Indigo children: Encyclopedia II - Indigo children - Criticism

Indigo children - Criticism

Critics of the indigo children hypothesis claim that it is more pseudoscience than a serious scientific way of understanding social changes. The Skeptic's Dictionary asserts: "the main thesis of The Indigo Children is that many children diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are actually space aliens." Believers in this concept have proposed classifying it as protoscience rather than pseudoscience.

Alleged indigo children are often the offspring of new age parents. Exposed to new age thinking, it might be taken as unsurprising that the children possess a greater fluency of 'spiritual language' than earlier generations. Having been told that the vast majority of children are now "indigos", new age parents in fear of suppressing this 'special' generation may be encouraging behaviors that would otherwise have been thought antisocial. The traits listed by the authors could be interpreted as simple arrogance and selfish individualism.

Just as critics claim many people tend towards astrology because it presents believers with complimentary accounts of themselves, critics of the indigo children concept claim that parents relate to the hypothesis because it provides a more flattering conclusion about their children than that of conventional science. The schema of a very gifted person being troubled during childhood is common in Western society, and parents may prefer to believe a child who has trouble fitting in is especially gifted rather than suffering from a condition like ADD. Some claim the labeling of a child as "indigo" is irresponsible as it may keep children shielded from scientific diagnosis, and for increasing the pressure on already struggling children by unrealistically raising parental expectation. To critics, The Indigo Children is a nice sounding but ultimately vapid way to avoid addressing the moral panic surrounding medicines such as Ritalin.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Criticism", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki