longer is held as being an important career? Are kids just something one is expected to HAVE like the right kind of car or the home in the suburbs?

I have also seen it used a lot in cases where a parent did not want to admit that perhaps their little darling might have ADHD issues because that would mean that they were less than perfect. Of course the one to suffer is the child who misses out on part of his educational needs because he cannot concentrate long enough to master the material.

And the Crystal/Rainbow hype is just more of the "my kid is speshuler than yours".

I think the whole thing is a poison that needs to be stamped on whenever it arises before it becomes any more entrenched in our society.

[pt_tangles]

I think that a lot of it is the same problem that people of my parents' generation had (and my own father). They never want to be the 'bad guy'. They never want to have to say no, so they find a reason not to.

But, as has been often said, kids have oodles of friends. They don't need that in their parents. They need guidence and discipline. They need their parents to show them how to grow into productive human beings. It is a big job, and I think that there are far too many people who either are having kids because their friends are (which I have seen a lot of in the community I was raised ... it isn't pretty), or because they want to have someone who will love them unconditionally when they feel that they do not have the love and understanding of their family and friends already (which I think puts unfair pressure on children).

And I think that a lot of it, like you said, is desperate denial of a less than perfect child. Like somehow their kid has to be perfect in every way in order to be worthy of love.

The indigo phenomena is kind of a catch all for both the angsty misunderstood crowd and folks who either really need help parenting or probably shouldn't have been parents in the first place.

--Phae