Belief in Indigo is growing

The documentary 'The Indigo Revolution' will be shown starting Friday.
Knight Ridder Newspapers
PHILADELPHIA -- Dina Melendez was taken aback when her 4-year-old started talking about his past lives, describing brothers, sisters, two dogs and a cat.
"And then he told me he died when he was 6 and that he waited before being born again -- waited for me so I could be his mommy," Melendez recalls.
But it's what Matthew says about the future that really rattles this young mother, and leads her to conclude that he is one of the so-called Indigo children -- believed to be a new generation of high-energy, sometimes difficult youngsters who have psychic abilities and a deep-blue aura.
"I'm not going to grow up," Matthew says nonchalantly when he is questioned about the future. "Not everybody grows up."
Melendez is convinced that Matthew is not imitating Peter Pan but calmly predicting his own death.
"That really frightens me," she says.
Mainstream doctors, scientists, psychologists and educators shake their heads at the very idea of Indigo children, who are described as "old souls" returning to earth to usher in an era of environmental renewal and political rebirth born of peace and compassion.
Still, the movement has gained thousands of believers since it emerged in the 1980s, spawning an array of books, Web sites, services and specialists. And Friday through Jan. 29, followers are expected to line up to see a new documentary, "The Indigo Evolution" around the globe. James Twyman is the producer/director.
"These new humans, this evolution we're seeing, is in answer to the mess we have made of the world," he says.
Becoming popular
Twyman was executive producer of an earlier film, called simply "Indigo," that grossed nearly $1.4 million on its opening weekend in January 2005. A fictionalized account of one child's experience, that film was written by and starred Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-seller "Conversations With God."
Hay House, the publishing firm that Louise Hay built with self-help and spiritual titles, reports that sales of Indigo-related books are at the half-million mark.
Among them, with 250,000 copies sold, is "The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived," by Lee Carroll and Jan Tober.
Carroll and Tober define Indigos as "restless, fearless" individuals who "believe in themselves ... have difficulty with absolute authority," and "often see better ways of doing things, at home and in school." They are in every country, on every continent, the authors say, and only a clairvoyant can see their auras.
Carroll and Tober recommend that Indigo children attend private schools that focus on individual needs, such as Montessori or Waldorf schools.
But educator Paula Moraine, faculty director at the Kimberton Waldorf School, says she's not sure there is such a thing as an Indigo. It is just as likely, she says, that parents are raising their children with more freedom of expression -- certainly with more permissiveness.
Carroll and Tober's descriptors, she says, are "so vague that they encompass being human."
"You can find almost every child in those definitions."
Color energy fields
A self-described clairvoyant named Nancy Ann Tappe is credited with first sighting and identifying Indigos.
In her 1982 book, "Understanding Your Life Through Color," (Starling Publishers) Tappe claimed she could see the colored energy fields that, she said, surround every individual -- and said she was starting to see children with a new, deep-blue, aura.
She outlined four types of Indigos -- humanist, conceptual, artist and interdimensional -- who will become tomorrow's doctors, engineers, artists and religious leaders.
But Tappe, along with retired psychotherapist Doreen Virtue, says many Indigos also exhibit other, more troublesome traits: impatience, a sense of entitlement that borders on boorishness, and uncontrollable rage.
These children are so smart that they're bored and distracted easily, says Virtue, associate producer of "The Indigo Evolution" and author of "The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children" (Hay House).
The documentary shows only bright, happy children who excel academically and in the arts.
But in an interview last week, Virtue painted a darker picture. She says conventional teachers -- and parents -- are ill-equipped to deal with these youngsters. As a result, many Indigos are wrongly identified as having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
Instead of having their positive traits encouraged, Virtue says, the children are inappropriately treated with such drugs as Ritalin.
What ADHD expert says
George J. DuPaul, a Lehigh University professor of school psychology who has extensively researched ADHD and its treatment, is aghast at the suggestion.
"It's amazing to me that people would believe it," DuPaul says. "There's no scientific basis at all."
ADHD is a quantifiable, medically recognized diagnosis, he says, but Indigo is a dream.
"This Indigo-child thing," DuPaul says, "has no basis in fact or research. There is no diagnostic nomenclature, no test for it."
Dina Melendez was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was only 28. Her belief that everything in life happens for a reason was part of her survival strategy -- reinforced by her surgeon, Beth DuPree, at St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne, Pa.
It was DuPree who introduced Melendez to the Indigo phenomenon.
"She came to my house," Melendez recalls, "and she looked at Matthew and said, 'You know, he's Indigo.'"
DuPree says she recognized in Matthew some of the traits of her own Indigo child, Tommy, now 15.
"I see Indigo as that color of the spectrum of light that has to do with spirituality," DuPree says. "To me it means your soul has an eternal nature."
After that, Melendez read all she could on the subject, and struggled to be patient with her whirling dervish of a child.
For now, Matthew Melendez is in a half-day preschool where he is doing well, and Dina Melendez says the Indigo/ADHD debate is irrelevant.
Matthew, she says, has been a gift to her, and it won't matter if teachers don't see him as Indigo.
Meanwhile, Virtue predicts that no new Indigos will be born. Instead, she says, she's already beginning to see Crystal children, born with exceptional healing powers and the ability to communicate telepathically.
Their challenge, she says, "is that they may be misdiagnosed with autism."
X"The Indigo Evolution" will be shown for the first time nationwide Friday and Jan. 28 and 29. A full list of locations is at www.theindigoevolution.com.