"The Indigo Child and How to Recognize One" by Sandra Musser

Someone who is close to me said about Indigo children that the term is a label.  She is certainly "one", but has not been surrounded by people who could understand and/or would honor this in her...however, as she evolves she will likely come to it.  There is no doubt whatsoever that her child is an "Indigo"...proven, tested!

In any case, I disagreed with her vehemently at the time she made that statement. But as life and synchronicity happen, within a week, I saw a flurry of articles by "Indigo" children who also did not like that "label".  At the same time, each had proven gifts.  I finally told her that, out of respect for her view, I would no longer call her an "Indigo", and certainly not in front of her.

As far as the term goes, it is really the way that people identify a person / child with the features.  Teachers, those who are informed and conscious, use that term among themselves or with those who understand the background. Sadly, the "Indigo" children who do not have support from home or school may grow up internalizing some real truths, never to share those gifts with another for fear of rejection.  The good part?  We are now evolving to a point where the culture comes incrementally closer to having this become mainstream knowledge.

The indigo child is here to bring us closer to our true essence. We think our minds are separate because of our bodies. These children know differently. A true indigo travels comfortably between worlds usually at night when we think they're asleep.


Our thoughts and feelings are not our own. The truth is, we have forgotten who we are and how our minds are connected to each other. Indigo children remember and have an inner knowing that far exceeds our psychic abilities.


Having said this. Not all children born since about 1980 are indigos. Many brought major challenges from previous lifetimes they're still working through. But, once the lessons are learned and the patterns forgiven, they will join the ranks of the cosmic caring indigo.


"The intricate inner workings of our DNA are changing...Brain-wave relationships are spontaneously moving into higher vibrational patterning as the electromagnetic fields within our DNA. Because of this, our brains are working together as cohesive units of consciousness. That means humanity is becoming more aware and moving toward becoming sentient beings – aware of everything all at once all of the time.” Conversations with the Children of Now, Meg Blackburn Losey

So what happened to cause us to loose touch with our inner knowing?

Put simply, we began to "think" instead of "feel," thousands of years ago. Our ability to tap into the collective consciousness is still within us. We’ve just forgotten how to do it. The ego became our ruler holding us back by relying on memories to make our decisions. Using the past as our guide, and when we gave our power to the ego, we made ourselves fearful. We began to live from our lower natures. The intellect caused us to loose our connection to the collective consciousness, making us feel alone.


Some adults have been able to gain at least a part of this former knowing. They in turn are giving birth to children who remember how the collective consciousness works and they are using it. The indigo child is there descendant.


"The conclusion of our book was that today’s children are different – more challenging, more intelligent, more confrontational, more intuitive, more spiritual, and in some cases even more violent – from any generation we have yet seen. This calls for a new and different way of parenting and schooling – outside of the old ways." The Care and Feeding of Your Indigo Children, Doreen Virtue

Where did the term “Indigo Child” come from?

Nancy Ann Tappe, a teacher and counselor, studied the human auric field, otherwise known as their electromagnetic field. The field surrounds every living thing. She even wrote a book about it called "Understanding Your Life Through Color."


Through colors in the aura, she instituted a shockingly accurate and revealing way to psychologically profile a person using her new auric color method. The signs of an indigo child actually began even as early as in the 1950’s in much smaller numbers. What she noticed was that 80 percent of the children born after 1980 had a new deep blue colored auric field. She called this new color "indigo".

What are the behavioral patterns of Indigo children?

1. They are born feeling and knowing they are special and should be revered.
2. An indigo child knows they belong here as they are and expect you to realize it as well.
3. These children are more confident and have a higher sense of self-worth.
4. Absolute authority, the kind with no choices, negotiation, or input from them does not sit well. The educational system is a good example.
5. Some of the rules we so carefully followed as children seem silly to them and they fight them.
6. Rigid ritualistic systems are considered archaic to an indigo child. They feel everything should be given creative thought.
7. They are insightful and often have a better idea of method then what has been in place for years. This makes them seem like "system busters."
8. Adults often view an indigo child as anti-social unless they are with other indigos. Often they feel lost and misunderstood, which causes them to go within.
9. The old control methods like, "Wait till your father gets home," have no affect on these children.
10. The fulfillment of their personal needs is important to them, and they will let you know.

Are you or your children an indigo?

These are the characteristics of an indigo child as stated in The Care and Feeding of Your Indigo Child:

• Strong willed
• Born in 1978 or later
• Headstrong
• Creative, with an artistic flair for music, jewelry making, poetry, etc.
• Prone to addictions
• An "old soul" as if they’re 13 going on 43
• Intuitive or psychic, possibly with a history of seeing angels or deceased people
• An isolationist, either through aggressive acting-out, or through fragile introversion
• Independent and proud, even if they’re constantly asking you for money
• Possess a deep desire to help the world in a big way
• Wavers between low self-esteem and grandiosity
• Bores easily
• Has probably been diagnosed as having ADD or ADHD
• Prone to insomnia, restless sleep, nightmares, or difficulty/fear of falling asleep
• Has a history of depression, or even suicidal thoughts or attempts
• Looks for real, deep, and lasting friendships
• Easily bonds with plants or animals.

If you possess 14 or more of these traits you are an indigo child. If 11 to 13, you’re probably an indigo in training. If you’re an adult with these traits you could be a "lightworker."

The effects of Ritalin and other drugs on an indigo child diagnosed with ADD or ADHD

"Indigo Children who take Ritlin or other psychotropic drugs soon lose touch with their intuition, psychic abilities, and warrior personality. These children were sent to Earth with these three spiritual gifts for the express purpose of cleaning up our planet, environmentally and socially." Care and Feeding of Your Indigo Child, Doreen Virtue

Suppressive drugs such as Ritlin cause an indigo child to forget their lives purpose, which only delays what HAS to change on our earth for us to continue living on it.


One of the reasons an indigo child has trouble sleeping is because wayward spirits are attracted to them. These spirits know these children can see and sense them. Often indigo children have a hard time sleeping, which makes them more irritable and restless in school. The schools and doctors decide from this they are ADHD or ADD.

So what would an ideal indigo child’s world look like?

Indigo children have a job to do on this planet, and they WILL do it. It’s their job to help eliminate the values of the present world age and replace them with the values of the coming world age. And, they take their job very seriously. They are preparing the world for the new values of "love, brotherhood and unity." Indigo prophecies talk about how these special children are the forerunners to dramatically changing the word for the next Great Cycle change in the area of 2012. Forgiveness towards others is a key element to help heal the earth. An indigo’s world would be:

1. Free from all harsh chemicals.
2. Food would be organically grown, locally grown, fresh with minimal processing and refining.
3. Education would be for all and children would have a much greater say in their educational future and curriculum.
4. Family would mean whom you are with at that time, and be inclusive to a greater circle of people.
5. Our political system would be truly for the greater good of all, much more democratic, even socialist.
6. All countries and all people would work together to better the lives on the entire planet.
7. Nature and her needs would come first including clean air and soil.
8. Children would be treated with respect and consulted on any decisions that would affect them.
9. All people would be equal no matter what their race, color, sex, or creed.

We’ve drugged them, punished them, denied them, but they still will not conform to "our" views of what a model child should be. Why? Many indigo children can see their futures and know what we are trying to teach them is useless and irrelevant.


An indigo child has an enormous amount of tenacity and willpower. Through their sensitivity to chemicals, processed foods, and authority, they are showing us what has to change in our world. They're sensitive to so many things. An indigo child will tell you that we should not be using these detrimental chemicals if we truly loved our earth and each other.


"Indigo children are "natural children in an unnatural world."...their immune systems (physically and emotionally) aren’t able to assimilate the earthly toxins in food, water, air, toiletries, cleaning supplies, artificial lighting, and relationships. Scientists have discovered huge links between ADHD and environmental toxins.” The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children, Doreen Virtue.

Every Generation appears to have a group purpose or consciousness, which is related to a certain color with certain values.

1940’s and 1950’s – these people had issues of security. They married young, stayed at their jobs for a lifetime. Happiness in marriage or career were secondary to security. The color was red and is of the ROOT CHAKRA – red slowest moving rays.
1960 and 1970’s – less concerned with security. More interest began with drugs, sex and harsh music. Free love, bra burnings, equality for minorities and the sexes began in earnest. Orange is the color associated with the SACRAL CHAKRA – orange is a slower but not the slowest moving ray.
1980’s – things gain importance in this time with people acquiring personal property and power increasing the debt load. Women made great gains in the male dominated areas of the workforce, but at the expense of their femininity. They took on more masculine type traits. The color associated with this time is yellow, which represents the SOLAR PLEXUS CHAKRA – the speed of the rotation the chakras increases as the color changes from hot to cooler.
Early 1990’s – As we get closer to the Great Cycle change the time periods move closer together, because evolution in consciousness increased. The spiritual revolution grew at this time with people joining churches, temples or nonreligious spiritual groups. The Pope apologized for the churches past abuses. All this is due to the coming new millennium. Emerald-green is to color associated with this time period and the chakra is the HEART CHAKRA. The speed of this chakra increases over the last one again.
Late 1990’s – This was a time of the individual. People strove to become independent by playing the stock market, opening businesses or whatever else helped further this trait. Corporate downsizing helped move this trend along. These people left jobs, marriages or anything else that didn’t feel healthy or right. Their passions came to the forefront. Integrity towards themselves became paramount. These changes to truth and integrity are the work of the THROAT CHAKRA because they deal with communication. This chakra spins in the color of light sky-blue, and faster still.
2000’s the new millennium – The spiritual revolution went into swing with increased interest in psychic phenomena, earthbound spirits, life-after-death and angels. Interest in psychic phenomenal comes through loud and clear with the THIRD EYE CHAKRA. This chakra spins at three colors, white, purple and primarily indigo.

These children are highly psychic and spiritually gifted. They are right-brain dominant. So, they feel instead of think. Other traits are artistically gifts, musical and mathematical thinking, learning through visuals not auditory. Many are emotionally gifted, and want to help other children in an nonjudgmental and openhearted way.


An indigo child is sensitive to others, because many times they know what the person is feeling. Being truthful to these children is recommended, because they can detect a lie through their inner knowing. Lack of integrity does not work for an indigo child. They will call you on it every time. So truth and integrity are what we have to give our children to help an indigo child grow and move in the direction of their lives purpose.


These children are very different then when we were children. Their combined IQ’s are higher than at any other time in history. But, they have higher scores in non-verbal intelligence and lower scores in verbal skills. To them the telepathic trips they take are their true schooling...night school. It’s why many are tired the next day, because they haven’t slept. What they learn during the day at human school is boring and obsolete. They turn to "night school" for their true learning... and many do it in secret.

The Global Purpose of Indigo Children is to usher in the New Age of Peace, the Age of Aquarius.

Indigo children naturally want to help others. They know that it is through helping others that big changes happen on the earth. A true indigo child cares deeply about the values of fairness, individuality and brotherhood of all. According to doctors and teachers, Indigo children report seeing angels, auras, fairies and deceased loved ones. They intuitively know the integrity level of others and they sense a lie. Most important of all, these children know, understand and respect their gift without question.


We as adults have been taught to question everything. When we get a feeling, we often discount it's worth and end up making mistakes because of it. An indigo child does not question the divine inspiration they receive. Instead they follow it without question and to the letter.


As these children move into adulthood, psychic experiences, telepathy and angels will become common conversations. Lying becomes impossible when you're telepathic. The legal professions, justice systems and more will become obsolete. People will naturally be honest, because they will not be able to get away with anything else.

You have to earn the trust of an indigo child.

Indigo children know the legal and government systems today are corrupt. They know the educational system needs a major overhaul, and they have the tenacity to make it happen when they are in a position to do so. We are presently in the Age of Pisces with the values of "money, power and control." It is predicted that these values will be replaced by 2012 with the values of "love, brotherhood, unity and integrit." The overhaul of theses systems has already begun, and the indigo child will continue the change till we take on the values of the next Great Cycle
In the new Age of Peace, the Age of Aquarius, we will live in "cooperation, brotherhood, integrity and love." We will live a much more natural existence through natural whole foods, clean water and fresh locally grown produce.

MLM's (Multi-Level Marketing) may become more prevalent and could represent the major source of our market economies.

All the unnecessary "things" that are produced now will no longer have a market and will cause massive closures of the businesses that produce them. But, they will be replaced with other needed and useful businesses that will be operated to a large extent from home. People will follow their lives purpose and not settle for just a "job."


As these obsolete businesses go, so will smog, pesticides, food additives, pharmaceutical drugs, stress and worry. As we stop using unnatural time given us by clocks, we will start to life in natural time...our birthright.

The old energy of "fear" will be replaced by the new energy of "peace."

People who live in higher dimensions instantly manifest in order to get their needs met. They focus their desire and vision on their goal, which attracts or creates it. Because of our increased psychic talents when we need something we will manifest it through the power of visualization. It takes discipline to keep the focus unwavering on what we desire. Worrying creates negative results so it has to be replaced with loving thoughts immediately.


The indigo child doesn’t worry about job security, because they know their true source of security is from living through God/the Universe and purpose.

Conclusion:

Our very DNA is changing. Many of you, as adults are feeling the effects of these changes as our bodies attempt to adjust. You may feel your nerves a bit frazzled, or your breathing will become short and you’ll feel anxious for no apparent reason. Some will even have sensations of spinning or movement of energy in their chakras as the ray energy from the galactic center plummets down to earth, stimulating our internal energy centers.


The Earth’s own magnetic field has changed dramatically from what it was only centuries earlier. It’s weakening as we approach the next Great Age, which is promised to change our very existence and thinking.


The children of today, the indigo's and their younger counterparts, thecrystal children were born with much of this DNA already in place. They are the forerunners and the instituters of our new lighter bodies and refined psychic abilities. Through their sensitivities, knowing, and integrity they are here to show us the way...not the other way around. Adults have to encourage them to be themselves. They come to us with a whole new set of values based on the values of the Next Mayan Great Age...the Age of Peace...the Age of Aquarius as some call it. It’s all the same. What are these values?

...Love, Brotherhood, Unity and Integrity

P.S. Hold onto your hats...another evolution is occurring with rainbow children coming on the scene NOW!

References:
The Care and Feeding of Your Indigo Children, Doreen Virtue
Conversations with Children of Now, Meg Blackburn Losey, MscD, PhD
Beyond the Indigo Children, P.M.H. Atwater

The 12 Keys of Spiritual Activism

The 10 Commandments of Mother Earth

Beyond Traditional Means: Ho'oponopono

An interview with ... 

Morrnah Simeona and Dr. Stan Hew Len*
by Deborah King -- frequent contributor to the Times

"We can appeal to Divinity who knows our personal blueprint for healing of all thoughts and memories that are holding us back at this time," softly shares Morrnah Simeona. "It is a matter of going beyond traditional means of accessing knowledge about ourselves."   

The process that Morrnah refers to is based on the ancient Hawaiian method of stress reduction (release) and problem solving called Ho'oponopono. The word Ho'oponopono means to make right, to rectify an error. Morrnah is a native Hawaiian Kahuna Lapa'au. Kahuna means "keeper of the secret" and Lapa'au means "a specialist in healing." She was chosen to be a Kahuna while still a small child and received her gift of healing at the age of three. She is the daughter of a member of the court of Queen Liliuokalani, the last sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands. The process that is now brought forth is a modernization of an ancient spiritual cleansing ritual. It has proven so effective that she has been invited to teach this method at the United Nations, the World Health Organization and at institutions of healing throughout the world.  

How does Ho'oponopono work? Morrnah explains, "We are the sum total of our experiences, which is to say that we are burdened by our pasts. When we experience stress or fear in our lives, if we would look carefully, we would find that the cause is actually a memory. It is the emotions which are tied to these memories which affect us now. The subconscious associates an action or person in the present with something that happened in the past. When this occurs, emotions are activated and stress is produced."   

She continues, "The main purpose of this process is to discover the Divinity within oneself. The Ho'oponopono is a profound gift which allows one to develop a working relationship with the Divinity within and learn to ask that in each moment, our errors in thought, word, deed or action be cleansed. The process is essentially about freedom, complete freedom from the past."  

Every memory of every experience, since the first moment of our creation, eons ago, is recorded as a thought form which is stored in the etheric realm. This incredible recorder/computer is also known as the subconscious, unihipili or child aspect within us. The inner child is very real and comprises one part of the Self. The other aspects are the mother, also known as the uhane or rational mind and the father, the superconscious or Spiritual aspect. The three comprise the inner family, which, in partnership with The Divine Creator, makes up one's Self I-Dentity. Every human being in creation, every plant, atom and molecule has these three selves and yet each blueprint is completely different.  

The most important task for people is to find his or her true identity and place in the Universe. This process allows that understanding to become available.   

The purpose of Ho'oponopono is to: 1) Connect with the Divinity within on a moment-to-moment basis; 2) To ask that movement and all it contains, be cleansed. Only the Divinity can do that. Only the Divinity can erase or correct memories and thought forms. Since the Divinity created us, only the Divinity knows what is going on with a person.  

In this system, there is no need to analyze, solve, manage or cope with problems. Since the Divinity created everything, you can just go directly to Him and ask that it be corrected and cleansed.  

In the area of problem solving: the world is a reflection of what is happening inside us. If you are experiencing upset or imbalance, the place to look is inside yourself, not outside at the object you perceive as causing your problem. Every stress, imbalance or illness can be corrected just by working on yourself. It is important to mention that this system is fundamentally different from other forms of Ho'oponopono.

In traditional methods, everyone who is involved in a problem needs to be physically present and work it out together. In Morrnah's system everything can be handled by you and the Divinity. You don't need to go one inch outside yourself for answers or help. There is no one who can give you any more relevant information than you can get by going within yourself. 

Morrnah especially recommends Ho'oponopono for those in the healing profession: "It is important to clear Karmic patterns with your clients before you start working with them, so that you don't activate old stuff between you. Perhaps you shouldn't be working with that person at all. Only the Divinity knows. If you work with a person and it isn't your business, you can take on the person's entire problem and everything associated with it. This can cause burnout. The Ho'oponopono gives the tools to prevent that from happening."

Morrnah wished for our Western society that everyone would do things to reduce the stress. "Western people have great difficulty in putting the intellect behind. It is difficult for the Western mind to get a grasp of a Higher Being because in traditional Western churches, the Higher Beings are not made evident." She continues, "Western man has gone to the extremes with his intellectualism. It divides and keeps people separate. Man then becomes a destroyer because he manages and copes rather than letting the perpetuating force of the Divinity flow through him for right action."

Morrnah works with her associate, Dr. Stanley Hew Len, who spent several years as a consulting clinical psychologist at the Hawaii State Hospital. He has had profound results by using this process with the most dangerous, violently "mentally ill" criminals in Hawaii. Yet he never talks to them, in fact, he never even sees them. He writes down their name and then just works on himself.

He cleanses his judgments, beliefs, attitudes and asks the Divinity what he can do for the person. As those attachments and memories are cleansed, the patient improves. "The Divinity," comments Stan, "says it is time to bring all the children home."  
[* also known as Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len]

                       

                        Ho'oponopono:  

            I love you 

            I am so sorry 

            Please forgive me 

            Thank you.

Tech Parents May Pick Blackberrys Over Babies

The Huffington Post, 
June 14, 2010

This is the print preview: Back to normal view »

Huffington Post   |  Bianca Bosker First Posted: 06-11-10 11:29 AM   |  
 Updated: 06-13-10 01:51 PM

Tweens and teens take a lot of flack for being tuned-out
texters and tweeters glued 24/7 to their cellphones.

Turns out, their parents aren't much better.

The New York Times and CBS (see video below) have done
segments on "tech addicted parents" who have trouble balancing
the attention they give to their babies and their BlackBerrys.

Sherry Turkle, director of MIT's Initiative on Technology and Self,
has studied the effect of technology on children and parenting.
 "After five years and 300 interviews, she has found that feelings
of hurt, jealousy and competition are widespread," the New York Times
reports.

Turkle told the New York Times, "Over and over, kids raised the
 same three examples of feeling hurt and not wanting to show it 
when their mom or dad would be on their devices instead of paying 
attention to them: at meals, during pickup after either school or an 
extracurricular activity, and during sports events."

What do you think are the risks and rewards of plugged-in parents? 
Tell us in the comments section below.

"The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting"

Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

By Nancy Gibbs

The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old's "pencil-holding deficiency," hooked up broadband connections in the treehouse but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. We hovered over every school, playground and practice field — "helicopter parents," teachers christened us, a phenomenon that spread to parents of all ages, races and regions. Stores began marketing stove-knob covers and "Kinderkords" (also known as leashes; they allow "three full feet of freedom for both you and your child") and Baby Kneepads (as if babies don't come prepadded). The mayor of a Connecticut town agreed to chop down three hickory trees on one block after a woman worried that a stray nut might drop into her new swimming pool, where her nut-allergic grandson occasionally swam. A Texas school required parents wanting to help with the second-grade holiday party to have a background check first. Schools auctioned off the right to cut the carpool line and drop a child directly in front of the building — a spot that in other settings is known as handicapped parking.

We were so obsessed with our kids' success that parenting turned into a form of product development. Parents demanded that nursery schools offer Mandarin, since it's never too soon to prepare for the competition of a global economy. High school teachers received irate text messages from parents protesting an exam grade before class was even over; college deans described freshmen as "crispies," who arrived at college already burned out, and "teacups," who seemed ready to break at the tiniest stress. (See pictures of the college dorm's evolution.)

This is what parenting had come to look like at the dawn of the 21st century — just one more extravagance, the Bubble Wrap waiting to burst.

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together. And so there is now a new revolution under way, one aimed at rolling back the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads. The insurgency goes by many names — slow parenting, simplicity parenting, free-range parenting — but the message is the same: Less is more; hovering is dangerous; failure is fruitful. You really want your children to succeed? Learn when to leave them alone. When you lighten up, they'll fly higher. We're often the ones who hold them down.

A backlash against overparenting had been building for years, but now it reflects a new reality. Since the onset of the Great Recession, according to a CBS News poll, a third of parents have cut their kids' extracurricular activities. They downsized, downshifted and simplified because they had to — and often found, much to their surprise, that they liked it. When a TIME poll last spring asked how the recession had affected people's relationships with their kids, nearly four times as many people said relationships had gotten better as said they'd gotten worse. "This is one of those moments when everything is on the table, up for grabs," says Carl Honoré, whose book Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting is a gospel of the slow-parenting movement. He likens the sudden awareness to the feeling you get when you wake up after a long night carousing, the lights go on, and you realize you're a mess. "That horrible moment of self-recognition is where we are culturally. I wanted parents to realize they are not alone in thinking this is insanity, and show there's another way." 

How We Got Here
Overparenting had been around long before Douglas MacArthur's mom Pinky moved with him to West Point in 1899 and took an apartment near the campus, supposedly so she could watch him with a telescope to be sure he was studying. But in the 1990s something dramatic happened, and the needle went way past the red line. From peace and prosperity, there arose fear and anxiety; crime went down, yet parents stopped letting kids out of their sight; the percentage of kids walking or biking to school dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2001. Death by injury has dropped more than 50% since 1980, yet parents lobbied to take the jungle gyms out of playgrounds, and strollers suddenly needed the warning label "Remove Child Before Folding." Among 6-to-8-year-olds, free playtime dropped 25% from 1981 to '97, and homework more than doubled. Bookstores offered Brain Foods for Kids: Over 100 Recipes to Boost Your Child's Intelligence. The state of Georgia sent every newborn home with the CD Build Your Baby's Brain Through the Power of Music, after researchers claimed to have discovered that listening to Mozart could temporarily help raise IQ scores by as many as 9 points. By the time the frenzy had reached its peak, colleges were installing "Hi, Mom!" webcams in common areas, and employers like Ernst & Young were creating "parent packs" for recruits to give Mom and Dad, since they were involved in negotiating salary and benefits.

See iPhone apps for new moms.

See the 10 best college presidents.

Once obsessing about kids' safety and success became the norm, a kind of orthodoxy took hold, and heaven help the heretics — the ones who were brave enough to let their kids venture outside without Secret Service protection. Just ask Lenore Skenazy, who to this day, when you Google "America's Worst Mom," fills the first few pages of results — all because one day last year she let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone. (That is probably a bit excessive more on the permissive side of parenting which, as we know, has rather grim outcomes,) A newspaper column she wrote about it somehow ignited a global firestorm over what constitutes reasonable risk. She had reporters calling from China, Israel, Australia, Malta. ("Malta! An island!" she marvels. "Who's stalking the kids there? Pirates?") Skenazy decided to fight back, arguing that we have lost our ability to assess risk. By worrying about the wrong things, we do actual damage to our children, raising them to be anxious and unadventurous or, as she puts it, "hothouse, mama-tied, danger-hallucinating joy extinguishers."

Skenazy, a Yale-educated mom who with her husband is raising two boys in New York City, had ingested all the same messages as the rest of us. Her sons' school once held a pre-field-trip assembly explaining exactly how close to a hospital the children would be at all times. She confesses to being "at least part Sikorsky," hiring a football coach for a son's birthday and handing out mouth guards as party favors. But when the Today show had her on the air to discuss her subway decision, interviewer Ann Curry turned to the camera and asked, "Is she an enlightened mom or a really bad one?" (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

From that day and the food fight that followed, she launched her Free Range Kids blog, which eventually turned into her own Dangerous Book for Parents: Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. There is no rational reason, she argues, that a generation of parents who grew up walking alone to school, riding mass transit, trick-or-treating, teeter-tottering and selling Girl Scout cookies door to door should be forbidding their kids to do the same. But somehow, she says, "10 is the new 2. We're infantilizing our kids into incompetence." She celebrates seat belts and car seats and bike helmets and all the rational advances in child safety. It's the irrational responses that make her crazy, like when Dear Abby endorses the idea, as she did in August, that each morning before their kids leave the house, parents take a picture of them. That way, if they are kidnapped, the police will have a fresh photo showing what clothes they were wearing. Once the kids make it home safe and sound, you can delete the picture and take a new one the next morning.

That advice may seem perfectly sensible to parents bombarded by heartbreaking news stories about missing little girls and the predator next door. But too many parents, says Skenazy, have the math all wrong. Refusing to vaccinate your children, as millions now threaten to do in the case of the swine flu, is statistically reckless; on the other hand, there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million. When parents confront you with "How can you let him go to the store alone?," she suggests countering with "How can you let him visit your relatives?" (Some 80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives.) Or ride in the car with you? (More than 430,000 kids were injured in motor vehicles last year.) "I'm not saying that there is no danger in the world or that we shouldn't be prepared," she says. "But there is good and bad luck and fate and things beyond our ability to change. The way kids learn to be resourceful is by having to use their resources." Besides, she says with a smile, "a 100%-safe world is not only impossible. It's nowhere you'd want to be." (See pictures of eighth-graders being recruited for college basketball.)

Dispatches from the Front Lines
Eleven parents are sitting in a circle in an airy, glass-walled living room in south Austin, Texas, eating organic, gluten-free, nondairy coconut ice cream. This is a Slow Family Living class, taught by perinatal psychologist Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll. "Our whole culture," says Contey, 38, "is geared around 'Is your kid making the benchmarks?' There's this fear of 'Is my kid's head the right size?' People think there's some mythical Good Mother out there that they aren't living up to and that it's hurting their child. I just want to pull the plug on that."

The parents seem relieved to hear it. Matt, a textbook editor, reports that he and his wife quit a book club because it caused too much stress on book-club nights, and stopped fussing about how the house looks, which brings nods all around the room: let go of perfectionism in all its tyranny. Margaret, a publishing executive, tells her own near-miss story of how she stepped back from the brink of insanity. On her son's fourth birthday, she says, "I'm like 'Oh, my God, he's eligible for Suzuki!' I literally got on the phone and called 12 Suzuki teachers," she says, before realizing the nightmare she was creating for herself and her child. Shutting down your inner helicopter isn't easy. "This is not a shift in perspective that occurs overnight," Matt admits after class. "And it's not every day that I consciously sit down and ask myself hard questions about how I want family life to be slower or better."

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Fear is a kind of parenting fungus: invisible, insidious, perfectly designed to decompose your peace of mind. Fear of physical danger is at least subject to rational argument; fear of failure is harder to hose down. What could be more natural than worrying that your child might be trampled by the great, scary, globally competitive world into which she will one day be launched? It is this fear that inspires parents to demand homework in preschool, produce the snazzy bilingual campaign video for the third-grader's race for class rep, continue to provide the morning wake-up call long after he's headed off to college.

Some of the hovering is driven by memory and demography. This generation of parents, born after 1964, waited longer to marry and had fewer children. Families are among the smallest in history, which means our genetic eggs are in fewer baskets and we guard them all the more zealously. Helicopter parents can be found across all income levels, all races and ethnicities, says Patricia Somers of the University of Texas at Austin, who spent more than a year studying the species at the college level. "There are even helicopter grandparents," she notes, who turn up with their elementary-school grandchildren for college-information sessions aimed at juniors and seniors. (See pictures of Barack Obama's college years.)

Nor is this phenomenon limited to ZIP codes where every Volvo wagon just has to have a University of Chicago sticker on it. "I'm having exactly the same conversations with coaches, teachers, parents, counselors, whether I'm in Wichita or northern Canada or South America," says Honoré. His own revelation came while listening to the feedback about his son in kindergarten. It was fine, but nothing stellar — until he got to the art room and the teacher began raving about how creative his son was, pointing out his sketches that she'd displayed as models for other students. Then, Honoré recalls, "she dropped the G-bomb: 'He's a gifted artist,' she told us, and it was one of those moments when you don't hear anything else. I just saw the word gifted in neon with my son's name ..." So he hurried home and Googled the names of art tutors and eagerly told his son all about the special person who would help him draw even better. "He looks at me like I'm from outer space," Honoré says. "'I just wanna draw,' he tells me. 'Why do grownups have to take over everything?' "

"That was a searing epiphany," Honoré concludes. "I didn't like what I saw." He now writes and lectures about the many fruits of slowing down, citing research that suggests the brain in its relaxed state is more creative, makes more nuanced connections and is ripe for eureka moments. "With children," he argues, "they need that space not to be entertained or distracted. What boredom does is take away the noise ... and leave them with space to think deeply, invent their own game, create their own distraction. It's a useful trampoline for children to learn how to get by." (See pictures of college mascots.)

Other studies reinforce the importance of play as an essential protein in a child's emotional diet; were it not, argue some scientists, it would not have persisted across species and millenniums, perhaps as a way to practice for adulthood, to build leadership, sociability, flexibility, resilience — even as a means of literally shaping the brain and its pathways. Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist and the founder of the National Institute for Play — who has a treehouse above his office — recalls in a recent book how managers at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noticed the younger engineers lacked problem-solving skills, though they had top grades and test scores. Realizing the older engineers had more play experience as kids — they'd taken apart clocks, built stereos, made models — JPL eventually incorporated questions about job applicants' play backgrounds into interviews. "If you look at what produces learning and memory and well-being" in life, Brown has argued, "play is as fundamental as any other aspect.'' The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that the decrease in free playtime could carry health risks: "For some children, this hurried lifestyle is a source of stress and anxiety and may even contribute to depression." Not to mention the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation of kids who never just go out and play.

Remember, Mistakes Are Good
Many educators have been searching for ways to tell parents when to back off. It's a tricky line to walk, since studies link parents' engagement in a child's education to better grades, higher test scores, less substance abuse and better college outcomes. Given a choice, teachers say, overinvolved parents are preferable to invisible ones. The challenge is helping parents know when they are crossing a line.

Every teacher can tell the story of a student who needed to fail in order to be reassured that the world wouldn't come to an end. Yet teachers now face a climate in which parents ghostwrite students' homework, airbrush their lab reports — then lobby like a K Street hired gun for their child to be assigned to certain classes. Principal Karen Faucher instituted a "no rescue" policy at Belinder Elementary in Prairie Village, Kans., when she noticed the front-office table covered each day with forgotten lunch boxes and notebooks, all brought in by parents. The tipping point was the day a mom rushed in with a necklace meant to complete her daughter's coordinated outfit. "I'm lucky — I deal with intelligent parents here," Faucher says. "But you saw very intelligent parents doing very stupid things. It was almost like a virus. The parents knew that was not what they intended to do, but they couldn't help themselves." A guidance counselor at a Washington prep school urges parents to find a mentor of a certain disposition. "Make friends with parents," she advises, "who don't think their kids are perfect." Or with parents who are willing to exert some peer pressure of their own: when schools debate whether to drop recess to free up more test-prep time, parents need to let a school know if they think that's a trade-off worth making.

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A certain amount of hovering is understandable when it comes to young children, but many educators are concerned when it persists through middle school and high school. Some teachers talk of "Stealth Fighter Parents," who no longer hover constantly but can be counted on for a surgical strike just when the high school musical is being cast or the starting lineup chosen. And senior year is the witching hour: "I think for a lot of parents, college admissions is like their grade report on how they did as a parent," observes Madeleine Rhyneer, dean of students at Willamette University in Oregon. Many colleges have had to invent a "director of parent programs" to run regional groups so moms and dads can meet fellow college parents or attend special classes where they can learn all the school cheers. The Ithaca College website offers a checklist of advice: "Visit (but not too often)"; "Communicate (but not too often)"; "Don't worry (too much)"; "Expect change"; "Trust them."

Teresa Meyer, a former PTA president at Hickman High in Columbia, Mo., has just sent the youngest of her three daughters to college. "They made it very clear: You are not invited to the registration part where they're requesting classes. That's their job." She's come to appreciate the please-back-off vibe she's encountered. "I hope that we're getting away from the helicopter parenting," Meyer says. "Our philosophy is 'Give 'em the morals, give 'em the right start, but you've got to let them go.' They deserve to live their own lives." (See the 10 best iPhone apps for dads.)

What You Can Do
Among the most powerful weapons in the war against the helicopter brigade is the explosion of websites where parents can confide, confess and affirm their sense that lowering expectations is not the same as letting your children down. So you gave up trying to keep your 2-year-old from eating the dog's food? You banged your son's head on the doorway while giving him a piggyback ride? Your daughter hates school and is so scared of failure she won't even try to ride a bike? "I just want to throw in the towel and give up on her," one mom posts on Truuconfessions.com. "This is NOT what I thought I was signing up for." Honestbaby.com sells baby T-shirts that say "I'll walk when I'm good and ready." Given how many books and websites drove a generation of parents mad with anxiety, a certain balance is restored to the universe when it becomes conventional for people to brag about what bad parents they are.

The revolutionary leaders are careful about offering too much advice. Parents have gotten plenty of that, and one of the goals of this new movement is to give parents permission to disagree or at least follow different roads. "People feel there's somehow a secret formula for parenting, and if we just read enough books and spend enough money and drive ourselves hard enough, we'll find it, and all will be O.K.," Honoré observes. "Can you think of anything more sinister, since every child is so different, every family is different? Parents need to block out the sound and fury from the media and other parents, find that formula that fits your family best."

Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, teaches seminars on how to peel back the layers of cultural pressure that weigh down families. He and his coaches will even go into your home, weed out your kids' stuff, sort out their schedule, turn off the screens and help your family find space you didn't know you had, like a master closet reorganizer for the soul. But any parent can do it just as well. "We need to quit bombarding them with choices way before their ability to handle them," Payne says. The average child has 150 toys. "When you cut the toys and clothes back ... the kids really like it." He aims for a cut of roughly 75%: he tosses out the broken toys and gives away the outgrown ones and the busy, noisy, blinking ones that do the playing for you. Pare down to the classics that leave the most to the child's imagination and create a kind of toy library kids can visit and swap from. Then build breaks of calm into their schedule so they can actually enjoy the toys. (See how to plan for retirement at any age.)

Finally, there is the gift of humility, which parents need to offer one another. We can fuss and fret and shuttle and shelter, but in the end, what we do may not matter as much as we think. Freakonomics authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt analyzed a Department of Education study tracking the progress of kids through fifth grade and found that things like how much parents read to their kids, how much TV kids watch and whether Mom works make little difference. "Frequent museum visits would seem to be no more productive than trips to the grocery store," they argued in USA Today. "By the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it's too late. Many of the things that matter most were decided long ago — what kind of education a parent got, what kind of spouse he wound up with and how long they waited to have children."

If you embrace this rather humbling reality, it will be easier to follow the advice D.H. Lawrence offered back in 1918: "How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning."

— With reporting by Karen Ball / Kansas City, Mo.; Alexandra Silver / New York City; and Elizabeth Dias and Sophia Yan / Washington, D.C.