I have never mentioned God to my son. Today he told me his kindergarten teacher told him God made everything and "God gave us ten fingers."
I don't even know how to talk to him about this. I'm completely unprepared for how to explain religion in a way a five year old will understand.
How do y'all talk to your kids about this crap when other people push God on them?
And don't worry I am absolutely going to talk to his teacher, enforce our boundaries and escalate if needed. In the meantime I am trying to navigate the weird conversations I now have to have with my son.
Dreading this myself. I’m in Texas and just had a baby.
Do you do Santa in your house?
Yes. We do Santa.
If you had said no, I would say treat it the same way you do Santa. I wish I could be more help.
Best way I can think to navigate is let him understand and think about the idea until it reaches a logical conclusion. He's going to eventually get exposure to the creationism propaganda. Most of us got to where we are by taking time to think it through and realize how silly it is objectively when you aren't socially pressured to believe a silly thing just from consensus alone.
He's a bit young for the ideas pushed by harder sciences or whatever but building a good groundwork of understanding natural selection, evolution or similar science based alternatives at least lays groundwork for a more critical analysis of why God made everything beliefs aren't the only option. I don't think most atheists fully understand the evolutionary and structural reason why 10 fingers became the standard but at least we understand it comes from a long period of genetic advantages being carried forward and the fact we weren't always hairless bipedal primates rather than a space wizard thought it looked right.
So here's what I did.
I said "Wait .. what? Who is God?" And he shrugged. I said I think you got ten fingers when you were growing in my belly and I ate lots of good foods with vitamins to help you grow all those ten fingers. His face lit up!! He wanted to know all the things I ate and if it tickled me when he moved around in there. I said "do you have any more questions about what your teacher said?" And he said "what else did you eat when I was in your belly?" There was much giggling.
I told him his teacher should not be talking about beliefs and God to him because those things are very personal and different people believe differently. Teachers should only be teaching you things that are true whether you believe them or not. Like how 1+1=2 and it doesn't matter if you believe it, it's still 2. He said he would tell me if it happens again.
Edit: he likes his class and his teacher, so I'm going to try to settle this with a conversation with his teacher. I really hope it doesn't have to go further than that.
Please update us. I would love to hear how that went.
I had an English teacher in middle school who totally put the curriculum aside and spent weeks trying to teach us this weird word-association memorization system. I still remember the first two words: teacup and Noah. There was no rhyme or reason to this system. We were just supposed to memorize this long list of weird words.
I refused to do it and the teacher gave me an "F" for the class, as if that exercise was the only thing that mattered.
My mom asked me how the hell I got an F in English. I explained it to her, and she went down to talk to the guy. She came back and sat me down.
"Honey, you're gonna meet a lot of assholes in your life. Sometimes the only way to deal with them is to just power through it." Then, she sat down with me and helped me memorize the stupid list.
I don't think you should take the teacher on. Your kid is going to meet crazy people. You can't prevent it. The best thing to do in my opinion is prepare them with answers like, "How interesting! Excuse me, I see someone I need to talk to."
This is so true. I've had to have this conversation with my own kids when they were younger. The world is full of crazies , don't engage unless necessary and if necessary play along until you can get away.
There's r/atheist and r/atheistparents that might have more advice for you. I'm not going to comment on the legality of this, however, when I see this come up in those subs I usually encourage More religious teaching. But not on Christianity, on ALL of it. It's harder for them to indoctrinate if your kid already knows people believe a lot of interesting things, and they're all "the one true religion." And don't forget myths! Greek and Roman gods were just as real to people back in the day as Christianity is now. You may be able to combat this inappropriate kindergarten teacher, but there's always going to be another around the corner, and actual education is always the key.
There's a Usborne book (World Religions) out there with big pictures and facts on all of the major current religions. It's not kindergartner level, but the big colorful pictures of people in religious dress really catch your eye, and you can pick out some interesting things to chat about. There's probably others, but I know we liked this one.
Thank you! We do sometimes attend a UU church. He goes to the religious ed class for kids and learns about all different religions. Haven't been in a while. I might make a plan for Sunday. His best friend is also not Christian or atheist. It's important to me that he knows other people believe differently and that's ok.
I would not recommend asking advice from the edgelord teenagers in r/atheist . I can tell you right now they will just say “Lawyer up”.
I would shrug and say, "Some people believe silly things, and that's okay," and quickly move on. You don't have to have the conversation now. Keep it simple.
I'm an atheist and my wife is agnostic. I have 2 kids and I am letting them figure it out on their own. I will point out that both my kids are autistic like me and my son is firmly on the atheist camp just because logically nothing else makes sense. My daughter has just turned 5 and I am just letting her be a child and learn what she wants and when she is older she can choose for herself. I don't push my atheist beliefs on them because that would not be fair, I am letting them choose their own paths.
Yeah that was a big part of what I told him was wrong with the teacher's comments. I said "nobody should be telling you what to believe." I told him his teacher's job is to tell him facts not what to believe or what to think about those facts. As with everything else in parenting, I just hope I'm doing the right thing.
It sounds to me like you are doing your level best to do exactly that. Stick to your current trajectory and keep encouraging critical thinking and your child reaching their own conclusions!
Thank you! I didn't have good examples of parenting when I was a kid. I am just trying to do better than what I got.
I think you're doing a great job! ❤
A bus driver told one of my older kids (now in his 20s) that his mom was wrong, God is too real, and lives in his heart.
Another bus driver intervened in an incident between one of my kids (also an adult now) and another child. The other child was threatening to punch my kid if my kid didn't admit evolution is a lie. The intervention by the bus driver involved her saying, "Well, he's right, otherwise where do you think you came from? And don't say your mom and dad!"
This year, an elementary school teacher sent home a welcome packet including a declaration that this year will be great because [Bible verse about how God formed each person in the womb, sorry I don't have the paper anymore and am not looking it up at the moment but y'all probably know the one].
I stg sometimes I feel like they're right about public schools being indoctrination centers, just wrong about which ideology they push.
That said, in the first two cases (and others in between) I did contact the school and they did handle it. I didn't bother this time since the page was addressed to parents, not the kids, and I'm so tired. I figured I'd just consider this one a red flag and watch out the rest of the year. So far so good.
I would contact the school and emphasize that you are the one in charge your child's religious education and that you'd appreciate teachers and staff not interfering with that duty.
I'm sure a five year old knows exactly what an imaginary friend is, and what lies are.
The difficult parts to explain... comforting delusion, myths that define cultures, politics disguised as mysticism, why there's no point in explaining to a stupid person that they're stupid... yeah.
I think if you introduce him to comparative mythologies, he'll see why belief in them is attractive, and how otherwise decent people get pulled in. That goes for modern myths - Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr Who - as well as the Bagavad Gita, shintoism, and the Jesus stories.
Basically, let him geek out in all directions.
I love the idea of geeking out in all directions. Right now he "believes in" Black Panther and the Incredible Hulk. Maybe that's my starting point to explain why some people believe in god(s).
Invisible people do not exist.
It’s that simple.
That’s exactly what an invisible digital person would say 🤔
Play your silly games if you like.
In all of human existence no one has ever demonstrated even so much as a plausible mechanism by which a sentient invisible creature is even possible.
But by all means, feel free to tie yourself in a knot as you please.
r/whoosh ?
I'd get him some comic books or picture books of various made up things, and include a Jesus one in there somewhere along with Thor, Athena, Morgan la Fey, the Sidhe, etc...
Maybe teach him what the days of the week are named after, that'll be a nice treat for the teacher lol 😉
I mean unless you’re raising your kid to be atheist it’s probably not be a big thing
If he was older I might agree with you but he's five. He trusts his teacher to tell him facts. This is the teacher's personal belief and it was presented to my son as if it was fact. As if it deserves the same respect as 1+1=2. Now my son wants to know if the teacher "lied" about other things he's been taught at school.
When I had the god question, I already knew what fairy tales were, so my parents explained that it was another kind of fairy tale about how things got created and asked if I wanted more fairy tales of how things got created, and started getting me age-appropriate books of myth and folklore
That is so sweet! Mine told me I would burn in hell.
I have a 4-year-old daughter with religious grandparents on both sides. I have always had the misgivings that she's going to be taught things I don't condone or believe in and this would stress me out.
The other day some Mormon missionaries were at our front door, talking to my wife. They politely complimented my daughter's dancing and they said, "You know, you can come to church and dance, too!" And I just about got up and yelled at them.
I don't have an answer for you, other than: trust your child will encounter all sorts of beliefs and ideas that you may disagree with. Teach them to be skeptical and thoughtful and they'll find their way, just like you and I did.
Oh I hate when they make us the bad guys. Telling her she could dance at church so you have to be the one to tell her no. Like she's missing out on something because of you. That's so dirty of them.
Your mommy and daddy made you. Some people think that long long ago your great great great great grandparents were made by God, but it was so long ago no one knows for sure. I think it’s wrong.
I love this but I know my son and he will immediately ask "how did mommy and daddy make me?" And I am tired 😆🙃
Yeah - that could be a long conversation.
How about, “It’s too hard for you to do when you’re little but we’ll talk about it when you’re bigger.”