Today's Kids - They Really Are Different

by P. M. H. Atwater, L.H.D.

No other generation of record matches the children now being born.

Noted historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 (William Morrow, New York City, 1991), put this into perspective for those of us in the United States by identifying the children born between 1982 and about 2003 as our nation's fourteenth or "Millennial Generation." These are the most wanted, nurtured, and educated group of individuals we've ever produced, and the most protected by law. Unusually smart and assertive, these youngsters are as creative and intuitive as they are computer literate and inventive.

Not confined to the United States, this emergence of new kids is truly global, as this observation from Mexican pediatrician Ibarra Chavez attests: "The new crop of infants are coming in more aware. eyes focused and alert, necks strong, lying in bassinets no bigger than chickens, and with a knowingness I cannot describe [in Spanish or English]. They are very special babies, this new crop."

Sharon Begley, author of the Newsweek magazine article entitled "The IQ Puzzle" (May 6, 1996), describes the situation this way: "IQ scores throughout the developed world have soared dramatically since the tests were introduced in the early years of the 20^th century. The rise is so sharp that it implies that the average school child today is as bright as the near-geniuses of yesteryear."

The gene pool cannot change fast enough to account for this leap, so we can't claim genetics as causal. Test scores rose only slightly in the area of rote schooling, so education isn't the cause either. Trying to make sense of the situation, experts have surmised that young people today are simply better at taking tests - or maybe it's because they're better nourished, or have larger vocabularies (thanks to permissive parenting), or play a lot of video games (which demand concentration before response).

The scurry to find answers to what is happening to our youth centers around one glaring fact: the extreme jump in intelligence, between 24 and 26 points, concerns "non-verbal intelligence" - the ability to know or intuit information. This means that the new children are natural "creative problem solvers." While geniuses were once ranked with scores between 134 and 136 points (some say 140), a preponderance of today's youth regularly test out at 150 to 160; many over 184. No precedent exists to explain this.

The anomaly in IQ scores immediately caught my eye because it exactly reflected what I was finding with child experiencers of near-death states. The more sources I studied, the more professionals I interviewed, the more confident I became that humankind's long predicted quantum leap in evolution was indeed happening and on several fronts: kids being born "different;" and children "changed" either because of an intensely powerful life event or from an encounter with the "power punch" that best describes the impact of a near-death or otherworldly experience.

Authors Lee Carroll and Jan Tober talked about today's youngsters in their popular book, The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived (Hay House, Carlsbad, CA, 1999). They spoke of how technologically oriented these youngsters are while at the same time being highly intuitive and creative - confident, strong, non-attached, with quick, sharp minds. The claim is made that the children have "indigo" or purple auras around them. (The "aura" is the part of our electromagnetic field closest to the physical body that can sometimes be seen by gifted intuitives. It's predominant color is said to show that person's basic traits and moods.) Much of the information in the book comes from "channeled" sources, with additional comments from some professionals and parents.

Drunvalo Melchizedek, a self-realized mystic, echoed many of these claims in an interview he did with Diane Cooper about "Children of the New Dream," held on June 22, 1999. Only he went further by explaining that, in his view, there are three different types of children now emerging: those in China who are super psychics, the indigo children, and kids born with AIDS. He describes the Chinese youngsters as "psychic beyond belief." He says they have scored 100% on every test given to them, no matter what kind of test it was or how difficult. This has puzzled their parents, who often lament, "I have a kid who knows everything - what do I do about this?" He reports that such children are now showing up in Russia and the United States, and that these super psychics are similar to indigo children.

But what excites Drunvalo the most are the AIDS kids. "About 10 or 11 years go in the U.S.," he offers as an example, "there was a baby born with AIDS. They tested him at birth and at 6 months and he tested positive for AIDS. They tested him a year later and he still tested positive. Then they didn't test him again until he was 6, and what was amazing is that this test showed that he was completely AIDS free! In fact, there was no trace that he ever had AIDS or HIV whatsoever!" He goes on to reveal that, in close monitoring by medical researchers at the University of California/Los Angeles, the discovery has been made that youngsters like this particular boy exhibit a unique DNA patterning no one else has - 24 active codons. (In human DNA the world over, 20 of the 64 different patterns or codons are "turned on" and active, 3 operate like "stop/start" codes similar to a computer, while the rest remain inactive.) The children with 24 active codons, instead of the usual 20, have shown a resistance to disease that is quite remarkable. They seem to be immune to everything. Drunvalo believes this DNA advancement heralds "the end of disease" in that anyone, by choosing to align with unity and interconnectedness, as the kids do, can achieve the same result.

Various channelings from a number of well-known psychics are making claim after claim about the new children. Some of the kids call themselves "the children of Oz," especially those from war-torn countries like Bosnia. I'll soon be writing a book that delves deeper into the subject but, for now, here's an overview that attempts to separate some of the facts from fiction about today's youngsters:

Their intelligence and creative, innovative abilities are well established.

Their tendency toward non-attachment might account as much for the lack of compassion many exhibit as for their unusually forgiving nature.

Because the original tests on AIDS babies have since been discredited, any claim of their amazing immunity is now suspect.

No scientific research paper has yet to be published on extra codons with these new children, although it is now recognized that a significant number do have enlarged heads (protrusions at the back and front as if they were "wearing" a helmut - which is eventually covered by hair).

Just as many kids with auras of different colors exhibit these abilities as those with auras of indigo or purple hues. When assigning aura colors, one quickly runs into significant challenges: the color of the personal aura tends to alter depending on mood and maturity; colors also exist traditionally that signify the "ray" or "mission" in life; and, in the study of evolution, there are said to be "root races" or stages in the development of the human species that are symbolized according to vibrations of color. To say the new children are "indigos" is misleading.

It is well known in psychological circles that children who are abused, painfully shy, shell-shocked by wars and similar traumas, or suffering from neglect become quite psychic. It's as if the intuitive sense develops or expands as a survival skill. It is no wonder, then, that so many of these children become super psychics or at least are able to speak "mind-to-mind" with both spirit beings and anyone else sensitive enough to "hear" them.

Predictions on why today's kids differ so much from their elders, and they do, have the ring of apocalyptic predictions, like the coming end of the Mayan calendar, which will occur December 21, 2012. There is no doubt that society is changing, especially after America's 9-11 emergency and the resulting war on terrorism, the rise of the Euro dollar, and what's been happening in The Holy Lands. Interestingly, there was no appreciable reporting of children's near-death episodes until after the widespread use of technological intervention in resuscitation and medical care. Since then, the majority who "come back" seem somehow "rewired" to thrive in the world of optics that is quickly replacing the very technology that saved them.

Are the citizens we need for tomorrow's world being created today - through genetic changes that cannot be explained and by the intensity of near-death states - for a reason? Are we witness to evolution in our time, or the working out of a Grander Plan of a Higher Order, or both? No one can say for certain, but what we can say is this: our children's cry for peace, for the right to grow up in a world where there is enough food and water and equal opportunities to learn and question without fear, to love and be loved, is a cry that needs to be heard and acted upon.

P.M.H. Atwater began tracking the impact of consciousness transformations, especially in children, back in 1966, and she began research the near-death phenomenon in 1978. Her books include Coming Back to Life, Beyond the Light, Future Memory, Children of the New Millennium, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Near-Death Experiences. Her website is www.cinemind.com/atwater.

NOTE: Dr. Atwater is looking for comments about these new youngsters from parents, school teachers, health-care providers, the children themselves - little stories, ideas, drawings, sayings, personal experiences, whatever you would like to share (all drawings must be in black and white). Send material to: Dr. P. M. H. Atwater, P. O. Box 7691, Charlottesville, VA 22906-7691, U.S.A. Also send a written "permission-to-use." No items can be returned (so make certain you have a copy of your own), and no guarantees can be made on what will actually appear in her book and what will not. Space requirements and editing will determine that.