Grasp the Nettle

Edited mildly for grammar and analogy clarity:

The debate around Indigo children is one of those things that leaves me dissatisfied all around.

Essentially,  the Indigo Children movement argues that some children are a quasi-magical next stage in human evolution. There’s some claim of paranormal abilities, but let’s put that aside and look at the more mundane characteristics:

Descriptions of indigo children include the belief that they are empathetic, curious, possess a clear sense of self-definition and purpose, strong-willed, independent, often perceived by friends or family as being weird, and also exhibits a strong inclination towards spiritual matters (e.g. God) from early childhood. Indigo children have also been described as having a strong feeling of entitlement, or “deserving to be here.” Other alleged traits include a high intelligence quotient, an inherent intuitive ability, and resistance to authority.

So in essence, they are curious, assertive, purposeful, and smart. Doesn’t sound like this needs its own useless New Age quasi-scientific concept, but doesn’t sound bad either.

According to research psychologist Russell Barkley, the New Age movement has yet to produce empirical evidence of the existence of indigo children and the 17 traits most commonly attributed to them were akin to theForer effect; so vague they could describe nearly anyone.

This could certainly be a legitimate critique…

Many children called indigo by their parents are diagnosed with ADHD. Robert Todd Carroll points out that labeling a child an indigo is an alternative to a diagnosis that implies imperfection, damage or mental illness, which may appeal to many parents, a belief echoed by many academic psychologists. He also points out that many of the commentators on the indigo phenomenon are of varying qualifications and expertise. Linking the concept of indigo children with the use of Ritalin to control ADHD, Carroll states “The hype and near-hysteria surrounding the use of Ritalin has contributed to an atmosphere that makes it possible for a book like Indigo Children to be taken seriously. Given the choice, who wouldn’t rather believe their children are special and chosen for some high mission rather than that they have a brain disorder?”

I don’t buy Indigo Children theory, but “brain disorder” is a very strong claim, and the tone of condescension in the quote is galling. Does the explanatory power of the theory back up the bold assertion? Some symptoms of ADHD:

• Be easily distracted, miss details, forget things, and frequently switch from one activity to another
• Have difficulty focusing on one thing
• Become bored with a task after only a few minutes, unless they are doing something enjoyable
• Have difficulty focusing attention on organizing and completing a task or learning something new

And there are various proposed explanations, including genetics, diet, and social factors, with no compelling explanatory model.

The symptoms above seem to boil down to “likes to change tasks often (apparently to the annoyance of others), except when the task is fun.”

I don’t think the alternative theory psychiatrists put forward (ADHD) is terribly more compelling than that of the Indigo Children movement. The Indigo Children movement’s theories may be more facially suspect, because they often involve explicitly paranormal and magical claims. But the specious approach of psychiatry  – which claims that children have brain disorders and wants to browbeat parents into giving children drugs for those disorders, based on some vague symptoms which could describe pretty much anyone and an explanatory framework which needs work —  has much to answer for as well.

This is frustrating. On the one hand, we have mystical people who think their children are magical and probably treat them somewhat better than the norm as a result (a similar phenomenon happens with many Aspies, I think). On the other hand, we have advocates of “science” who want to drug children for getting bored too easily because this means their brains must be broken.

What is the truer theory?

A relevant post from curi gives us some direction: in it, he uses a very fancy graph to make the point that as memes regarding child-rearing have changed, Asperger’s syndrome has skyrocketed.

In the thread that followed, an individual was very resistant to the notion that Asperger’s could be so meme-driven. I pointed out that people tend to systematically underestimate the degree to which old-school parenting memes were vicious and cruel to children. I would add that people tend to underestimate the degree to which memes, in *general*, can have a huge impact on the development of individuals in ways that give rise to traits which seem almost “inherent” or “biological.”

An analogy: New Yorkers are known for their propensity for jaywalking (or crossing in the middle of the street as opposed to the intersection). Mayor Giuliani tried to implement some measures to curtail this behavior (which he apparently disapproved of), including issuing citations and throwing up concrete barriers in some places to prevent people from doing so. But people carried on jaywalking anyways. Does this mean New Yorkers are an inherently less lawful people than, say, people in Singapore? No. New Yorkers may have some different values about respect for certain parts of the law. This difference in values could be overcome to bring about a change in behavior: New York Police Department snipers on roofs shooting people in the leg every time they tried to jaywalk would probably be sufficient. The “character” of New Yorkers afterwards would be different; it would seem tamed and cowed. But we’re not willing to go that far to change the behavior. Maybe a fascist regime would be willing, but not us.

One has to realize that up until fairly recently (in the history of mankind anyways), the parallel to shooting people in the leg was the default approach to child-rearing: disobedience was met with terrifying violence not even necessarily tied proportionally to the infraction, largely for the purpose of maintaining control, upholding parental authority for its own sake, and quieting the nuisance that children were thought to be. But then a huge shift in values occurred, and has continued to progress: the past few decades in our cultural history, we’ve suddenly started caring a lot more about the happiness of our own children, and about enabling them to find and pursue the things that will make them happy.

And we’re surprised that this has led to a huge number of children who act very different than children are “expected” to? And that one commonly identifiable problem is that children get bored easily, when for the longest time the culture didn’t bother creating any knowledge at all about how to help children find interesting things? To expect that children’s preferences would start to be taken seriously without their being some new problems arising from that due to  lack of cultural knowledge, is sort of like expecting the old Soviet Union to have transitioned smoothly from an authoritarian socialist regime to  a Hong Kong style free-market laissez faire system despite having no knowledge of how free markets work. It’s a necessary transition, but it’s going to be messy.

And so, not unlike the political debates that sometimes occur about things like democratic and market reforms in other countries, you have people decrying and mocking the effectiveness of the new approach because of some bumps in the road, advocating not that you go back to the old ways, but that you just need some modification and control (psychiatrists and left-of-center bureaucrats, respectively), and you have some people who want to bring back the old ways (authoritarians of politics and parenting), and you have some people who are in favor of the changes, but for not-quite-the-right reasons (Indigo Children movement types and democratic socialists).