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INDIGO CHILDREN, CHILDBIRTH AND
BEHAVIOUR CONTROL DRUGS
J R R Tolkien was Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University from 1925-45. In his book Lord of the Rings Tolkien set out and succeeded in creating an English mythology akin to that of Ancient Greece. Tolkien was totally fluent in Middle English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons. Learning it was not a struggle. It was as if he had been born with some inherited knowledge. So, when he was boy, was Tolkien what would now perhaps be described as an Indigo Child?
I was introduced to the concept of Indigo Children by my very dear friend Shizuko Ouwehand. Shizuko was born into a large family in Kyoto in Japan in 1940. She was brought up in the Shinto religion with the customary shrine inside the house. Shizuko became familiar with doctrines of Oomato, a religious order based near Kyoto where two of her brothers became missioners. The Oomato faith, which had 2 million followers in prewar Japan, was founded in 1892 on the writings of Nao Deguchi, a completely uneducated country woman who wrote down with automatic writing what an inner voice told her. She produced many volumes of work that were completely outside any learning experiences she could possibly have had in her lifetime. Present day followers of Oomoto are striving to bring about a prediction made by Nao Degichi, namely that the time is coming when the world will move into a new age of love and harmony.
Knowing her background and her belief that we are brought into this life with information gained in previous lives I could easily understand Shizuko’s fascination for the so-called Indigo Children. The Indigo phenomenon was introduced by Nancy Anne Tappe in her book Understanding Your Life Through Colour, Starting Publishers ,1982.
Inputs into our brains from all of our senses: sound, touch, smell, taste and light, have an influence on how we feel. Some people become depressed in the winter months when light levels are low in a medical condition known as the seasonally affected disorder (SAD) syndrome. Colour therapists recognise the beneficial effects colours can have on our health and use different colours to treat different disorders. Some people have very distinct colour presences and surround themselves with certain colours in an unwitting process of self healing.
Nancy Tappe associated the colour indigo with youngsters who had a sense they had been here before. They behaved as if they were already programmed with knowledge. Often they knew more than their teachers. Tappe’s colour classification was largely unknown by the general public until the publication in 1999 of The Indigo Children – The New Kids Have Arrived by Lee Carroll and Jan Tober (published by Hay House). In their book they reported on the behaviour of youngsters who were difficult to handle, who could be rebellious and even violent, but who needed to be recognised for their exceptional qualities. The authors called on a plethora of different specialists to analyse what they identified as a new breed of children who seemed to be hell bent on breaking with the established way of doing things, especially in education.
Tober and Carroll proposed that having been recognised, Indigo Children should be celebrated for their exceptional qualities and guided with love and care.They asked why so many very bright children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) were being treated with drugs in special schools. They also suggested that there must be working alternatives to Ritilin – the drug most commonly used to chemically control ADD children.
Once the Indigo phenomenon was clearly defined countless parents immediately identified Indigo traits in their own and other children.
The book became a best seller. In 2001 Lee Carroll and Jan Tober produced a sequel, An Indigo Celebration, published by Hay House, which is a collection of stories by numerous contributors from different backgrounds. The book includes a quote from a paper published by paediatric psychologist Dr Gretchen Lefever in the American Journal of Public Health who points out that in the USA the number of children being given Ritilin to force them to pay attention and stimulate concentration rose from 900,000 in 1990 to 5 million in 2000. Not surprisingly many thinking adults were outraged at this trend. They beseeched the authorities to intervene and encourage the use of “education and discipline-based methods rather than amphetamines to correct behaviour problems and motivate better performance.”
Clearly IDEAL has a role to play in stemming this ever increasing dependency on drugs in the USA and elsewhere for the control of students whose behaviour makes them difficult to handle.
“Not all Indigo children are angry volatile and destructive. Some are so sweetly loving that they melt your heart,” says Dr Shirley Michael. In her contribution to the book Shirley quotes a poem entitled Peace by 10 year old Sarah Barkley. In it she writes of “Whales waltzing in the sea” and “Dolphins singing in the splash” which reflects quite clearly the close affinity most Indigos have with animals, especially dolphins.
I discussed the subject of Indigo children with fellow dolphin devotee Estelle Myers who is always forthright. Estelle, a grandmother and pioneer in water birthing, is a strong and outspoken advocate of natural childbirth. She deplores the fashion, especially in the USA, for the convenience of bringing babies into the world by caesarian section.
Estelle attributes a lot of the uncontrollable behaviour of some children who are labelled as Indigos to the manner in which they are born. She says, quite correctly, that the physical process of pushing a baby through the birth canal and out into the world produces an enormous number of hormonal changes that affect both the mother and her child. Instead of allowing this natural process to happen the mother undergoes major surgery with a six week recovery period. As a result the mother is anaesthetised during the crucial moments immediately after birth when she should be bonding with her new born child. “When you come into the world with all that psychological baggage its not surprising such kids behave badly. The situation gets even worse when they grow up and their parents don’t exercise proper control over them,” Estelle expostulated. “I have one arm for cuddling and one for correcting,” she continued.
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The relationship between a mother and a baby dolphin endorses Estelle’s stance. The calf, as it is called, has to be able to swim immediately it is born. From the onset the bond between a baby dolphin and its mother is very strong. When swimming together they appear to be connected by a thread of elastic. The mother also clearly defines the boundaries of acceptable behaviour.
By doing so she eliminates the fear that would otherwise build up in her baby when faced with the prospect of survival in a hostile world with no limits after leaving the total security of the womb.
The first of my Dilo books, Dilo and the Call of the Deep, looks at life through the eyes and mind of a new born dolphin. By identifying with Dilo the young reader finds the love and attention that all children crave for from their mothers. As Dilo grows up he discovers for himself that exploring new boundaries is exciting but not without danger.
Finding the balance between protective love and giving the youngsters the freedom to find out about the dangers of life for themselves is one of the most difficult challenges all responsible adults have to face when bringing up children. It is even harder for parents who are ambitious for their children but whose own careers in a highly competitive world make ever increasing demands on their time and energy.
Dealing with Indigo children is yet another situation in which grandparents, if they are available, can and should play a role. Far better that, than delegating the responsibility for managing a difficult child to chemical substances the long term side effects of which are impossible to predict.
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