Indigo Girls & Boys: Boring Music, Bad Science

Ever hear of the Indigo Children? The first I heard of them was on an Anderson Cooper 360 segment from November 14th. I didn't really think much about it because it seemed to be the type of ridiculous time filler that news programs show once in a while. In the segment, near the end of the program, I heard the following:

"Teens like Sandy claim they're part of a special generation born after 1978 known as "indigo children" for the deep blue auras that psychics say they see around them. Indigo children have high IQs and tend to be rebellious and oversensitive, they're often also said to share specials gifts, heightened intuition and psychic abilities."

I had a laugh and switched the channel to something on A&E about alien abduction, or on Lifetime about women who love too much, I think. One line from the show stuck in my mind, though, "Their parents claim they are a new breed of human."

A few days later, I overheard one of my coworkers talking about the same topic (I believe she saw the same segment), so I had to talk to her about it a little to get her take. She has a daughter whom she said is sensitive to almost everything, having bad reactions to all kinds of food and chemicals, but that she's extremely intelligent and intuitive. My coworker said that she thinks her daughter might be an Indigo Child.

I wanted to say to her that I thought it was scary to me that the idea of her daugter being an Indigo Child was anything less than an act of turning a real problem into a way of not having to worry about her illness any longer. It wasn't my place to impose my skepticism on her happy place, so I just told her that I hope her daughter gets well.

Needless to say, I believe there are explanations for everything that may seem spooky about these kids. The overactive imagination of a child is nothing compared to an adult's overactive imagination. The youngins make it up, and parents want to believe. Life is just easier and more interesting that way.