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Thu 13 Apr, 2006 02:08 pm
"My own humanity feels incredibly restrictive."
I came across this quote on a site about "Indigo Children".
(Git yer fill of similar quotes at:
http://www.metagifted.org/topics/metagifted/indigo/realityBites/realityBites.txt)
Have you heard of this?
My newpaper had an article on it today so, disbelieving me went out in search of more headshaking weirdness.
Here is the pop quiz:
Quote:Is Your Child an Indigo?
To find out, ask yourself these questions:
Did your child come into the world acting like royalty?
Does your child have a feeling of deserving to be here?
Does your child have an obvious sense of self?
Does your child have difficulty with discipline and authority?
Does your child refuse to do certain things they are told to do?
Is waiting in lines torture for your child?
Is your child frustrated by ritual-oriented systems that require little creativity?
Does your child see better ways of doing thing at home and at school?
Is your child a nonconformist?
Does your child refuse to respond to guilt trips?
Does your child get bored rather easily with assigned tasks?
Does your child display symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder?
Is your child particularly creative?
Does your child display intuition?
Does your child have strong empathy for others?
Did your child develop abstract thinking very early?
Is your child very intelligent?
Is your child very talented (may be identified as gifted)?
Does your child seem be a daydreamer?
Does your child have very old, deep, wise looking eyes?
Does your child have spiritual intelligence?
If you have more than 10 yes answers, he or she probably is an Indigo. If more than 15, almost definitely.
http://www.metagifted.org/topics/metagifted/indigo/isYourChildAnIndigo.html
OH MY GOSH! Every child I know is an indigo! Except maybe the ones I know that are .... uhhh...... kids.
What is up with this kind of stuff?
I laughed my ass off at the list.
Particularly:
Quote:Does your child have difficulty with discipline and authority?
Does your child refuse to do certain things they are told to do?
Is waiting in lines torture for your child?
Are the asking for money, or something?
Yeah! I read some of those and thought that the only thing that would have been indigo would have been my ass.
Quote:Indigo Children are the current generation being born today and most of those who are 8 years old or younger. They are different. They have very unique characteristics that set them apart from previous generations of children. The name itself indicates the Life Color they carry in their auras and is indicative of the Third Eye Chakra, which represents intuition and psychic ability. These are the children who are often rebellious to authority, nonconformist, extremely emotionally and sometimes physically sensitive or fragile, highly talented or academically gifted and often metaphysically gifted as well, usually intuitive, very often labeled ADD, either very empathic and compassionate OR very cold and callous, and are wise beyond their years. Does this sound like yourself or your child?
I knew you were a hippie, but Life Colors and Chakras?
I am so not a hippie.
I'm a stoner.
(Okay okay - an ex-stoner.)
Quote:Indigo Children are the current generation being born today and most of those who are 8 years old or younger.
In other words,
boomer wrote:OH MY GOSH! Every child I know is an indigo!
I first read about this in the seriously disturbing New Yorker article about a child prodigy who committed suicide. In that context, I'm not just amused, I'm actively appalled.
It's some offshoot of the superparenting/ superbaby thing, I guess.
I'm actively appalled too. Bewildered might best describe me.
I'm thinking the article you read was much better than the one in today's paper. I'd love to hear about what happened.
I've been looking for it online since it came out, no luck. This gives a flavor:
http://boards.newyorker.com/thread.jspa?threadID=280&messageID=745
Basically, what I got from it was that there was a genuinely smart, nice kid with weirdly overinvolved parents (especially the mom) who made sure that he was labeled super-smart (through somewhat shady means) and encouraged this fiction in which he was some sort of superhero -- homeschooled, not many friends, very involved with his mom and dad at home. Then he came of age and started to meet real people and things unraveled.
Complicated. Heartbreaking story to read, wish it was available. (I could scan and send if need be I guess, still have the New Yorker it appeared in.)
Sometimes I've found New Yorker articles that I couldn't find on the NYer site elsewhere online by googling the author and title...
Oh, of course, but it's nowhere... (if you can prove me wrong, great!)
Thirty years ago these kids were "Free Spirits"--"Wonderful Free Spirits".
They were also known as "Brats" by the unrelated adults they inconvenienced.
Hands Off Parents have lots of elaborate rationales.
I have been running into this shite for a while now.
WHERE do these people get this stuff from?
evidently, none of you have had the *privilege* of seeing the film, <Indigo>, starring Neal Donald Walsh, the fellow who has conversations with God. it's available on DVD and it's so bad, Mr. Walsh is the best actor in it.
Oh my.
I read the conversation that soz linked then I came back and saw Noddy's comment and then I had to go away and think for a bit.
Is it overly hands off or overly hands on parenting?
I've often asked myself this about my little oddball nephew, "Mitch". I adore Mitch in all of his oddball glory. In fact, Mitch and I like a lot of the same things.
Sadly, I don't get to see Mitch very often because my sister seems to think that my family will somehow contaminate him. By the same token, she doesn't want to contaminate him either. She delights in his oddballness.
<sigh>
It's hard to explain.
She's a sMother who is also a hands off parent. Does that make any sense at all? Do you all know what I'm talking about?
I really worry about Mitch once he enters the "real" world where his oddballness might not be so.... ummm... beneficial to his acceptance - meaning employablilty and social interactiveness.
Thankfully, this indigo stuff seems to be a spiritual movement and she doesn't want her kid contaminated by God either.
Is it hands on or hands off?
As to the conversation that soz linked....
If that kid commited suicide, unless he did a bad job of it, he couldn't be an organ donor because you have to be "brain live" to donate. So I think those parents are nut jobs in more ways than one.
And....
I am too an ex, DrewDad. I haven't touched any of that stuff in fifteen months of Sundays. Maybe longer. (February and leap year always f*** me up with counting.) Why do you think I'm always looking for someone to pay for my threapy?
Is this somehow related to grup parenting?
I was just teasing, Boomer.
I was on exactly that same train of thought, boomer.
What I came up with was something like:
This certain kind of parent (it's not just moms but seems to more often be moms) wants validation of her wonderfulness as a mom by having a Truly Extraordinary Child. (I certainly sympathize with this, I think we all think our kids are great and that it can be part of being a good parent -- who's going to be a kid's bigger fan than his/ her parents?)
However, this kind of parent may also not have a lot of patience for the day-to-day drudgery of childrearing, and welcome the opportunity to let the child do as he or she will, and not have to do the unpleasant stuff, the authoritative, boundary-enforcing, "I'm the parent" stuff. It's not fun, the kid gets mad at you, and it just kind of belies the whole "best friend" sort of vibe that a lot of these parents seem to be going for.
What really struck me in the Brandenn story (I'm gonna scan that darn thing) is that his mom had two other daughters from a previous marriage that she had fair-to-awful relationships with, and Brandenn became the repository of all of these hopes and aspirations, this grand experiment. Seemed to be way too much about her.
sozobe wrote:I What really struck me in the Brandenn story (I'm gonna scan that darn thing)
no need, i can email a plain text version of the article--a little hard to read, but you get what you pay for--to anyone interested, if they PM an email address to me.
Valentine's Day division of labor between non-custodial mother and stepmother.
Mother: Buys $1.99 bag of valentines and a $1.00 candy heart.
Stepmother: Supervises signing and addressing cards to 34 classmates.
Where do you pin the "Hands On" label? The "Hands Off" label?
In Bleak House Dickens presents Mrs. Jellyby, a woman with many charitable pursuits who allows her children to "tumble up" without taking much of an interest in the process of maturation.
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