Alien-ated Youth

The peculiarities of Jake and Jan (their families asked that their real names not be used) were apparent from an early age. As a toddler, Jan sometimes spoke using her own language. Instead of "cookie," she would say "cookah" and refused to call a sandwich anything but a "phonic." Odder still, she didn't begin speaking until she was three years old. For Jake's part, he had trouble grasping the concept that he was not in charge. "He has to be told," Jake's mother says. "He doesn't think he needs permission." Spence noticed a similar idiosyncrasy in her granddaughter. "You have to coax her to do her homework," she says.

Jan doesn't quite agree. "I just made it up," she says. Like many Indigos, she's very shy about discussing her abilities. Once she has drawn for a few minutes, Jan feels comfortable enough to talk. She admits she feels she's different "when Satan tries to come in my head." Most of the time, she says, Satan tries to come in at night. (Indigos often receive their visions through dreams.) Jan shrugs when asked what sorts of information she receives, and continues to draw. She says she knows she's an Indigo because "my mother told me."

Jake found out he was an Indigo when his mother read a book on the subject. His mother's psychic recently told him he might even be higher than that, something called a Crystalline Child. "I think she was telling me so I could understand him better," she says. What he needs to do in this world, she says, is to learn to be human. "Once he can conquer that, then he can teach and he can heal, and that's the struggle." The hardest part about raising an Indigo, she says, is not getting the chance to be parents. She starts to recount one epiphany she had when her son realized some insects he caught had a mother and father.

"You said that," Jake objects. "You're the one who said it had a mother and father."

"I wasn't in your classroom," his mother says.

"You told me."

"He's always talking about God," Jake's mother continues. "But it's not questioning -- he knows." Yet she had never taken him to church. What's more, he remembers his past lives. "He's always talking about his other mother, his other fathers and siblings, and he'll tell you how they died," Jake's mother says. Just the other day, Jake said he didn't want to hurt her feelings, but that his other mother was prettier.

Jake runs into the school bathroom, slams and locks the door. "I'm not making fun of you," his mother calls after him. If she doesn't talk about him, she explains through the door using her most soothing voice, "there won't be other people who understand who you are, and who Jan is, and what it's like to try and help." After a few moments, she says that Jake probably feels she's betrayed his trust, since he doesn't want other people knowing about his gifts. "His teacher can't teach him. His speech teacher can't teach him. His occupational therapist can't teach him."

Jackie Brahm, a local "medical intuitive" who counsels Indigos, says it's not uncommon for their parents to have no control over them. Because they're so advanced, the kids don't feel like they have to obey. According to Brahm, this is why many Indigos get misdiagnosed as having ADD or ADHD. "They don't know how to process all the energy that's coming through, so they overload and react fairly badly to it."

Through her practice, Brahm has been able to hone her abilities for spotting these special children, and says she's been seeing an increasing number of them in public places. She found one three-year-old Indigo recently at a museum, critiquing one of the paintings on the wall. When the mother asked her how she could know, the girl explained that she used to be a "master." But when the mother asked if she would like to take up painting and demonstrate some of the abilities she learned in a past life, the girl thrust her hands on her hips, and said, "I told you, I was a master, I don't need to do it again."

Similarly, Jan refuses to do her homework because it's boring. She often objects by saying, "I know already. You don't have to tell me."