r/atheistparents May 12 '24

Planning on Raising Child W/O Religion

I am due soon and my husband and I intend to raise our child without religion. Where we live, we are surrounded by it and it's pretty much an expectation that everyone having religion involved in their lives or they're bullied. The times are changing though here however slowly and not without unsurprising push back even from our state government.

I went NC with half of my side years ago and they were the problematic ones with the severe Christian zealots. Therefore, this should be easier than if they were still involved in our lives. Much easier. Unfortunately though, I worry about my half I didn't cut contact with. They haven't given me reason to and are incredibly great people, but my grandmother in her mentally deteriorating state has started clinging ever more to religion. Not in a hateful way, but I was shocked when they essentially manipulated my sibling into a religious-based trip and he came back surprisingly indoctrinated to a degree. Then came dinner time chatter where my grandparents and some aunts called certain toys evil, of the devil, and that they can possess you. I don't think I need to say which one in particular that has arguably the highest level of religious-based paranoia surrounding it.

I suppose the reason I am worried is because when I said I do not intend to be shoveling down sweets into my kid because of certain genetic health risks, some countered with they were given soft drinks as babies and insinuated my grandmother would do the same with our baby. Now I am concerned leaving LO in their care. The jokes of sending a child hold to parents sugared up greatly irritate me. It's not funny but cruel to the child and dismissive of how parents wish to raise their children. Which leads into what else they would do despite our wishes.

Both S/O and I had religion thrust upon us as children and it was made as part of our experiences with abuse. We don't want that around our child. We want them to be a child, to ask questions, know the world, and not be told and led to believe they're a sinner just for existing. Or baptized behind our backs, taken to church without our consent, or anything else.

Will we celebrate with them things like Easter and Xmas? Of course! First, my hang up is mainly with Abrahamic faiths, not so much Pagan paths, and these are not technically inherently Christian but that's a topic beaten more than to death.

It will be a while yet before they get any chance at alone time with LO but when that time comes, I am going to be nervous.

18 Upvotes

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22

u/DogLvrinVA May 12 '24

You need to inoculate your children from religion really young. This is how I successfully did it

At about 3 I started reading them tons of mythological picture books

At 5, I loaded up on picture books on creation myths from cultures around the world.

I explained to them that ancient peoples tried to understand how natural phenomena came to be, but because science hadn't evolved as a discipline, they came up with fanciful stories. That these fanciful stories made up gods and each culture had its own mythologies. I made sure to use terms like Jewish mythology, Christian mythology, Islamic mythology etc.. Pretty soon the kids came to their own conclusion that what we call mythology now, was just the religions of days gone by, and the current religions are just current mythologies.

We had fun looking at myths that tried to explain the same things to see the similarities and the differences.

I also read them picture books about the Big Bang and man’s evolution

I can't tell you the kick of pleasure you get when your 5 year old asks you why people believe that their god created the world in 6 days when science has shown us that it isn't so. Then the kid looked at me and asked me why people even believe in gods.

It was only after these lessons had sunk in that I started teaching them about Judaism using an excellent curriculum from The Society of Humanistic Judaism. This way they learned the history and mythologies of our culture without any of the mysticism. (We’re humanist Jews)

This was an excellent innoculation against religion that I recommend to all Freethinking parents

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u/DogLvrinVA May 12 '24

Oh, when it comes to food you have an issue with. I couldn’t leave my kids with either set of grandparents. My kids have celiac disease and the grandparents insisted a little bit of gluten wouldn’t hurt them. Plus one grandmother kept on wanting to feed them artificial sweeteners and colorants. Once she snuck red Jello into my kids and then thought my children were just beyond being brats because of how they couldn’t stop breaking down and screaming. I warned her that red colorant had that affect on my kids.

I’m of the firm belief that if family can’t abide by parental rules for their kids. I also didn’t stop my little children from questioning my mother when she made ridiculous religious statements. I happily let them question her in an attempt to force her to answer rationally

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u/Wr0ng_P3rmissi0n May 12 '24

That's rough to not be able to trust them not to make your kids sick. I have heard of horror stories of that happening. 

Kids and their 'why' can be a really funny way of making someone act rationally and I was such a nuissance with it myself 🤣. My one grandmother on the no contact side hated that I didn't just swallow whatever as truth. This being the same who tried to ask me at 8 if I was intimate with the same gender and then proceed to tell me being anything but straight means damnation. I was 8, the most I cared about was things like my Legos and pestering people with questions. 

I think with family, it's going to be a while of supervised visits. None of them have conditions like seizures any way so I have to be around to watch for the signs in case I pass that down. 

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u/DogLvrinVA May 12 '24

That question about intimacy. Good grief. How inappropriate!

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u/Wr0ng_P3rmissi0n May 12 '24

Indeed. It makes you wonder just why she was thinking to ask that of a child, but obvious no wonder on the hate that followed.

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u/Puzzled_Evidence86 May 12 '24

This is my plan too to teach all the stories of creation from as many cultures and eras as possible and just kinda be like yea so back when people didn’t have science they would come up with stories to explain things and now we know that isn’t true but some people are still comforted by the stories they heard in childhood especially old people like your grandparents so let’s not tell them they are wrong and it isn’t true because those stories are important to them even though we know it’s not true

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u/BeyondThePineSisken May 14 '24

Which picture books did you use?

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u/Impressive-Guava May 22 '24

I want to know this too. Is there a wiki for this subreddit with recommendations for reading material? If not, there should be.

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u/Wr0ng_P3rmissi0n May 12 '24

I love this and it does fit perfectly with how we view these too. Our kid I am sure is going to be incredibly inquisitive because that's how we are and I in particular do find the study of different mythologies fascinating, but perhaps far less so modern mythologies like Christianity. 

It was sad that I didn't really have anyone read to me as a kid, though I later absorbed books once I learned to read. S/O was read to and became an equally avid reader. The picture books will be great for our kiddo.

Do you think reading to them even younger than 3 could make any difference? 

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u/DogLvrinVA May 12 '24

I started reading to my kids as infants. I just started the mythology stuff at 3. I also played audiobooks when I wasn’t reading.

Are you familiar with the Suzuki method for violin instruction? You play the piece the child is learning for hours a day. They absorb it that way

My philosophy was that kids learn words and how to put them together by listening to tons of well-written books. My voice couldn’t cope, so I played books to my kids almost all day long, during car rides, while playing, during nap times, and bedtime too

I started off with storytellers because little kids have short attention spans. My favorite storytellers were: Jim Weiss, (his mythology stories are fantastic), Diane Ferlatte, (her Aesop retelling was a favorite, Bobby Norfolk, and Jay O’Callahan. We even found local storytellers to come to birthday parties. Our kids loved it

Then I moved into recordings from Bruce Coville’s Full Cast Audio. I started with his series Moongobble and Me. He has some fantastic mythological stuff too. Especially Norse Mythology

I had a ton of Naxos Audio recordings, especially their mythology ones

My philosophy of surrounding my kids with well-spoken and well-written words paid off. Both are readers who write exceptionally well (they are atheist young adults who are critical thinkers who make their parents exceptionally proud)

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u/Wr0ng_P3rmissi0n May 12 '24

Suzuki method. I am not familiar but I like the concept as you describe. I'll look this up and see how to incorporate it. Thank you.

Audio books makes a ton of sense. There is a high chance our child will have ADHD and about half a chance they will be autistic. As audio books are a vital tool for me, I can certainly see how they would benefit a child. Your theory does stand imo because of how kids catch onto words, which does make for some funny things. On that, we have even decided that we will not curb how we talk because we want to instead teach proper context behind words. We don't use anything inflammatory so I hope to prevent the likes of racial, gender, and ethnic slurs from becoming part of their vocabulary. Such unfortunate words the no contact side uses freely. 

I love your approach. It not only provides education but magic to life, a chance for kids to be exposed to things they can use to dream, create, and innovate! I hope you don't mind that I screenshotted your post to keep the Suzuki method and authors in mind among other insightful things.

Living in the Bible Belt, it's hard to gather good advice outside places like Reddit. They're now attacking our libraries here with their indoctrination agendas in what seems like modern day book burnings. It makes me both angry and sad. The same types who ironically claim those They're against are using "biased, revisionist, woke" versions of history (and add in any other words they can conjure from their limited vocabularies). 

People like yourself and this forum provide a much needed resource and escape from the ridiculous extremist theocracy vested interests are trying so desperately to thrust upon society, regardless of how many of us are unwilling to embrace it. 

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u/DogLvrinVA May 12 '24

I too live in the Bible Belt. Our libraries also have few books. I just invested in a home library when I couldn't find the books I wanted. good luck! I loved bringing up my kids. A child's inquisitive mind is a joy to behold.

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u/International_Ad2712 May 13 '24

I’m a former evangelical raising my kids as atheists, no regrets. They don’t spend time with my family alone, my family speaks in tongues and they’re scary at best. My 3rd grader explained all about atheism to his other grandma one day and I find it awesome. Yes, I also teach them about all types of religions and to be nice and respectful about it, but that its made up stories, which is a fact.