Requesting Help from the Community

Congrats...

two things..

firstly, having raised a boy to 11 now , who seems to bea free thinker and critical of whoo haaa, i dont have a REAL problem with santa, and in fact challenged my child to work out for himself after friends at school spilt the beans...
he did.

he realised it was one of those , "if it sounds too good to be true" moments... he applies this as an initial stance against BS now.

kids cant help but assimilate the views of their parents to a degree so if you tell him your thoughts, he will likely adapt them.at least initially.
The main think i try to impart is to ask questions, think things over for your self.. work out the "truth" rather than accepting what you hear.

this has led to challenging moments at school where teachers are politely corrected. :)

another is belief doesnt make aperson a bad person, actions do ... always remember that.

my second tip... since someone mentioned santa being good at behaviour control, is this.

A list.

a xmas list (if you are doing that )
and a birthday list.

when you are out shopping and the child DESPERATLey wants a toy, instead of buying it , pull out piece of paper, and say, would you like to put tht on your birthday list or xmas list?

now as long as he/she sees at least one or two of those list items at birthday time... he will realise that it works.

This changed our shopping experiences dramatically.

then, when out shopping , and your kid wants to look at toys, say "yeah sure, and if something catches your eye, we can put it on your list, ok ."

then they know exactly where they stand.

sorry for the long rant...

hope there is a nugget of help in there..

First, congrats on the family expansion!

I think the Santa myth might actually be a useful tool for raising freethinkers, just as long as you 'fess up to it being a myth when they start acting suspicious. Small children will accept Santa at face value (and oh, is he a useful tool for encouraging good behavior in December); when they get a little older and start really thinking about the "facts" of Santa, then you can explain the truth. Then when they're confronted with myths of the religious sort, they've already got a handle on how to separate fact from fiction (and how something isn't necessarily true just because somebody says it is).

I believed in Santa as a child, and I don't think it impaired my ability to disbelieve in myths later in life.

I've read Dale's first book, and I'll be acquiring his second one shortly. It is an excellent resource for ideas on how to raise your children as you said, freethinkers. Which means you expose them to a wide variety of beliefs - Christinaity, Buddhism, Greek mythology, and you allow them the freedom to explore and most importantly, change their minds as often as they want to. In fact, my wife and I just attended one of Dale's seminars 2 weeks ago, which was also excellent. One of the more critical points I took away from that seminar was that parents can often be a bigger part of the problem than the solution when it comes to raising freethinking children. You don't need to start beating it into their heads at a young age that Christianity is false and god is imaginary (which is one of the mistakes I made). Kids have a natural curiosity and imagination, and their religious education should flow along those concepts. I mean, the stories of Hercules and other mythological beings are cool, and can teach kids great lessons. Yes, even the stories of Jesus! By exposing your children to a wide variety of beliefs in a laid back, enjoyable setting you are accomplishing the goal of educating without indoctrinating.

I mentioned how parents can sometimes be a bigger obstacle than guider when it comes to raising freethinkers; I wanted to share something my son said this morning. I live in Chicago, and a landmark Catholic Cathedral caught fire this morning and was all over the news. My son(6) was watching that with us and said "Is that a church? Oh good, we hate church". As a secular parent, I felt like a complete failure hearing that. We kindly corrected him, and while I can chalk up part of that response to the inexperienced pysche of a 6 year old, I feel horribly responsible that he is already demonstrating a 'us vs them' mentality towards religion, which is precisely NOT what we want to accomplish. So I already have some work to UNDO what my child has learned or picked up from me!

Great news about the crumb muncher.

One thing I discovered in Adolescent Psychology (which was very similar to Abnormal Psychology) is that people obsess way too much on how to raise their children. Get advice, read books, learn things; that's all fine and well. But just get used to the fact that you're going to get some things brilliantly right, and some things brain-numbingly wrong.

Enjoy being parents, and realize that there is no "goal" of raising the perfect young adult.

Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.

Thanks very much for your input folks.

I'm nearly completely with you Hank. I'm all for answering our kid's questions, but until they're ready to face it on their own 2 feet (mentally) I'm wary of taking them to church. My own critical thinking skills manifested early in my church-going experience...but even then they were limited to the small arguments w/in what I was taught rather than applying them to the church going experience as a whole.

Congratulations! Don't worry about Santa though; if you taught her to be a freethinker she'll figure it out for herself soon enough!

Speaking as a former child (but definitely not an expert on others), I'm thinking the best thing would be to raise a critical thinker. And I don't think that's something you do by just sitting back and letting it happen. Paradoxically, growing into the freedom to think your own thoughts takes a lot of discipline in learning HOW to think. How to reason. How to understand you never, at any time, give up the independent thinking of your own thoughts.

(I don't necessarily believe an independent thinker has to get into a loud disagreement over every question that arises — with parents or teachers, for instance — but he does have to deal with questions in the privacy of his own mind. You can respect others and yet decide not to accept what they tell you — out of an equally necessary respect for yourself — if it flies in the face of things you already know to be true.)

I've heard people many times say they'd take their kids to church if they wanted to go, but ... I would never, ever do that. If I did, I would never let them go alone. And here's why: First of all, most children's brains aren't mature enough to handle people acting crazy. I remember being at a church service in which my own grandmother started waving her arms and speaking in tongues, and to this day it makes me uncomfortable to call it to mind. My dear grandmother, whom I had a very warm and wonderful picture of in my head, was suddenly acting insane. And it SCARED me. It affected my life, and even my relationship with my grandmother, for many years.

But even if I knew none of that would happen, I'd still hold back on letting my kids go, because, second, the tribal aspect of church — especially if they catch your kid at a moment of loneliness and uncertainty — can be seductive as hell. Why do you think otherwise smart, middle-class kids get sucked into Scientology, or Heaven's Gate? Because there’s someone there telling them they love them, that they belong there, that their lives are BETTER there. Every parent who ever lost a kid to a cult probably thought their own children were immune.

I'd no more leave my kids in the hands of church-goers than I would in the hands of any other seducer (con men, child molesters, drug dealers, etc.). Never doubt that proselytizing is a core principle of churches, and they've had centuries to work out how to draw people in. Plus, if someone there truly believes your kid is going to burn in hell unless they infect him with their religion, they'll go around your wishes in a second.

There's something more subtle but more damaging there, too, in my opinion. One of my “wise old sayings I just made up” is “Never lie to a child or a dog for any reason.” I threw the dog bit in for comic relief, but I also meant it as an example for dealing with kids: When you’re playing fetch with a dog, it might be funny to YOU to pretend to throw the thing and not throw it, but it seems mean to take advantage of someone not as intellectually capable as you. Likewise, kids trust you — because they have no choice — to give them straight answers (or an honest demurral: “I can’t give you a good answer to that right now, honey.”).

Think of their growing brains and minds as a construction company building a tall building. If you give them good solid materials (true facts) and workable plans (a healthy philosophy of life, much of it learned by example) in the beginning, they’re born with the equipment to build something solid, something sturdy, that will allow them to stand and grow through an entire lifetime. If you give them mush (no guidance at all, or lies), or let them scavenge for plans anywhere they can find them (corporate advertisers, rappers and pop musicians and movie stars, popular fads, sensationalist authors, gurus and mystics and yes, even churches), that building will end up crooked and unsteady. It will take some renovation to get it solid again (heh — assuming getting permanent face tattoos wasn’t part of the shaky journey).

In the beginning, the sturdiest part of a child’s confident approach to living is probably the knowing that they have someone absolutely trustworthy to catch them if they fall, help correct their course if they drift off, or pull them back if they get too close to the fire. Parents who lie to their kids take away that foundation of trust, forcing them onto their own resources earlier in life ... or, worse, forcing them to betray their own minds when a paradox presents itself, and simply believe whatever they’re told.

And once your kid absorbs the lesson that he/she should just believe what they’re told, do what they’re told, they’re little more than a bag of blood for the next demanding parasite to come along, be it a corporation, a political demogogue, an authoritarian religion ... or just a domineering abusive boyfriend.

Again, speaking strictly of my own experience, knowing that it took me more than 20 years to get religion out of my head – which manifested largely as the real fear that there was a god somewhere glaring into my every thought and desire, which caused me to curb my curiosity, my adventurousness, my independent mind – there’s no way I would inflict those ugly memes on someone else. I was lucky enough to get out. Most aren’t.

And finally, lest any of us think none of this is as serious as I’m painting it here, remember we just got done with 8 years of lying, religious nutballery in our own White House. The exact same sloppy-yet-authoritarian manner of thought that goes into religion went into politics, and helped wreck our economy, killed 4,000 or so of our kids and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, set back science, ignored global atmospheric and environmental problems for long enough to do what might well be catastrophic damage, and spewed out a level of meanness and stupidity and wanton greed I’ve never in my life seen the equal of. All for no good reason, and a lot of bad ones.

...

Oh, and hey: Congratulations! :-)

Kids? You mean those smelly proto-humans that some people keep around? Why on earth would I want to have anything to do with one of those, or the knowledge of how to raise such a thing?

;)

Seriously, no suggestions here - just good wishes to you guys with the whole thing!

Jim Downey

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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.