I’m following the example set by my parents: they’re allowed to do the religious education class that’s offered by the school, I’ll answer any questions they have to the best of my ability, and their church attendance will be limited to weddings and (when age appropriate) funerals. I haven’t been invited to a church wedding in a decade, and that was the first since I was a child so I don’t think it will come up often.
We have no religious relatives or close friends so it’s unlikely to be an issue.
Kids talk to other kids. Some of those other kids will talk about church. Your kids are going to hear about church. Trying to bubblewrap them until 12 is just not feasible.
IMHO, you’re better off having age-appropriate discussions with your kids, acknowledging that some families go to church (and, of course, other places of worship) and some don’t. I’m sure your kids are smart enough to understand that different families do different things.
Religion was not a big deal when I was a kid. We moved from base to base so the services we attended were some blend of Protestant teachings, none of which had any impact with me. The missus was raised Catholic so when Miss DrumBum came along, she was baptized and went to Catholic schools when available. I admit having some concerns with mixing religion and science education but these never materialized. None of this has stuck with her and she has not shown any interest in religion since then.
I discussed religion with my kids and shared my atheistic views. They each attended various churches with friends growing up, but today are adult atheists.
ETA: thinking about this, it is exactly what my parents did with me as a child.
When my kids were little, I still classified myself agnostic. I sent them to a Christian school until about fifth grade (just as my mom did to me), because it was a lot nicer than the public school they were zoned for. I also allowed my mom and grandma to take them to church and proselytize all they liked, but the kids knew I was not a believer. These days I am an atheist and the kids will tell you that they are too (they identified Christian for a while). They may just be blowing smoke up their evil old mom’s fanny, but I think they mean it.
I think we’ve done okay so far. The little Torqueling has a friend at school whose parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses, and so she picks up some stuff from her that I’d really rather she didn’t. Haley won’t come to birthday parties, which is sad. Apparently, celebrating birthdays is “Satanic” or something. I just tell her that different people believe different things, and I certainly don’t believe that birthdays have anything to do with Satan.
At the age of 6, we really haven’t taken it much farther than that. “Everyone believes something different. I don’t think X is true, but it’s not nice to tell people who believe differently that you think they’re wrong,” has been about it so far.
My understanding is very incomplete but I don’t think it has anything to do with Satan. JW celebrate no holidays that are not mentioned in the bible and only follow the religious aspects of the holidays that are. Celebrating secular holidays puts them before god which is not allowed.
I took the approach that they’re going to hear this stuff so I want them to hear it from me first.
So we learned all the stories. We read a lot of kids religious books but treated them mostly the same as Green Eggs and Ham. These were stories.
As they got older we discussed how some people believed stories were true and that even though we didn’t it was rude to call their parents liars (this applied equally to god and Santa Claus)
Our only big issue with this approach came when their decided that after years of being an asshole he wanted to be an asshole Catholic and when the kids were in grades 7&8 he had them baptized without telling me and enrolled them in a Catholic school.
My daughter failed her religion class that year. Oddly she later chose to attend a Catholic high school for her senior year after verifying she could take a class on world religions (ie all) for her religion requirement. The Catholic school board in Ontario is a publicly funded school system and you are no longer required to be Catholic to attend them btw.
The end result is that both kids are atheists and the biggest issue we have with their ability to question and draw their own conclusions is an occasional inability to shut their mouths when it would be more appropriate.
Yes, I’m a nonbeliever and I did something special to keep my kids from becoming religious - I took them to church, a bunch of different ones. They heard other kids talking about church and they had questions, so I suggested we go there and see. Not their cup of tea.
I think churches have a useful function in a community, except for the magical, woo-woo parts and the fire and brimstone parts, so I wanted to introduce them to that. Later, if they want to hang out there on Sundays for the bake sales and pot luck dinners, that’s their choice. I just wanted them to be free of the early childhood threats and indoctrination.
My wife is an active Christian and I’m an atheist. The kids go to church and I stay out of it. I figure, I was raised Catholic and yet by 12 I was firmly an atheist, so the kids will be alright. At some point we’ll have to have the “daddy doesn’t believe” talk, but for now my oldest still hasn’t noticed that the Arctic Ocean section in the kid’s world atlas doesn’t mention Santa, so…
I voted “Absolutely Not”. My wife was raised with practically no religion and biblical references fly right over her head, which doesn’t seem like a big deal until you realize how many there are!. I was raised Catholic but saw through it around age 11.
So our plan is the same as Moontherial, we read them the stories and don’t put any special emphasis on them. My three year old loves the Noah’s Ark story because it’s got lots of animals, which is fine by me.
We just talk about religion in our house. Not in any kind of planned way, but it comes up often enough. Mostly, I’ll be telling my husband about some moronic religious thing I saw, and we giggle/rant about it, and end up explaining to the kids what/why we’re talking about it. For example, my son and I were waiting in the car, and Beastie Boys came on the radio, and I told him the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace.
I know this is not a popular opinion around here, but did not teach them that religion is worthy of any special respect. We just taught them that rude is rude, and not to be rude to people for any reason. We also openly mock the idea of religion and spirituality in private, and just generally have taught our kids that believing in gods is stupid and silly.
But, we did send our kids to a YMCA camp which is Christian. 99% of their time is spent playing capture the flag and swimming kinda stuff, but they went to chapel daily and have nighttime devotions. It was okay with us, because the teaching there is on the good parts of Christianity, like Golden Rule-type things. That’s fine, and when we talked about it, we talked about how to extract the good lesson from the religious bullshit. My son just got back from camp actually. He’s 8, and described the teaching as “heavy-handed”. Ha! Just wait until he ends up at a actual church with an actual sermon!
I know of two families who homeschooled their kids so the kids would not be exposed to Christianity! :eek: One is atheist, and the other is pagan. To me, that’s as kooky (for want of a better word) as people who do that because they want the children to ONLY be exposed to Christianity.
And I’m a Christian whose family went to church when I was a young child because we had to impress the neighbors :rolleyes:, and then we got old enough to say, “Why should we do this when you don’t want to be there yourselves?”
Atheist here, with a very progressive catholic wife. We have a 16 month old right now, and really haven’t done anything to push him either way. No baptism so far, but he will probably attend catholic school, since his mother did, and she turned out fine. It’s up to him to believe what he wants. As long as he can articulate those beliefs, and not just blindly go along to get along.
Some people have really been hurt by religion and its purveyors that they’ll do anything to prevent the same damage from being inflicted on their kids.
Would you say that if someone lived in a mainly Jewish area and HS’ed the kids to keep them away from, specifically, Judaism? Or, for that matter, Islam?
Ditto. I my kids decide they want religion in their lives, that’s fine with me. Only because we Atheists do have a cross to bear, in the fact that we have nothing to comfort us when a loved one passes.
I guess that is one good thing about religion. It’s an effective tool for relaying sincere sympathy and communion with one another.