I’m not sure if my congregation or the Durham one is closest to you, but if you decide to check it out, let me know and I can send you our newsletter and show you around a bit.
Just a heads-up that your local UU group may vary. Apparently the one in my suburb is very humanist. Meanwhile others can be very “Jesus lite,” and still others very “neo-pagan.” You may consider visiting on your own before bringing your kids, if you think it’ll confuse them too much.
Well, in a sense, I guess they are Hindi stories, since the translations you’re reading from are probaly based on modern Hindi texts rather than Sanskrit ones. 
Definitely. We have a lot of people in our congregation who have fled another local congregation when it got too “Judeo-Christian” for them. And I’m sure we’ve lost members due to our own “Agnostic/Humanist/Social Action” leanings.
In my experience six is way too young for you to worry. Both our kids went to Presbyterian nursery school, where they sang “God we thank thee for our food” but it was just a word. We never went to any religious ceremonies, our Christmas was totally secular, and at 10 or 12 or so I sat down with them and went over the beginning of Genesis, pointing out the contradictions, the two versions, and the absurdities. It worked fine.
I think the GS homework is odd. Homework, first and then the type of homework. Why not have her turn in what I do for my community or family?
We’ve been to a UU church only once, for the naming ceremony of a neighbor’s baby, and it seemed way too Christian for me. Why go at all? You can teach respect for others much better yourself, and why expose them to religious myths that get taught as real? Plus, if they get into the habit of going to one church it will be easier for them to switch to one not as much to your liking.
If your daughter was able to avoid telling her friends Santa doesn’t exist, she should find it easier to not say anything about god.
But definitely do not malign religions. My younger daughter, at 15, used to threaten me with turning Christian. I laughed at her, and it turned out fine. We also let them go with friends to events sponsored by churches, which didn’t hurt either.
Give your daughter the Bible and other scriptures and let her read and think.
That is pretty much what you need to do. She’s 6. She needs guidelines. Putting it in those terms are guidelines that she can understand. When she’s older and can understand better, you can go into more detail.
Another vote for trying a UU congregation. Not only do you get the opportunity to introduce your kids to a congregation that respects all beliefs and non-beliefs, but you get the other bonuses of a congregation - a community of people to call on in times of need, interest groups to participate in, ways to do charitable work, singing in choir, et cetera.
This is a good suggestion.
I just wanted to say, I *loved * Deaulaire’s Greek Myths when I was 6. Reading it is one of the few things I still remember from that age.
This is a big reason for us to go. We have a good circle of friends and family, but there are things a church community provides - a sort of distance we don’t get from friends and family, but a dependability - knowing they are there to step up with home visits, casseroles and hugs if we need them. And its a place that the kids can get married and we can get buried out of - and all those little other life rituals that I know not everyone around here things are important, but I want to have the option for.
Me too. The pictures are still how I think of the Greek gods. These days they’ve reprinted the Norse Gods book as well, and it might be even better. So I vote you get both.
Would you give your children scriptures from other religions and not state a personal preference in front of them?
If so, which religious texts would you allow, and which would yet withhold?
He’s not talking about what he would do. He’s talking about what the OP can do.
I could see maybe finding a children’s bible with illustrations (she hates being read to without looking at pictures right now), IF it was just the text made more accessible, without extra indoctrination stuff like telling the reader, “And that’s why God loves YOU, blah blah.”
After all D’aulaire (I misspelled it earlier) doesn’t say, “And some people used to believe . . .” it just says “Ymir and the ice cow emerged from Ginungagap.” (Norse book is top of my Amazon to buy list now, thanks.) And all her picture books don’t start by saying they are talking about made-up people, they just say, “Bear was asleep in his den,” and whatnot.
Also, reading the bible creates a lot of atheists! I think the story of Abraham and Isaac (while perhaps too intense for this age), is a great illustration of how fucked up Judeo-Christian beliefs are. I remember being really confused and angered by that story as a child. Similarly, the tale of Amalek, Noah, etc. When you aren’t brainwashed ahead of time to define Yahweh as all-loving, he comes across as a total bastard.
This worked well for us.
I was raised catholic, my wife Lutheran. Our siblings retain those faiths. Wife and I are strongly atheistic.
Our 3 kids are now 18-21. All capital-A Atheists. When they were young, I recall being similar to you, wanting to communicate my well-thought out positions while not indoctrinating the kids. Had thought of conducting my own “comparative religion” curriculum, but quickly realized I was too lazy/disorganized to make that happen.
Started going to a UU church when the kids were young for 2 reasons. Most importantly, it offered RE classes including “The church across the street” in which kids learned about and visited various houses of worship. But almost as important, in our primarily christian community it was useful to be able to represent ourselves as attending a “church.” So far we have not yet met a “believer” who realized that UU did not necessarily imply christianity/theism. Besides the kids, my wife and I also had some issues about dealing with folk who so strongly believed in something we thought bullshit, and so we derived some benefit as well. (Yes, FH, the UU church in your town is Humanist.)
One thing we emphasized with the kids was to be sensitive to others’ beliefs. But it was easy - for example - to simply tell the kids not to say “Godammit” in from of grandma. Fit in well with much of the rest of our liberal leanings - the right of each individual to make the choices that are best for them, tolerance for differences, etc. Often difficult when the others were not similarly respectful of our non-belief. We flat-out told them that it sucked that to get along in society a non-believer would probably be less open about their position than believers, but that is the way we think it is. Life as non-believers got far easier for our kids in HS, and then even moreso in college.
For us, it really worked well to simply openly discuss the reasons why we did not believe there was a supernatural, as well as our best understandings for why other people might believe. We didn’t go out of our way to start young or anything. When the kids were really young it didn’t bother us if they believed in Santa or the tooth fairy. At holidays we sang and listened to religious and non-religious carols. And we took our kids to family communions, confirmations, funerals, etc. While we did not deny religious holidays, we discussed and often celebrated contemporaneous pagan seasonal celebrations. Once our kids became old enough to separate imagination from reality, it was a no-brainer for them to realize it made far more sense to celebrate things like the changing of the seasons than some specific fable.
Think about it this way - if your kid asked you about racism, you would have no problem explaining how such beliefs developed, why some people might accept them, but why you personally reject the beliefs and their rationales. We had no problem discussing religion similarly.
Have you consider Unitarian Universalism?
I think at age 6 she already senses that. I suggested since our family doesn’t believe in any gods, she might want to substitute another word in the Promise. She said she does believe in God. I asked (in the most open, non-threatening, non-judgmental way I could) what “God” means to her. Response: “Well, it doesn’t mean anything. I mean, it means something, but it doesn’t really mean anything.” Translation: “I prefer to go with the flow and everyone else says “God,” therefore I will too.”
I’m cool with that.
And yes, I think we will check out the UU fellowship next month. She will be much more likely to listen and participate in a class anyway. She generally hates me reading aloud to her, and when I get into lecture or even Socratic mode about something weighty, she tends to pipe up, “Can we stop talking about this now?”
Your daughter is a ceremonial deist. Neato.
You are right on with the difference between girl and boy scouts. My son probably shouldn’t have gotten his Eagle badge, and it was cause for considerable thought/anguish at the time. He even got a UU religion badge before they outlawed them because UUs don’t hate fags.
It is kinda funny, it really didn’t seem like indoctrination to raise our kids in our nonbelief. But raising our kids to ask questions and seek for explanations of things, it was very natural for them to question all supernatural as baseless and unnecessary. But kids are so plastic, and tend to model their parents. I bet most believers don’t feel as tho they are going to any unusual lengths to convince their kids of their beliefs either.
It really is so silly that so many believers question whether one can be moral without religion. In my mind, it is far more sensible to discuss with kids the reasons they should act one way or another, than to simply declare that some being ordered/forbade certain behavior.
Even tho we thought we tried to be respectful of various beliefs, we noticed that we fell short at times. Like when we’d be in a Catholic service and around Communion time my kids would start saying things like, “I’m feeling a mite peckish, anyone for a snack?” 