I am not concerned about children giving their friends cards, on Valentine’s Day or any other time, if it is something that they individually choose to do. I am concerned about children being pressured into participating in a tacky ceremony from which all positive meaning has been drained, which has been turned into mockery of the things it was once meant to celebrate. I am concerned about kids being coerced to give messages of personal romantic love (something that kids do not understand anyway) not only to their friends but also to other kids to whom they may be quite indifferent, or positively detest. It is a devaluation of love, it harms children by forcing them to be hypocrites, and it benefits no-one but the greeting cards companies.
Remember, kiddie valentine exchanges don’t necessarily have to (and didn’t used to) require commercially manufactured purchased cards. Sonny boy, when I was your age we made our own valentines for our classmates! With construction paper and paper lace and straggly crayon writing! And glue, lots of glue! Uphill in the snow, both ways! Why, we even used scissors! Minimally supervised! Those were the days.
AFAICT, not even Hallmark is pressuring kids to view the kiddie valentine exchange as an expression of personal romantic love. If Hallmark kiddie valentines are “messages of personal romantic love”, then the Barney the Purple Dinosaur song “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family, with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you” is a campaign song for polyamory.
When I was last forced to do this in fourth grade and to give one to everybody I wrote “I’m only doing this because they made me” on each one. Turns out those cards weren’t as anonymous as we were lead to believe.
But on the not doing birthdays and other holidays (I’m in the “raising children with religion is a mild form of child abuse” camp but as mentioned, parents do this on all topics not just religious) I was always amazed at how many adults treated me as if I were being beaten weekly and subjected to monthly sodomization with a broom handle.
It really wasn’t that big of a deal. I still had plenty of interactions with my fellow classmates.
And on the plus side, now as a thoroughly atheist adult I recognize how artificial holidays are and feel completely comfortable only celebrating them when and how I am in the mood for and not as dictated by societal guilt trips. If I feel like making a big deal out of my wife’s birthday I do. If I don’t, I don’t. If I feel like visiting with family on Christmas I do, if spending four days in Vegas sounds more fun that year, I do that instead.
It’s one thing to raise your kids as a member of a major religion, but to impose completely irrational restriction on them in a way that singles them out and robs them of enjoyment due to extremist fringe interpretation is to be a bad parent.
I kind of feel the OPer on this one myself. I was raised in a fairly strict non-denominational Christian home, learning Bible verses, going to church once or twice a week, attending Christian summer camp, etc, and I spent a lot of time in my pre-teen/teen years beating myself up because I never felt this “personal connection” with Jesus everyone was going on about. Even when I read my Bible or did devotions every night, even when I prayed every day, it never felt real for me past the age of 10 or so. Eventually I realized that whatever it was, it wasn’t right for me, and I was lucky enough to have understanding parents that let me make my own decisions about religion once I was old enough to care either way. But I did spend a lot of time feeling damn guilty about my lack of faith. Obviously parents raising their kids to believe what they believe is just parents doing what they think is best for their kids, but I still think it’s creepy when people make a big deal out of it to their children when they’re too young to understand anyway. Do you really want your 10 year old obsessing over which of their classmates is going to hell?
I recently watched this episode of the show 30 Days where they took an atheist woman and filmed her experience living with a Christian family for 30 days. In the beginning they showed them interacting with their own families and I got the creeps seeing both the atheist mother reinforcing that there is no God to her children and the Christian mother doing the opposite to hers. It just seems brainwashy and weird when you make your children chant your personal mantra back to you. I think you should let them figure it out on their own.
digs, I sympathize with you, but to play devil’s advocate: what would you tell a kid who complained that she didn’t get to smoke pot, or stay out until 3 a.m., or dress in Jr. Ho fashions, or participate in the local KKK cross-burning, because her parents didn’t believe in it?
It’s part of parents’ job to protect their children from things that they believe are overly harmful, dangerous, or corrupting, and “everybody else is doing it” is not necessarily an argument that something’s innocent and harmless.
Ok, this seems odd. You just quoted a long post where I’m talking about how I’m raising my kids… so should I read that as semi-humorous? As in “Do you really have kids, dude, because if you did you’d realize they’re out-of-control hooligans!” Or should I read it as a plea for help?
Which makes me feel like the age thing is a little weird, also. Again, it easily could be “How old ARE you, dude?” And again, you just quoted the post where I’m describing my kids having grown up… so I’m old enough to have old kids. But, do you seriously want to know? Why do you need to?
BTW, my son still laughs when he remembers that after a talk on the addictiveness of cigarettes, I said “If I ever catch you smoking, it better not be tobacco…”
I had a friend in grade school, maybe 5th grade? I had bought her a xmas gift that she told me she wasn’t allowed to accept because of her religion. It was one of the non-xmas christian factions, I don’t remember which. I felt bad, but she seemed ok with it. Parents have every right to bring their own children up in their own religion. Once children grow up they then have the responsibility to chose to continue or not.
This is how I approach it. My kids are being brought up in a Christian home and will continue to be until they reach an age they make their religious decisions for themselves.
I don’t drill things into their heads…my approach is we put everything through a filter of loving God with heart, soul and mind and loving our neighbor as ourselves.
The way I teach my kids is that if they are loving God with heart/soul/mind and loving their neighbor as themselves then they aren’t juding their neighbors decisions and telling them what they should or shouldn’t be doing. They aren’t denying rights to their neighbors based on using the Bible out of context. They are basically setting their sights on those 2 key components: love God and love each other.
As they age if they choose to go on a different path then yes, I will be sad and I will pray they come back around but I’ll support them and always love them regardless.
If that makes me a controlling religious parent then I’m okay with that.
Ultra-controlling parents go beyond spoiling holidays and birthdays for thier kids: I’m talking about the parents who send their kids to camp to get rid of “the gay.” This really breaks my heart. At an age when kids are most confused and vulnerable about their hormones, Mom and Dad have to swoop in and tell them that their very thoughts, which they cannot control, are going to make them burn for all eternity. I think that’s just abuse of power. Making your kid get up early Sunday to go to church is one thing, but it’s the very definition of controlling bastardness that compels a person to send their own child away to be indoctrinated in order to “fit in.”
In our house, we have 3 Catholics and 1 Lutheran. The Kid is being raised Catholic. However, none of us have ever TOLD her what she “has to” believe. We’ve told her she, and only she, can make that decision.
Either you believe or you don’t. Either it’s a real faith or it isn’t. If it isn’t real, if it doesn’t come from within and from free choice, it’s worthless. I’m sure we all have our stories of the preacher’s child from the excessively strict upbringing, who became the biggest meanest hell raiser in town.
You push too hard, some day they will push back harder, and go off in the opposite extreme.
You just can’t force faith. And, some “beliefs” are just bullshit to begin with.
