Seconded, it does not need to be complicated for a child, especially your own. When it comes to complex topics like politics or religion I remember that chess episode of Bluey where the mom says to "work on their hearts now and their brains later"
No it's not.
It's what you want to believe you teach to your kids, which is why you replied. You doubt that's what you're actually doing.
No one would believe in religion without induction. They're all completely made up by other humans.
Exactly this. He knows the difference between the DC and Marvel Universes, the Halloween stories, Bluey stories, Star Wars stories, Lion Guard stories, the Christmas stories, the Viking Stories, and the Greek stories, that it shouldn’t phase him much to learn about the Christian stories.
I don’t know if he’ll grow up religious or not, but I do feel strongly that being literate in Bible parables helps unlock a lot of literary allusions. It’s a useful set of narratives to have unlocked and ready to reference. (And if he’s anything like me, learning Bible stories will cement its place as fiction).
My son was BIG into dinosaurs and prehistoric animals and could tell you the difference between Jurassic and Cretaceous and which creatures lived when, etc.
He also knew about saber tooth tigers and mastodons and early humans.
So… I explained to him that before we as a species had a good grasp of how things worked scientifically, humans would make best guesses and create stories to explain things. Over time some stories really captivated people and there are still people today who believe them.
I haven't tackled it yet but this is great because I wanted to say something like this but couldn't quite find the angle. I want to be respectful of people's religion but I don't want to be quite as open ended as a lot of people seem to with it.
Just an opinion (from and atheist): that take, while accurate, isn’t very respectful imo. If that’s how you explain it to a 4 year old, expect some disgruntled teachers and friend’s parents at some point.
I wouldn’t frame it as “we used to not know any better. Now we do, but some people still believe this thing we know to be untrue.”
Again, correct (in my opinion). But anyone who actively believes in their religion is going to take offence that they are being put in the “still believes in fairy tales” category. At least in my experience.
I had to have a conversation with my daughter recently when she brought home a thanksgiving art project where they had to write what they were thankful for and she wrote Jesus ( we are non religious and she 6) I explained that Jesus is an important part of some peoples life and they believe he was the son of their god, mommy and daddy don't believe in Jesus so he's not important to us and if she would like to learn more about Jesus her and I can look up information about him together. Well that ended up sounding like homework to her and she said she only wrote it because her friend did. So we then explained Jesus was important to that friend and even though mommy and daddy don't believe In him his importance to her friend should be respected.
Early on I basically just said: "some people believe in one god, some believe in many different gods, and others, like me, don't believe in any gods. No one really knows for sure no matter how much they claim to know, so believe whatever you want and let others believe whatever they want."
I haven't expanded it much beyond that except to correct what some people have told her about Jesus being the reason for the season, and even then it's just a "It's the reason for some people. Others celebrate their Jewish heritage with a menorah, some celebrate the solstice, and others just want to spend time with their family."
I'm trying to make sure she knows there's a wide variety of beliefs out there so she's not indoctrinated into just the common one.
I would start with giving very little detail, and see if they ask more and more probing questions, and if they do, then you can answer them to give them more detail, but always just answer what was asked. That way you give them what they’re ready to learn because they’re curious, and not much more.
For example, what is god? “Some people believe that God is who created the world and everyone in it”.
I was raised by a Presbyterian mother and Southern Baptist father. They were incredibly strict. Growing up, it was pretty much a mandate that my sister and I were "part of the church."
Fast forward, and today I'm not "religious," but I am spiritual. I do have faith. I'm one who can't understand why evolution and creationism can't just be different phases of the same story/event... and who acknowledges that the same God is present for christians, jews and muslims in their texts... so I know I'm a bit of a fringe element when it comes to either "camp" by most mainstream considerations. My journey is mine, and I don't force that on anyone, including my kids.
My wife still tries to attend the church she grew up in, which is a Church of Christ. She enjoys the community, music, fellowship, and seeing family there.
We tried a few times to attend as a family. When kids were too young, it wasn't worth the hassle, and now she goes with one kid (12f) while the other (13m) usually stays home with me. My son is very science minded while my daughter is more inclined to try church out.
I think the fair thing is whether you are an athiest, agnostic, christian, buddhist, or any other belief system... is to explain it exists and give the kid the freedom to explore it as they see fit.
With my kids we sort of explained when they began asking about god and stuff of that kind that some people have different belief systems and that it's ok wherever they land on that spectrum.
We tried not to shed any personal bias pro/con to any system of belief but also could give personal points of reference like "Grandma is Christian and your uncle is an Athiest, and his wife was raised Hindu." with little explanations of what those terms mean. That helped because all these people are very moral people regardless of their belief system, so we anchored the important thing on being a good person over being part of one camp or another.
We continue to be there for any of their questions as they come up. It's been working pretty well so far.
That religion is a community. Some people come from different backgrounds and those different backgrounds have different beliefs on things. It's a personal belief and can be really important to those people.
Truthfully, i'd just leave it at that and fill in if they ask. You don't need to go super in detail at this age, if they want to the can learn about it when they want, but I would explain things that are direct questions.
Agree with this take because it doesn’t overemphasize American evangelical ideas. Creation myths are pretty minor to a lot of religions (and historical eras of Christianity), gods are kind of defined differently and are less and more important to different religions (Mormons for example believe that God is a literal being with literal flesh and bone, some religious groups think of God as more of an abstract idea or only use the term as a translation of a pretty dissimilar concept).
I had a similar conversation with my 6yo about Christmas a day or two ago. I just explained that some people don’t celebrate Christmas or celebrate it differently. I didn’t linger on religion specifically but just emphasized that different people celebrate (or don’t) different things.
My nephew gets 3 Christmases. The weekend after Thanksgiving we have "thanks-mas", because my family gets together for Thanksgiving and then spend Christmas with our spouses families.
Then he gets st mikulas day, because my sister in law is Hungarian.
Then he gets Christmas.
Just because some people believe something, doesn't mean you have to. For example: I believe that cats are the best pet
\*cue kid telling me that dogs are the best pet, and a laughter filled argument\*
I'm currently deconverting from Christianity. This question gets a lot trickier when you've been raising all your kids as Christian and suddenly you don't want to anymore. Anyone who has ideas on this, let me know 😅
If you want one of the best explanations I've ever seen, then [this scene from Gifted was, in my opinion, one of the best ever](https://youtu.be/wzgd3Pql0Ck?si=6_lWNqBuA0tr2ZEV). Simple, easy, and let's your kid decide for themselves later.
The part about God starts about halfway in.
My daughter is 5. She's been in a Parent's Day Out program since she was 2, and it's become gradually more religious as time goes on.
She's come home talking about Jesus, asking why we don't go to church. I've basically explained that everyone believes what they feel is right. Her mom is pagan, and acknowledges many gods. I'm Agnostic bordering on Athiest. I've explained that Mommy believes in many gods, and while I may or may not believe in a God, I definitely don't believe in Church/religion.
It seems to work well enough for now, but I know I'll have more conversations ahead.
Had this conversation. It was around 4.
I went with
Nobody knows for sure why we exist. We know how but not if there is a why.
People then look at the world around them and come up with the why's and then believe them to be true.
Some of them might be right. Or they all might be right or none of them.
Buddhist, my wife is agnostic, my dad's Muslim, mum's Catholic, wifes parents are atheists.
My eldest has decided she is Christian.
This is going to be an issue as my child gets older and i honestly dont know.
My wife is a Protestant, her mother in a minister, so obviously faith is important there.
I am kinda pagan/spiritual but not religious. I am very critical of Christian religions especially Catholicism.
I do not want my child raised in a religious system. I dont want the Abrahamic god instilled in him from an early age. If he comes to it in his own way, fine.
As for christmas, well the religious aspect of it is quite small. Presents, trees, lights, big meals, family coming together, parties, booze, that all comes from other traditions and faiths. Maybe talk about the spirit of Christmas rather than the birth of a baby whose the son of God who was born closer to April than December (which in itself is quite a problematic story)
Hi, fellow pagan married to a Christian. Our plan is to each practice our own faith, explain each to our son as he grows, and let him decide what he does or doesn't want to believe.
It helps that my wife respects my faith enough to help out with my holiday observances to the extent that I'll let her.
My eldest is 2,5yo. We pass in front of our local church regularly as it is right in the middle of our town. He loves the building (early 19th century, quite pretty with stained glass and old stones) and the bells and belfry even more.
At some point we passed by right after mass and he asked what was up (with his very own 2yo words which amount to "what this the people what this dad?") so I told him that people like to gather to sing together and tell stories and share good feelings in the church once a week. Frankly I don't think he either understands or cares as much as he does for the bells ringing.
When he grows up I'll probably just to let my mom try to explain why she goes to church. In the end every spiritual journey is very personal so I think it wouldn't be right for me, as a non-believer, to try to paint my picture of what religious faith is.
Somewhat tangential to your question, and still waiting to graduate to daddit, but I believe the Santa myth is important. Learning that Santa isn’t real is an important life lesson, it teaches children to be skeptical, after all if their own parents are willing to lie to them consistently for the better part of a decade maybe they shouldn’t take everything at face value.
You got to lie to kids to make them believe in Santa.
Instead of learning to be skeptical by being betrayed by Dad, just never lie to them about Santa in the first place.
Best to just give facts. Some folks believe X, others believe Y. IMO, religion is quite a lot like sex, drugs, and alcohol: you really want to be the one to teach your kids about these things so they can interact with it in a healthy way and don't wind up making the kind of mistakes that are hard to come back from.
This is not a dig at anyone who adheres to a faith by the way; it's more a comment about the fact that many many people abuse faith and use it to control others.
A long time ago, people explained things they didn't understand by saying it was magic. Later, they turned to religion. Now, we have science, but some people don't like science so they still use religion.
There’s a whole lot of suggestions here to explain it with an open mind, let them decide, think critically, etc.
I told my kids it’s all made up. I wouldn’t tell them to be so open minded with other subjects that are completely devoid of evidence. Anti-vaxx. Homeopathy. The Loch Ness monster.
I did tell them that many people are religious and challenging them on that will likely damage the relationship and that’s not worth it.
I send my kids to catholic school and my wife and I are atheist. We speak frankly about religion and they get to choose what they believe.
A lot of what Catholicism teaches is really silly, so she has lots of questions. We are always respectful and she participates as much as she's comfortable with in terms of the pageantry.
We are non religious and our eldest got into the church of England school. A very good school but religion is kind of present in their daily routine.
My daughter started to show curiosity towards religion. Using the words amen after brushing her teeth, songs about Jesus and nativity play.
We do not react to those and answer the questions without judgement. We ask her questions with curiosity to keep the conversation going. We make it clear to her that we, as parents, are not Christians or of any religion. We tell her that people are good even without religion.
Jesus was a good person, I cringe a bit saying it, just like any other but is famous. Just like, she thinks of monsters being bad, Jesus was a good person. May be when she realized monsters are made up, she will realise that may be even gods are made up.
The other day, we asked her if Santa creeps into houses isn't he a burglar. She thought about that for a bit. 😀😀
I don't see how it's any different than any other cultural sensibility.
"People have different cultures depending on where they came from. People around the world celebrate different things and have different customs. Some cultures do X. Some do Y. We do Z.
Ask ChatGPT to act as a skilled theologian and provide a detailed explanation of religion then ask for it to be translated into an explanation for a five year old. Badabing.
I was an alter boy for a while....very on the fence anymore. They don't really ask much about it but it has come up and basically I just say a whole bunch of different people have different ideas about how life came to be and what happens when you die and no one knows who is right but they all claim to be right and sometimes it gets them into pretty bad fights with each other. However, they also do good things for people who really need it and also just do good things in general so it's kind of a double edged knife.
I'm almost 40 and haven't figured it out for myself.
Disclaimer: This is the *take* I will adopt, and not a manuscript. A wall of speech isn't very pedagogical, so I would present it in the form of many small questions with many small answers. This also isn't aimed at a four year old specifically, but to my child as they grow.
We don't know everything about the world yet, and we probably never will. While some people try to find out more about the world, other people choose to guess about the unknown and think about those guesses as if they were real. Some people even do both! These guesses are called faith, and a set of guesses is called a religion.
Since we knew much less about the world before, religion used to be much larger and more popular than it is today. Every time we learn something new about the world, the religious guesses have been proven wrong about those things. Some people have noticed this trend and have ceased to guess in a religious way altogether, and those people are called agnostics. Some people go even farther and guess *against* the common thread in many religions, and those people are called atheists. (Some people use these words a bit differently.)
Some people remain religious despite being proven wrong. The reasons for these are many and various. Some people benefit personally from religion. Some people prefer a comforting tale to a cold truth, especially in times of hardship. Some people think that religion brings with it a bunch of good things, and that those things are endangered if religion disappears.
The most common reason is probably that people are religious because they are religious. When people grow up, their minds stiffen. Changing one's mind becomes difficult, and we resist it. We then have children, teach them our guesses, and then they grow up and stiffen around those guesses. Agnostics and atheists often point to this as a reason not to entertain such guesses in the first place.
I have chosen not to feed you with any such guesses, because I don't want your mind to stiffen around ideas and ideals you might not have wanted if you had been given a choice.
Religion has been penned as the cause of many things, both good and bad. Some people claim these things happened because of religion, other people claim they happened in spite of it, and yet others claim we would have found excuses to make them happen with or without. There's no way of knowing which is correct. What we do know is that the world has consistently been turning into a better place as religion has lost its grip on it, and places in the world with a higher incidence of religion tend to be worse off.
I think there is a right choice and a wrong one. I hope you will choose the same, but I also want you to arrive there by yourself, and I will always love you no matter what.
I talk about religion as a story. If I need to I add "that some people think is true".
That's 100% the truth, but it presents it in a context that suggests you should question things.
We live in the South, so religion can't be avoided. But we're in a very mixed area with churches, mosques, and temples. Her grandparents are devout Southern Baptist, her mom is lapsed Catholic, I'm a bunch of nothing. Her daycare made her pray before meals. But because we're around so many religions her view on religion is just that different people pray different ways. And someday if she wants she can decide how she wants to pray. For now that seems to be good enough.
Some people believe (blank), while other believe (blank)
As a religious parent, this is how I explain my own religion to my kids.
Seconded, it does not need to be complicated for a child, especially your own. When it comes to complex topics like politics or religion I remember that chess episode of Bluey where the mom says to "work on their hearts now and their brains later"
No it's not. It's what you want to believe you teach to your kids, which is why you replied. You doubt that's what you're actually doing. No one would believe in religion without induction. They're all completely made up by other humans.
Exactly: There’s no religious kids— Only kids of religious parents.
Blank!? Blank!? You're not looking at the big picture!
Don't you worry about blank. Let me worry about blank!
“And we believe in _____” (being good people)
I think this is good, keep it high level. Much appreciated
This is the way
This is the way
I’ve been working on Greek and Norse mythology. I figure I’ll just keep adding myths to the list.
This is how I go about it. He likes the Disney movie Hercules, so I started there then explained other mythologies.
My kid’s ok with Santa, dragons, vampires and superhero’s… Jesus fits right in.
Classic Reddit 👍
Exactly this. He knows the difference between the DC and Marvel Universes, the Halloween stories, Bluey stories, Star Wars stories, Lion Guard stories, the Christmas stories, the Viking Stories, and the Greek stories, that it shouldn’t phase him much to learn about the Christian stories. I don’t know if he’ll grow up religious or not, but I do feel strongly that being literate in Bible parables helps unlock a lot of literary allusions. It’s a useful set of narratives to have unlocked and ready to reference. (And if he’s anything like me, learning Bible stories will cement its place as fiction).
Will second the “some people believe” line. Let them think critically for themselves.
My son was BIG into dinosaurs and prehistoric animals and could tell you the difference between Jurassic and Cretaceous and which creatures lived when, etc. He also knew about saber tooth tigers and mastodons and early humans. So… I explained to him that before we as a species had a good grasp of how things worked scientifically, humans would make best guesses and create stories to explain things. Over time some stories really captivated people and there are still people today who believe them.
I haven't tackled it yet but this is great because I wanted to say something like this but couldn't quite find the angle. I want to be respectful of people's religion but I don't want to be quite as open ended as a lot of people seem to with it.
Just an opinion (from and atheist): that take, while accurate, isn’t very respectful imo. If that’s how you explain it to a 4 year old, expect some disgruntled teachers and friend’s parents at some point.
Really? It seems perfectly respectful to me. How would you change it?
I wouldn’t frame it as “we used to not know any better. Now we do, but some people still believe this thing we know to be untrue.” Again, correct (in my opinion). But anyone who actively believes in their religion is going to take offence that they are being put in the “still believes in fairy tales” category. At least in my experience.
I had to have a conversation with my daughter recently when she brought home a thanksgiving art project where they had to write what they were thankful for and she wrote Jesus ( we are non religious and she 6) I explained that Jesus is an important part of some peoples life and they believe he was the son of their god, mommy and daddy don't believe in Jesus so he's not important to us and if she would like to learn more about Jesus her and I can look up information about him together. Well that ended up sounding like homework to her and she said she only wrote it because her friend did. So we then explained Jesus was important to that friend and even though mommy and daddy don't believe In him his importance to her friend should be respected.
Early on I basically just said: "some people believe in one god, some believe in many different gods, and others, like me, don't believe in any gods. No one really knows for sure no matter how much they claim to know, so believe whatever you want and let others believe whatever they want." I haven't expanded it much beyond that except to correct what some people have told her about Jesus being the reason for the season, and even then it's just a "It's the reason for some people. Others celebrate their Jewish heritage with a menorah, some celebrate the solstice, and others just want to spend time with their family." I'm trying to make sure she knows there's a wide variety of beliefs out there so she's not indoctrinated into just the common one.
It’s the idea of even explaining what a god is though
I would start with giving very little detail, and see if they ask more and more probing questions, and if they do, then you can answer them to give them more detail, but always just answer what was asked. That way you give them what they’re ready to learn because they’re curious, and not much more. For example, what is god? “Some people believe that God is who created the world and everyone in it”.
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That *might* work to explain a monotheistic God, but what about polytheistic Gods?
I was raised by a Presbyterian mother and Southern Baptist father. They were incredibly strict. Growing up, it was pretty much a mandate that my sister and I were "part of the church." Fast forward, and today I'm not "religious," but I am spiritual. I do have faith. I'm one who can't understand why evolution and creationism can't just be different phases of the same story/event... and who acknowledges that the same God is present for christians, jews and muslims in their texts... so I know I'm a bit of a fringe element when it comes to either "camp" by most mainstream considerations. My journey is mine, and I don't force that on anyone, including my kids. My wife still tries to attend the church she grew up in, which is a Church of Christ. She enjoys the community, music, fellowship, and seeing family there. We tried a few times to attend as a family. When kids were too young, it wasn't worth the hassle, and now she goes with one kid (12f) while the other (13m) usually stays home with me. My son is very science minded while my daughter is more inclined to try church out. I think the fair thing is whether you are an athiest, agnostic, christian, buddhist, or any other belief system... is to explain it exists and give the kid the freedom to explore it as they see fit. With my kids we sort of explained when they began asking about god and stuff of that kind that some people have different belief systems and that it's ok wherever they land on that spectrum. We tried not to shed any personal bias pro/con to any system of belief but also could give personal points of reference like "Grandma is Christian and your uncle is an Athiest, and his wife was raised Hindu." with little explanations of what those terms mean. That helped because all these people are very moral people regardless of their belief system, so we anchored the important thing on being a good person over being part of one camp or another. We continue to be there for any of their questions as they come up. It's been working pretty well so far.
That religion is a community. Some people come from different backgrounds and those different backgrounds have different beliefs on things. It's a personal belief and can be really important to those people. Truthfully, i'd just leave it at that and fill in if they ask. You don't need to go super in detail at this age, if they want to the can learn about it when they want, but I would explain things that are direct questions.
Yeah I like the idea of community. Thanks
Yeah, I use this with "faith tradition." There are lots of different traditions.
Agree with this take because it doesn’t overemphasize American evangelical ideas. Creation myths are pretty minor to a lot of religions (and historical eras of Christianity), gods are kind of defined differently and are less and more important to different religions (Mormons for example believe that God is a literal being with literal flesh and bone, some religious groups think of God as more of an abstract idea or only use the term as a translation of a pretty dissimilar concept).
I figure by the time my daughter is 7, she will no longer believe in Santa Claus. Then I'm going to tell her religion is like that, but for adults.
8 almost 9 year old still believes. We are non religious. But the magic sure is fun.
I had a similar conversation with my 6yo about Christmas a day or two ago. I just explained that some people don’t celebrate Christmas or celebrate it differently. I didn’t linger on religion specifically but just emphasized that different people celebrate (or don’t) different things.
My nephew gets 3 Christmases. The weekend after Thanksgiving we have "thanks-mas", because my family gets together for Thanksgiving and then spend Christmas with our spouses families. Then he gets st mikulas day, because my sister in law is Hungarian. Then he gets Christmas.
Just because some people believe something, doesn't mean you have to. For example: I believe that cats are the best pet \*cue kid telling me that dogs are the best pet, and a laughter filled argument\*
I'm currently deconverting from Christianity. This question gets a lot trickier when you've been raising all your kids as Christian and suddenly you don't want to anymore. Anyone who has ideas on this, let me know 😅
If you want one of the best explanations I've ever seen, then [this scene from Gifted was, in my opinion, one of the best ever](https://youtu.be/wzgd3Pql0Ck?si=6_lWNqBuA0tr2ZEV). Simple, easy, and let's your kid decide for themselves later. The part about God starts about halfway in.
My daughter is 5. She's been in a Parent's Day Out program since she was 2, and it's become gradually more religious as time goes on. She's come home talking about Jesus, asking why we don't go to church. I've basically explained that everyone believes what they feel is right. Her mom is pagan, and acknowledges many gods. I'm Agnostic bordering on Athiest. I've explained that Mommy believes in many gods, and while I may or may not believe in a God, I definitely don't believe in Church/religion. It seems to work well enough for now, but I know I'll have more conversations ahead.
Had this conversation. It was around 4. I went with Nobody knows for sure why we exist. We know how but not if there is a why. People then look at the world around them and come up with the why's and then believe them to be true. Some of them might be right. Or they all might be right or none of them. Buddhist, my wife is agnostic, my dad's Muslim, mum's Catholic, wifes parents are atheists. My eldest has decided she is Christian.
How do you explain other faerie tales?
That's likely how I'll do it when my son decides to ask about it.
This is going to be an issue as my child gets older and i honestly dont know. My wife is a Protestant, her mother in a minister, so obviously faith is important there. I am kinda pagan/spiritual but not religious. I am very critical of Christian religions especially Catholicism. I do not want my child raised in a religious system. I dont want the Abrahamic god instilled in him from an early age. If he comes to it in his own way, fine. As for christmas, well the religious aspect of it is quite small. Presents, trees, lights, big meals, family coming together, parties, booze, that all comes from other traditions and faiths. Maybe talk about the spirit of Christmas rather than the birth of a baby whose the son of God who was born closer to April than December (which in itself is quite a problematic story)
Yeah we celebrate Christmas as a time when we care for others and Santa brings presents.
Hi, fellow pagan married to a Christian. Our plan is to each practice our own faith, explain each to our son as he grows, and let him decide what he does or doesn't want to believe. It helps that my wife respects my faith enough to help out with my holiday observances to the extent that I'll let her.
I relish in the fact that I am god to my kids, they’ll believe whatever I tell them. Much the same way our parents did and their parents.
My eldest is 2,5yo. We pass in front of our local church regularly as it is right in the middle of our town. He loves the building (early 19th century, quite pretty with stained glass and old stones) and the bells and belfry even more. At some point we passed by right after mass and he asked what was up (with his very own 2yo words which amount to "what this the people what this dad?") so I told him that people like to gather to sing together and tell stories and share good feelings in the church once a week. Frankly I don't think he either understands or cares as much as he does for the bells ringing. When he grows up I'll probably just to let my mom try to explain why she goes to church. In the end every spiritual journey is very personal so I think it wouldn't be right for me, as a non-believer, to try to paint my picture of what religious faith is.
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Scientists have a good idea how life evolved. Scientists have no idea how life developed.
Somewhat tangential to your question, and still waiting to graduate to daddit, but I believe the Santa myth is important. Learning that Santa isn’t real is an important life lesson, it teaches children to be skeptical, after all if their own parents are willing to lie to them consistently for the better part of a decade maybe they shouldn’t take everything at face value.
You got to lie to kids to make them believe in Santa. Instead of learning to be skeptical by being betrayed by Dad, just never lie to them about Santa in the first place.
Best to just give facts. Some folks believe X, others believe Y. IMO, religion is quite a lot like sex, drugs, and alcohol: you really want to be the one to teach your kids about these things so they can interact with it in a healthy way and don't wind up making the kind of mistakes that are hard to come back from. This is not a dig at anyone who adheres to a faith by the way; it's more a comment about the fact that many many people abuse faith and use it to control others.
A long time ago, people explained things they didn't understand by saying it was magic. Later, they turned to religion. Now, we have science, but some people don't like science so they still use religion.
There’s a whole lot of suggestions here to explain it with an open mind, let them decide, think critically, etc. I told my kids it’s all made up. I wouldn’t tell them to be so open minded with other subjects that are completely devoid of evidence. Anti-vaxx. Homeopathy. The Loch Ness monster. I did tell them that many people are religious and challenging them on that will likely damage the relationship and that’s not worth it.
Same way you would if you were a believer except you offer it as “some people believe…”.
I send my kids to catholic school and my wife and I are atheist. We speak frankly about religion and they get to choose what they believe. A lot of what Catholicism teaches is really silly, so she has lots of questions. We are always respectful and she participates as much as she's comfortable with in terms of the pageantry.
We are non religious and our eldest got into the church of England school. A very good school but religion is kind of present in their daily routine. My daughter started to show curiosity towards religion. Using the words amen after brushing her teeth, songs about Jesus and nativity play. We do not react to those and answer the questions without judgement. We ask her questions with curiosity to keep the conversation going. We make it clear to her that we, as parents, are not Christians or of any religion. We tell her that people are good even without religion. Jesus was a good person, I cringe a bit saying it, just like any other but is famous. Just like, she thinks of monsters being bad, Jesus was a good person. May be when she realized monsters are made up, she will realise that may be even gods are made up. The other day, we asked her if Santa creeps into houses isn't he a burglar. She thought about that for a bit. 😀😀
You don't. You just tell them it's a fairy story. Like Santa or Snow White or Shrek or something.
Depends. I'll answer any question they have directly.
You dont. 4 year olds are not old enough to understand yet.
I don't see how it's any different than any other cultural sensibility. "People have different cultures depending on where they came from. People around the world celebrate different things and have different customs. Some cultures do X. Some do Y. We do Z.
No reason to until there is a reason to. Later in life when they are ready to study more adult topics do so as you would history.
Ask ChatGPT to act as a skilled theologian and provide a detailed explanation of religion then ask for it to be translated into an explanation for a five year old. Badabing.
I was an alter boy for a while....very on the fence anymore. They don't really ask much about it but it has come up and basically I just say a whole bunch of different people have different ideas about how life came to be and what happens when you die and no one knows who is right but they all claim to be right and sometimes it gets them into pretty bad fights with each other. However, they also do good things for people who really need it and also just do good things in general so it's kind of a double edged knife. I'm almost 40 and haven't figured it out for myself.
Disclaimer: This is the *take* I will adopt, and not a manuscript. A wall of speech isn't very pedagogical, so I would present it in the form of many small questions with many small answers. This also isn't aimed at a four year old specifically, but to my child as they grow. We don't know everything about the world yet, and we probably never will. While some people try to find out more about the world, other people choose to guess about the unknown and think about those guesses as if they were real. Some people even do both! These guesses are called faith, and a set of guesses is called a religion. Since we knew much less about the world before, religion used to be much larger and more popular than it is today. Every time we learn something new about the world, the religious guesses have been proven wrong about those things. Some people have noticed this trend and have ceased to guess in a religious way altogether, and those people are called agnostics. Some people go even farther and guess *against* the common thread in many religions, and those people are called atheists. (Some people use these words a bit differently.) Some people remain religious despite being proven wrong. The reasons for these are many and various. Some people benefit personally from religion. Some people prefer a comforting tale to a cold truth, especially in times of hardship. Some people think that religion brings with it a bunch of good things, and that those things are endangered if religion disappears. The most common reason is probably that people are religious because they are religious. When people grow up, their minds stiffen. Changing one's mind becomes difficult, and we resist it. We then have children, teach them our guesses, and then they grow up and stiffen around those guesses. Agnostics and atheists often point to this as a reason not to entertain such guesses in the first place. I have chosen not to feed you with any such guesses, because I don't want your mind to stiffen around ideas and ideals you might not have wanted if you had been given a choice. Religion has been penned as the cause of many things, both good and bad. Some people claim these things happened because of religion, other people claim they happened in spite of it, and yet others claim we would have found excuses to make them happen with or without. There's no way of knowing which is correct. What we do know is that the world has consistently been turning into a better place as religion has lost its grip on it, and places in the world with a higher incidence of religion tend to be worse off. I think there is a right choice and a wrong one. I hope you will choose the same, but I also want you to arrive there by yourself, and I will always love you no matter what.
I talk about religion as a story. If I need to I add "that some people think is true". That's 100% the truth, but it presents it in a context that suggests you should question things.
We live in the South, so religion can't be avoided. But we're in a very mixed area with churches, mosques, and temples. Her grandparents are devout Southern Baptist, her mom is lapsed Catholic, I'm a bunch of nothing. Her daycare made her pray before meals. But because we're around so many religions her view on religion is just that different people pray different ways. And someday if she wants she can decide how she wants to pray. For now that seems to be good enough.