:rolleyes: Are you suggesting I am interloping in this discussion, or that Dangerosa is interloping by speaking to a friend of her own child?
What’s not an appropriate role? Provider-of-a-book-without-express-permission?
She is absolutely interloping in her daughter’s friendship. She’s not this girl’s peer. It is not normal to plan on how you can CONVERT your children’s friends’ when they are coming to your house.
It is normal to provide activities, snacks, a safe environment, and supervision. That is an appropriate role. Not joining in with them. Let them influence each other, thats fine. Not so targeting this one specific girl for special treatment because you don’t like her parents’ beliefs.
Did your friends’s parents usually plan out what they could offer you from their book collection at 12? Cause that’s really weird if they did.
Different cultures see things different ways, of course. And someone belonging to an evangelical culture is going to regard inviting your daughter to Bible study and taking her to church with them as foreplay for a hoped-for conversion. Maybe you have a bright line there, but I think it’s an unrealistic one.
Of course they are trying to convert her. Bringing people to Christ is the professed aim of evangelicals. If you want them to not try to convert her, then you will have to keep her away from them. (Besides, it sounds like you don’t have anything to worry about here, so what’s the big deal?)
The only question I’d like to ask is, are the efforts to convert her basically peer-to-peer, or are the adults (parents, pastor, etc.) playing an active role?
Again, you’re overreacting about what Dangerosa is actually going to do. She used humour to describe it, and I don’t think you’re getting the humour.
As to adults interacting with children: that’s totally normal. Why would you only be allowed to be exposed to new ideas by your peers? Having a conversation with another adult can be such a wonderful experience when you’re a child, especially when they are taking you seriously. I remember conversations I had with our neighbour, with my godmother and with a friend’s dad.
Yes, of course they used to give me books! At twelve I had read a good portion of the books we had in the house (not my papa’s Asimov collection, but slightly more basic stuff). My neighbour used to plan what book she would give me next. Books that would open up my mind. Sometimes poetry. When I was younger I used to “run away” to her house and sit and read there.
I really don’t see anything strange about adults talking to children and lending them books, especially when children show a keen mind and an interest in intellectual pursuits.
Which is why I’d never make a big deal of it to her mother. Her mother would never understand that there is a difference. Nor would she even really get that what she is doing might be offensive. These are NICE people, and my daughter enjoys the time she spends at their church. And I value the exposure, even if I’m offended by the suspected motivation. But, as you said, to them they are one on the same and can’t be separated. There is no way to get one without the other, nor is there any way to explain why we wouldn’t let her go to church night without offending them and risking the relationship between the girls. I suspect as long as my daughter’s soul needs to be saved and they have access to it, my daughters heretical views will be tolerated. If I cut off access to her soul, they may cut off access to their lovely daughter and the friendship between the girls.
The motivation for this post was the sudden discovery that my daughter’s guest list for a sleepover caused them to suddenly get uncomfortable.
Bingo. That’s it exactly.
Gleefully PLANNING what you can give to someone else’s child that you expect them to find objectionable, for SPITE, is reprehensible. I don’t care if she uses humor to describe it, it is not funny, and it is not nice. Notice the thread title. This girl is not neglected or abused. The motivation is revenge for them disrespecting her. She should grow up and call them on it. Not sneak around trying to find ways to disrespect them through their daughter. It really shouldn’t make any difference whose side you agree with more. That just goes to show whatever bias you may have. Your experiences are not relevant. This is not about you. It is about a 12 yo girl being used as a tool to repay a perceived slight.
I really don’t understand why this is so complicated for any one. Let your children enjoy their friends. The parents, on BOTH sides, should stop trying to convert the others children.
This makes no sense. If you do not like what they do with your daughter, you are obligated as a parent to call them on it. If you have decided that it does not matter to you, then let the proselytizing drop. But don’t keep letting them take your daughter to church if you don’t like it just to justify spreading your own “gospel” to their daughter. It is bizarre that you won’t address this with the girls parents and insist on playing games with each other’s children.
Will be? This girl has spent entire weekends in my house since she was six. The first conversation I had with her mother was about both of us teaching Sunday School - since at the time I was teach Civil Right and Non Violent Resistance to fifth graders, I chose to explain that being a UU was a little different than what most people thought of in religion. Having heard from the grapevine that they were a religious family, I went out of my way to tell her that the end of the Civil Rights unit expanded the topic from the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s to women’s rights, disability rights and gay rights. I did that on purpose, I did not want a friendship between the girls to get cut off when fully developed because her mother decided we were Satanists or something, so I gave her a chance to cut it off near its inception. If what this girl is exposed to in my house is a shock to her mother, it is because she is choosing not to pay attention to what I’ve said and what my daughter has said over the previous six years.
You’ve made a lot of assumptions here, and I’m sorry you’ve read so much into a flippant and not well thought out OP. As I explained, I was time constrained and interrupted when I wrote it. But since you have been so willing to give me unsolicited advice, I’ll share some with you. When you read six or seven paragraphs about a complex situation on the internet, you are never getting the whole story in six or seven paragraphs. I’ve done the same “jumping to conclusions” myself
I beg your pardon? I’m obligated? I’m sorry, our worldviews are just completely divergent.
Clearly, they are. I do believe a parent is obligated to put a stop to any treatment of their young child they believe to be objectionable. Yes, I’m taking the crazy view that parent are obligated to look out for their child’s best interest. Crazy, ain’t I?
Um, actually, yes. It appears to me you’ve built up a version of the OP’s situation that is way overblown from the reality she’s expanded upon, and are now dug in on defending your outrage.
I’m sure your mileage will vary.
Oi, Dangerosa?
From the point of view of a once-11-year-old Lord of the Rings reader and life-long atheist, I think you’re doing the right thing. 
Oh well, if her actions are totally unrelated to these people’s religion why is that the focus of the OP? Oh, wait, she was just joking? Oh, right, that totally makes it okay to say offensive things. People never use that as a fallback to explain away their discriminatory behaviors!
Huh, now it’s discrimination to give a kid a book?! I thought it was just disrespectful to the parents 
Actually, Dangerosa is neither discriminating nor being disrespectful. She’s being a responsible, caring adult in presenting a child she has known for a long time with a book the kid might like. She really has made that abundantly clear. I could understand the tone from the OP and all her explanations since fit with the original tone, AFAIC.
It is discriminatory to treat this girl differently. It is disrespectful of the parents beliefs to use those beliefs to justify the discriminatory behavior.
Why do you feel it is okay to single this girl out of the crowd to make sure she “gets the word”?
I also understood the tone from the OP, clearly we have interpreted it quite differently. I, personally, do not believe it is acceptable to treat people, or their children, differently because of their beliefs. Even when I do not agree with their beliefs. Maybe its just me who feels that way.
It sounds to me like this is a girl she has a longstanding relationship with, for half of her life. She knows her, she knows her interests, she cares about her, she takes an interest in her intellectual life. The girl mentioned she was interested in the book, so she lent it to her. As she knows the girl’s interests, she’ll continue to engage with her intellectual development. That’s not discrimination; that’s what adults do for children they know and care about.
Anyway, a lot of this is speculation about another poster’s situation so I’ll bow out now. I just felt that you were twisting her words and certainly misrepresenting her intentions. I feel quite strongly that there is nothing wrong with stimulating intellectual development in a child, especially not in her situation.
Twelve is a perfectly appropriate age for a child to be exposed,* through books,* to adult things, and to different viewpoints. Children are not to stay children; they are to grow up.
The most important thing to the child’s development is not the parents’ wishes, but the child’s development itself.
Seems like some posters here are way to hung up on consensualism, while simultaneously seeing children–no youths of 12, even–as less than persons. That’s scary.
I’m not recommending it, but it could potentially be quite lulzy to pretend your family is very strange and unorthodox Episcopal. You know how liberal they are, and all that.
“We do believe in Jesus Christ. He was a great alien who taught us that it’s OK to hang out with prostitutes. Hurray!”