Sweetie, the Baby Jebus wants Daddy to watch football on Sundays. When Daddy doesn’t get to watch football, it makes the Baby Jebus cry. Now go fetch Daddy a beer, and then you and Mommy go pray for Daddy’s team to cover the spread. That’s a good girl.
My dad and I were having long discussions about different religions, our personal beliefs, and the nature of the universe, for as long as I can remember, certainly starting well before age 7. Then again, my dad was kind of wacky and avant-garde, so YMMV quite a bit.
My two biggest pieces of advice have already been covered, but since when did that ever stop me from posting? To elaborate:
Wait until she asks you or a Red Flag pops up, whichever comes first. Generally speaking, when kids are emotionally, psychologically and intellectually able to process a Big Topic, they’ll ask about it. What I’ve found is that if I jump the gun, either the talk goes right over their heads or they misunderstand something significant and it really bothers them deeply for too long before they ask about it and we can straighten it out. So waiting until she asks you why you don’t go to church might be the best approach. The exception would be what I call a Red Flag: when her behavior changes in a worrisome way. If she starts crying when it’s time to go to church, for example, or if she starts sleeping outside your bedroom door, she might be worrying about the safety of your soul or something. Then I’d go ahead and initiate that talk, even if she hasn’t asked you anything specific. That’s asking for help non-verbally.
Second - spend at least twice as much time listening to her ideas as you do sharing your ideas. Kids have some fascinating ideas about religion and spiritual matters - some of them they’re taught and some they come up with on their own. The best way to teach her to respect your beliefs or lack thereof is to respect hers.
Ummmm…it’s not brain-washing, it’s merely educating her to one side of things. You’ll get your chance. How else is she to learn about religion, and how normal religious people think and behave, if she doesn’t go? She can’t make an educated decision without learning both sides, and this is how she learns that side.
The hardest thing to determine, when they become teenagers and all, is when to allow them to stop attending church if they claim they don’t believe. Because for many teens. that lack of belief is just laziness! Especially if they see that “Daddy doesn’t have to get up early and get dressed and go to church…I want to lay around the house and watch TV all morning too!” There are several atheists and agnostics who have attended churches I’ve gone to with their spouse and children because they didn’t want their children to choose non-belief just because it seems easier and more fun. They went together as a family, and discussed what the ideas brought up in the sermon meant for each of them. Of course, these were not fundamentalists Christians…just average Protestants, mostly Methodists. I always admired that commitment to give the children all the information they would need to make their own decisions. the people who say, “Oh, I’m not going to take my child to church regularly, he can make up his own mind when he gets older” are actually denying them the chance to learn what they need to know to make that decision.
Now before you go all off on me, let me state my credentials for this…I attended Sunday School and church with perfect attendance for 13 years…and still went through a period of questioning and rejection, especially during college, when I only attended on the rare weekends I went home, and then really only to keep peace and see my friends. After I got married, I spent a few years not attending regularly at at, because my husband “didn’t want to get up” and go. I came back fully to the church when I had kids, because I missed the sense of community.
I “made” my kids attend Sunday School, and they both decided to stop attending after their confirmations…my daughter had hers, my son refused to go through with it. I have no problem with their decision to not attend, since they say they aren’t believers. but I also know that during those teen years, they didn’t want to attend because they were generally either hungover (hmmm, just like their dad…) or were embarrassed because none of their friends had families that went to church. They may someday decide to return to church, and that would be great…they are both in their 20’s now, and settling down into family-type situations. I’m just glad they had a good grounding and education in Christian principles, and an overview of other religions. There are basic cultural references that they understand as a result, unlike some of the students I had in a class of Biblical Literary Allusions. I was amazed at how many kids just didn’t “get” the point of some cartoon, or comic strip, or ad, or editorial, because they had no frame of reference.
Some of these additional replies have gone into the realm of downright silly, and a little insulting, to be honest. I don’t ‘lay around the house watching TV’ on Sunday mornings. I don’t drink, so I’m never hungover, and I still consider teaching kids at an early age to ‘believe’ to be indoctrination. I probably shouldn’t have used the term brainwashing due to it’s negative connotations.
Why is taking them to church early in their lives ‘giving them an opportunity to learn’ but not making them go depriving them?
Thanks again everyone. I think that I have a pretty good idea of how to approach this now.
Well, really depends on the church. I think some are downright into brain washing. Others are just at different levels of indoctrination. If I were you I certainly would attend the church your wife goes to a few Sundays to get a sense of where that church stands on it. If they were diehard evangelicals I would have a long discussion with my wife about the appropriateness of taking your daughter there.
On the whole I think a theological education is worthwhile from an early age though. Just part of a rounded education. If you teach your daughter to think for herself and respect her ideas and choices (e.g. I like broccoli but not spinach, I like Buddhism but not Christianity) she should be fine as she grows up. This is largely how my parents did it and although they had me go to church and they are believers at the end of the day they wanted their kids to think for themselves more than anything else. Much to their dismay this produced a pile of agnostic & liberal children to their christian & conservative selves. Makes for interesting debates at dinner and they shake their heads a lot but I do not think they would have it any other way.
So make the choice, “You can go to church, or you can stay home with Daddy and help him work in the yard, starting at dawn.”
I agree that it’s important to have a solid grounding in religion. I don’t know that taking a child to church regularly is necessarily the way to do so, though, if you yourself don’t have solid belief in that particular sect. I expect that the average child would take that as you’re implicitly endorsing that religion as being the correct one.
As I said before, my parents taught me about all religions, and then let me choose my own beliefs. I’ve actually read a Bible that my step-mother had lying around from cover to cover, unlike many actual Christians. They had no problem with me going to church with a friend of mine as a pre-teen, just to see what it was like, or reading bits and pieces of various other religious texts. And we discussed it a lot; pros and cons of various viewpoints, and how it effected how people behaved in the real world.
Another thought: If you and your wife respect each other as people, and don’t show disdain for each other or each other’s attitudes toward religion, then your daughter is going to learn that both religious believers and atheists can be good people and are worthy of respect. And that is a very good thing, regardless of what she herself comes to believe.
(And if you don’t respect each other, you have bigger problems than just what to tell your daughter about religion.)
I think children are malleable enough that weekly church attendance from such a young age is bound to have more of an effect than just learning “one side of things”. Especially because many churches make it a point to emphasize the virtue of unwavering faith in the face of temptation (i.e. things that would drive one from one’s faith, such as logical arguments). People can and do keep educated and well formed opinions regarding things that they have had little direct experience in. As far as I can tell from what you’ve shared about yourself, you have been able to make an educated decision about your religion without having attended say a mosque during your childhood (as opposed to the 13 straight years you attended church), right?
This is the kind of attitude that puzzles me. What does any particular religion offer to a child that is so important?
Anyway, I’m sorry for getting a bit off track…
Being childless and all, I can only offer my opinion as someone who was not too long ago a preteen kid confused as hell about religion: talk with your wife again about the fact that “going to church” is the default in your household and what that might tell your daughter. And in talking with your daughter, keep it as simple as possible, explaining to her that it is fundamentally a matter of ‘want’ for both of you, and the two opinions can coexist.
My wife and I are atheists - as all of our kids have turned out to be. Tho we desired not to dictate our kids’ beliefs, as with any moral lesson, we certainly did not shy away from explaining our experiences and opinions re: religion.
We let them go to vacation bible school (but only for one day until they were told mommy and daddy were going to burn in hell), and we took them to frequent baptisms, communions, confirmations etc. within the extended family. One main reason we started attending a UU church was because they had a “comparative religions” curriculum for youth RE.
What I’m getting at is I think it is optimal for kids to learn that there are other belief systems out there than whatever their parents happen to believe.
Short of offering your kids comparative RE classes perhaps the best example your kids could have is that her parents reached differing conclusions - and that they in turn can make up their own mind. Personally I think it undesireable for kids to get only one view of religion through their formative years - whether that results in their unthinkingly accepting the same beliefs, or rejecting them later in life.
The majority of Americans are Christian. Much of literature and other art makes allusions to Christianity. I am not Christian, despite attending Confirmation, but I do feel that some education in Christianity is important because of its cultural impact. I agree, though, that attending church isn’t necessarily the way to go. When I was little, my mom read to me from a book of bible stories (basically the Bible translated for kids) and that has served me well.
Learning a bit about what believers might think is completely different from teaching christianity as The Only Religon or as a valid explanation for the world around us. Culturally, it is but a piece of world culture.
Being Jewish I had no education at all in Christianity (besides what got forced on the public at Easter and Christmas) and I came out fine. I suspect it is more important for Christians to learn about Islam, Hinduism and Judaism than the other way around. I assure you, you can’t avoid learning about Christianity in our culture.
What starryspice and Kalhoun said. Aside from any personal rewards they might get from a particular religion (and I would support my hypothetical children in whichever they might choose if they went that way) - being familiar with at least the basics of a given religion is vital for fully understanding all sorts of literature, artwork, politics, and a host of other cultural artifacts the world over.
The problem is that no church (except maybe Unitarians) offers a comparative religion course. All operate on the assumption that they have the answer, even if they don’t rant about it. Our school system has a unit on religion in junior high history which is very well done, giving information about all world religions in a fair and balanced way.
If you truly want to teach a kid what other people believe, you’d have to take her to lots of churches and mosques and temples. Going to just one does not give a broad perspective.
What I did was to use Genesis as a logic lesson. Teaching them critical thinking was far more useful than teaching any dogma, even an atheistic dogma. Given that, and the role model of parents who did not go to any religious institution, was fine. They both went with friends to temples or churches, but they had no ill effect. My younger daughter, when she was mad at us, yelled that she was going to believe in Jesus. I laughed at her and it turned out fine.
God handed out candy and all I got was guilt?
Figures.
I like this.
It’s been a long time since Sunday School, but I seem to recall that a ruler was often involved.
That’s fuckin’ hilarious!