Indigo Parents:
From Coping with an Unknowable Unknown
to a Happy, Healthy Family

OK Indigo parents, I'm going to go heavy on a few points right off the bat in this article. Bear with me, it lightens up a little as you go along. Here goes:

Hello. You face Challenges.

As a parent of an Indigo Child, your keyword is lack. You'll face a frustrating and desperate lack of the following over the course of your journey as an Indigo parent:

- skills.

- abilities.

- time.

- resources.

- references.

- communication.

- a model or models to frame what's going on with you.

- professionals in this arena.

Above all, you'll face a lack of understanding. If your child is a true Indigo and you aren't, you probably won't understand your child. Society doesn't understand your child. Neither does the school counselor, the astrologer, the psychic or anybody else who's not an Indigo.

As a result, your child will be put into a series of social boxes. None of these boxes will help your child have a better life. Get used to it. The best thing to do is let go of your desperate search and stop looking. The best resource is right in front of you. It's your child. Start listening. Let him or her grow you and lead the way.

School is not a great resource in most cases. Even the 'alternative' schools tend to be blinded by their pedantic philosophies. Schools have no real way to fit your child into their system. This is the most typical way your child may begin to acquire labels in his or her life. Those labels can become a legacy that takes them years to work out, break through and be free of.

Mental health. This is a very tricky area unless you find a spectacular individual who is both a master of their craft and has retained the ability to think outside the box. Be very careful of labels that may be cast upon your child in the mental health department. The world has become virtually transparent. You never know where and how those labels are going to wind up in the future. The best thing to do is avoid getting branded with them in the first place.

Your child also faces challenges.

Communication. Who does your child talk with? Who is your child going to talk with? Who will be his/her friends? Over time your child will find that friendships with 'normal' children will only go so far before the issue of reality sharing rears it head.

Your child lives in a different world than the other kids in his or her peer group. Being labeled as 'weird' at some point on your child's time line is inevitable. Social labels are the cruelest of all, but at least your child can get away from them at some point in his/her life.

The point is that your child has low or no commonality with other children, so "socialization," whatever that means, can easily become an issue.

On top of it all, Indigos are sensitives on every level. Your child will feel all of these issues much more intensely than other children. This combination of sensitivity plus being at the butt-end of social cruelty will likely imprison your child in an emotional hell for some time.

You and your child will face tidal waves of illusion, chasms of ignorance and deserts of isolation on your journey.

But you get to face them together to some degree.

The New Age problem.

I'm strong on these points. The reason is that many parents have a child with serious mental/emotional problems, yet they believe that their child is gifted, rather than compromised. If you're one of these people, you're adding to your child's suffering, not helping them.

If you really want to help your child, get out of your illusion and deal with what you've got. Of course, however you treat your child, you'll want to do it with love, compassion, holding them in the highest and all that. But if you don't do it with your feet firmly planted in the dirt, your party is going to get crashed. Hard.

What do you do if you're the parent of an Indigo?

Real Indigos. I believe the most important first step is to find out where and how your child fits into the Indigo spectrum as clearly as you can. This is not an easy task. But if you don't do it, you'll spend a lot of time, energy, money and frustration in the wrong areas. You might wind up worse off than if you did nothing at all. To get to a real solution, you need to assess your child's situation in a real way and work from there. For help in this area, please refer to my article The X Factor.

Acknowledge your limitations. Nobody knows everything. Don't try to parent your Indigo alone. Once you have a clear understanding of where your child fits into the Indigo scheme of things, you'll be able to find people who can help you. It is vital that you utilize these resources to the fullest once you discover them. This will help not only you, but also your child and the entire field that is developing around this phenomenon.

Connect with other parents and mentors. Find people who know about what you and your child are dealing with. They don't all have to be professionals. Other parents, and above all, other Indigo children can be the greatest sources of hope and inspiration on your journey. These contacts can turn a nightmare of isolation into a really fun adventure that you wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

Participate in the network we're creating here. Your experience is valuable to others, no matter how out there it may seem. Actually, when it comes to matters Indigo, the more out there it is, the more helpful it is. Trust me on this one.

Early Identification.

Your job as the parent of an Indigo isn't really that different from any other parent. Your child depends on you as his or her primary resource for all things. You are your child's filter and translator for what's happening in the world around them and what's happening to them internally.

The place where the difference comes in is that parents of normal children have infrequent contacts with issues that are totally beyond their scope of understanding. You're faced with them multiple times on a daily basis.

On this level, after you identify where your child is on the Indigo spectrum, it's important to let it go completely. Indigo is just another label. Don't let that label separate you from the most important dimensions of friendship that you can share with your child.

Wherever your child falls on the spectrum, you'll want to assess:

- What are your child's real abilities?

- What are your child's real disabilities?

- Are your child's disabilities really with your child, or are they with society?

Models

Modern Medicine. If your child is a true Indigo, modern medicine will be torture for them. This is mostly because there are no models for health in Western Medicine. Even if there were, your child wouldn't fit into them. If there's no room for normal human health in these models, then there's certainly no room for super-human and even para-human models any time in the near future.

True Indigos have super-sensitivities. These sensitivities are inevitably diagnosed as pathological in modern medicine. Pathology leads to medication. Medication fails with Indigo nervous systems and can be very harmful to them. If your child is a compromised and compensated human, modern medicine may offer some relief, but little positive guidance.

Alternative medicine can be really helpful to avoid medications and develop a positive lifestyle and orientation. Remember there are limitations to every system of medicine. In my own practice, I've used Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine with great results in treating Indigo children.

Find a practitioner that works for your child. Even the best medicine will fail if your child doesn't have a good connection with the practitioner. Your child will usually know right off the bat if it's a good fit or not. Try listening to your child instead of trying to figure it all out by yourself. It works wonders.

Indigenous models. Indigenous people all over the world understand the Indigo phenomenon in a big way. Many of these cultures have a variety of strategies for dealing with Indigos and integrating them into society.

The essence of the indigenous understanding is that if you don't discover an Indigo early in life and give him or her proper training, their powers will turn against them and the community they live in. Indigos can create major havoc and become a serious liability to society if they aren't managed properly. This isn't because Indigos are evil. It's because they're powerful. That power needs understanding, training and discipline to become an asset to the world.

Parental Goals

In a word, your healing is in connection. In my experience and opinion, it's important to connect with:

- nature.

- others.

- mentors.

- this network.

- yourself.

This is happening to you for a reason. Remind yourself frequently that what you're going through is a blessing, not a curse.

Whether you know it or not, you're a pioneer in a field that may change the course of Earth's history forever. If life itself is trending in this direction, don't you think you might have some back up?

You can do it!



X Factor: New Models for Clinical Success in Working with Indigo Children

Articles and Interviews

John Mini, M.S.C.M./L.Ac.