subprocess

Yesterday morning I was talking with Janelle (6 years old, in KG) and she was telling me all about how school works.

“First there’s Kindergarten, which is in elementary school. Then there’s Church, Middle School, High School and then College.”

I laughed. “Ummm… Church?”

“Yeah, church,” she replied.

So I asked, “What’s Church?”

“Oh, it’s just one of the schools.”

“Who told you about Church?”

“No one,” she sighed, “I just know about it.” I’m not certain, but I think she rolled her eyes here.

I was confused and had to pause a bit to think it over. “Oh, do you mean Sunday School?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s at Church.”

“Ohhh… Well Sunday School isn’t a normal School. It’s a special School. They only teach you about the Bible and Religion. It’s not part of the School you’re in.”

“What’s the Bible?”

“Uh… a book.” She looked like that was obviously not sufficient. “Umm… You know those songs at Christmas time about baby Jesus?”

“Yeah! The ones the Cowboys sing!” She yelled.

We try to listen to kid friendly and generic Christmas music. But almost always when a Country Christmas song comes on (hence the Cowboys) it mentions baby Jesus. She’s asked us about that before and we tried our best to dodge the question for now. Questions like, “Why is this song on the Christmas station? It’s not Christmas music.”, when “Silent Night” is on.

I laugh. “Yeah. The Bible is all about him.”

“Oh, OK.” She replied and then left to do something else.

*phew*

So now I’m concerned… She’s starting to ask questions that I’m not quite sure how to answer yet. I want my kids to have as much information in front of them as possible, and for them to be old enough to understand the information, before any information is in front of them at all. I know… that’s not possible.

But when is the right age to talk about Religion? Obviously not now, now she still believes us when we tell her about Santa and the Tooth Fairy. So obviously, to me, telling a six year old about Religion would be wrong. So do we wait until she’s old enough to recognize who/what/why Santa really is?

I guess, for now, those are my thoughts. When she’s old enough and wise enough to recognize that Santa isn’t real because we tell her Santa is real, then she’ll be old enough to be told what Religion is. What spirituality is. And at that point I’d want to go all out:

• Many different Religions in the world
• Similarities between them all
• History of Religions from the ancient Religions before Judaism to modern Christianity and beyond to modern creations like Scientology

And yeah, I’d expect it to be overwhelming. But I want my kids to understand, accept, and respect differences in the world. And I want them to make clear educated decisions in all areas of their lives.

I don’t hope that they’ll believe one thing and not another. I hope that they’ll believe what they truly believe, confidently, happily and proudly. It doesn’t matter if it’s different from what I believe, as long as they come to that decision on their own and with sufficient information.

Posted on October 11th, 2008 under Random • RSS 2.0 feed • You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed