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What do you tell your children?
For those of you with young children, or for those of you with older children that have already gone through this.....
My dear daughter is 3 1/2 now, and she knows very little about Buddhism. She sees my Buddha statues and "knows" who he is, and she knows I meditate and things like that, but that's about it. Am I doing her a disservice by not saying much else to her at this point? Our plan for her has been to let her choose her own religion for herself as she gets older. But should I start talking to her now about the different religions, and give her some of my own thoughts, or do I just wait until she starts asking questions??
This is just something I have been thinking about lately. She's a very bright girl, so I know she would listen to what I was telling her.
My dear daughter is 3 1/2 now, and she knows very little about Buddhism. She sees my Buddha statues and "knows" who he is, and she knows I meditate and things like that, but that's about it. Am I doing her a disservice by not saying much else to her at this point? Our plan for her has been to let her choose her own religion for herself as she gets older. But should I start talking to her now about the different religions, and give her some of my own thoughts, or do I just wait until she starts asking questions??
This is just something I have been thinking about lately. She's a very bright girl, so I know she would listen to what I was telling her.
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Comments
Aw, YM..... You don't need us to tell you how to go.... You're a "Yoda"..... remember....?
While Chris was in hospital, she met our local vicar, who became a good friend. She started going to church, having effectively no church (or chapel as her parents were Baptists) background. I was pretty clingy after she was diagnosed and went with her. Jack was 5 at the time and made new friends. It was great: a nice community and 'broad church' enough to tolerate my unbeliefs. Jack joined the choir and I clearly recall the horror on the choirmistress's face when she realised that he didn't know the words of the Lord's Prayer! He learned them, just as he learned a few hymns and anthems until the attraction of skateboarding friends outweighed the small choir stipend. He likes sharing meditation time with me, if he has nothing better to do. Spiritual dialogue bores him, although he appears to be more of an animist or pantheist than anything else. He stores information and, if puzzled, tends to ask questions.
I share this because, despite having seen five children grow up, I have no idea what we do about 'religious education'. I am not even sure what it is for!
The only thing that I have made my guiding principle has been to be honest and to encourage them to question, question, question. I cannot answer for my success on the honesty front (they can deal with that and any other issues in therapy. I had to so why shouldn't they?) but they certainly know how to question.
It is never too early to train our children to have open and questioning minds, as I am sure you do, YM.
I can't tolerate someone forcing their opinions and beliefs on me - so I've refused to do that with my son.
I try my best to be a good example. I figure that should stir up questions when he's ready to ask them. And even if and when he asks them - it's my hope that I'll just provide answers and still let him decide what he wants to believe in.
-bf
Simon - thank you for that story. I really do want my daughter to have an open mind and to ask lots of questions, and then make her own decisions. She hasn't asked a lot of questions regarding this subject yet, but we live in a very Christian dominated area, so I am sure she will be coming to me with questions when her friends start to talk about church, God, etc. I just want to be prepared!
Kim
YM, does she still do asanas with you?
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Yes, she still does some asanas with me. These pics are a little old, but still adorable!
Adiana:type: :usflag:
However, with that said, I claim to follow the "dhamma" - which is roughly translated to "truth" - if I claim to practice the path of truth, I must share that truth with my kids - otherwise I cannot claim to practice truth if I don't really truly believe it's true..
Did that make sense?
Point being - "our only enemy is ignorance" and I don't want my kids to be as ignorant as I was when I was young. So I share the dhamma with them, but certainly don't make other religions seem horrible or scary.
YogaMama,
Your daughter is adorable!!!! and how cute are those pics.
I think everyone has the right idea. I agree....Let her ask questions and answer according to her age.
One thing I would have done differently with my boys now 20 and 27. I would have worked harder at teaching them to be compassionate. My youngest was born compassionate and giving. He use to give all his toys away to the neighborhood kids.
But my oldest one is hard.... Doesn't have a lot of compassion for anyone. We will see what fatherhood does for him now that he is a dad of an 8 month old daughter.
You don't have to teach a religion or philosophy with it just teach kindness and compassion.
I found with my youngest that he asked lots of questions as he got older.....Anytime he asked to go to a church with friends I always said yes. Thought it was good for him to experience different churchs etc....When in jr. high school he use to like to go to a youth church program with a few friends that belong to a Baptist Church. One saturday night we were sitting in the yard of a neighbors house visiting and a car pulled up in front of our house. We watched Latt answer the door to 3 kids about his age and an adult from the youth group. He came out of the house and sat on the front porch and talked to them. The adult we noticed did almost all of the talking. As the protective mother I wanted to go and see what was up but my husband said "no" we are right here if he needs us. Lets see if he can handle what ever it is. Well, it turns out....... they wanted to know if Latt believe Jesus died on the cross for his sins.
Latt told them at 1st he wasn't sure.....that he hadn't decided yet. The adult then started telling him that he would go to hell if he didn't believe this way and what would happen to him in hell. Then Latt told him that yes he did believe that Jesus died on the cross for his sins. So the adult told him that it was important that he get baptized and that he was to come to the church next morning. Latt said, I'll have to ask my mom and the adult said, No don't do that.......Just be ready at 9:00a.m. and when you see me drive up come out of the house don't tell your parents.....because it is not up to them if you get baptized or not. I'll pick you up.....take you to church to get baptized and then bring you home.
He scared Latt to death..........He never went back to a church again......until this last year he visited one at the university here in town. Which the world religion professor gave the sermon and he loved it. He is still undecided but leans towards Buddhism and when in a religious debate with friends always is on the Buddhist side of the debate. He still asks lots and lots of questions......If I don't know the answer, I find out for him.
The point of my story........when they are looking around and asking questions be careful Some ppl can go to far in there beliefs and scare your kids and then you have to pick up the pieces......If we would have had any idea that's what was being said we would have stopped it. We never dreamed the youth preacher would say those things to him. We were very naive.
I couldn't agree with you more about the importance of teaching your child kindness and compassion. I now realize, at the age of 39, just how important it really is. Even though my childhood was violent and incredibly dysfunctional it was also very, very loving and my parents had deeply compassionate, caring hearts. I shudder to think where I might be now if I hadn't had that bit if balance in my life because when I look back on my life it is glaringly obvious to me that I did my worst and got the worst when my heart was cold and all the good that I ever did or experienced came from kindness and compassion. When I look back it's like seeing parts of my life in black and white and parts of it in colour.
Not every parent can teach kindness and compassion and I don't know if every child can learn it but if a parent is able to teach it, or nurture and cultivate it in their child, that child has a huge advantage, no matter what our macho, dog eat dog culture may say. It is better to be kind than right. It always has been and always will be.
Oh, and I almost forgot...wisdom. You have to teach your child how to cultivate wisdom to go hand in hand with that compassion. The two should be inseparable.
Is it a little presumptuous of me, a childless woman, to be talking about what to teach children? Hope I haven't overstepped...:buck:
You're right, I forgot wisdom.....
Like Brigid, I would have been angry because I don't believe in forcing/coercing anyone regarding anything. In my opinion, it was wrong for this youth minister to say that to your child. While I still advocate letting my children decide for themselves what belief system they wish to follow, I will also make sure that no one says anything that could be detrimental to my child's well-being. I did not say that in my original post and I should have done so. Sorry for any confusion.
Adiana
He never even asked Latt if we were at home or not. Never asked to talk to us. Nothing. He had no idea that we were sitting across the street watching.
I did report him to the mother of the children he went to the youth group with and she reported him to the head minister of the church.......But nothing ever came of it. I called the church several times but no one was ever available to talk to me.....which is when I called the other kids mother....anyway...
I'm just trying to warn everyone to be more careful than we were and not to be naive like we were. We learned the hard way.
My mother told me a story about when she was a young mother of two in the early 60's. She was working in the kitchen and my older brother and sister, who were about 4 and 6 at the time, were playing in the backyard. As she was working at the kitchen sink in front of the window she heard her two children's voices and then she heard an adult male's voice talking to them! She ran out to the back yard and there, standing talking to her two small children, were two adult males. She recognized them immediately. They were the two Jehova's Witnesses who had been canvassing the area for the last week. They'd already been to the door once and my mother had explained politely that they were Catholics and weren't interested but they'd come back and climbed over the fence when they'd heard children's voices. My mother gave them the what to, as only a terrified, furious mother can, and they left and never returned. But my mother never forgot about it and she told me this story one day when I had come home to tell her that a cult member of some group had tried to recruit me at the mall.
While teaching children about acceptance of other religions we also have to teach them, when the time is right, about those who would take advantage of their naivete and youth in order to recruit them into their groups. I think that having had a home full of religion and religious freedom as a child and being able to talk to both of my parents about any spiritual subject whatsoever made me less vulnerable to people who might want to coerce me into their groups.
Teaching our children to reason and to question; being honest about our own beliefs, practices, doubts and joys; encouraging respect, creativity and joy: these are good ways to bring up children.
I don't know that child's toughts or her father's, but my heart broke to see a child's natural spritual process clumsily co-opted - once again - by adults.
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Yogamama, you seem very kind and open-minded - be yourself and your daughter will trust you.
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I too am very open minded for my childrens sake, when it comesto religion. We have a neighbor who is a devout Baptist and she has a grand-daughter who plays with my daughter frequently. They have asked her if she wanted to attend church on Sunday once so far and she wanted to go. She asked and I said yes, if that's what she wanted she could go. The people are very nice and aren't pushy, but being in the southern part of the bible belt I am paying very close attention so that she is able to make her own mind up. I hope she does not get into any of the situations already mentioned here.
Perhaps we should write one.
Thus, for example, the blue sky question leads to optics but could also introduce the myth of Tiamat and the "waters above the sky", which would introduce the Flood stories.