What of Religion / Spriituality

A post from yahoo group, parents on the Drive in response to questions and concerns about children being taught religion in daycare/pre-school.....

Just as a potential farmer may be born into a family of academics that push their youngster, who would rather dig in the dirt and plant seeds, towards "higher" academic learning, so a family of antheists /agnsotics may have a child who yearns for spiritual / mystical / godly connection....tricky stuff!  

I love this topic!! I love too, what you, Yvette said about hearts, well chosen, beautiful words!

My son started asking 'spiritual questions' early, and I run a home daycare. I have chosen to tell mythical and moral tales at our daycare, some Christian, some Buddhist, many Greek, pagan etc. Children are naturally drawn to deep meaning, moral tales, fantasy, and roles of dark and light, cycles, powers of nature...this is why they love fairy tales AND super heroes, many children as young as four will love to tell you what they believe in and find out if you agree, so my approach has always been to go with their interest, explain that different people believe different stories, that in each their is a seed of knowledge that they may enjoy or relate to, that each person as they grow comes to their own belief. If a child wants ot see the inside of a church or temple, in we go! Why not?

I've watched my son's vision of Santa be destroyed by an older child's non-belief....it was hard, but considering where we live, I think these discussions amoungst children, and between children and adults will come at some point, no? Better than, do you prefer puma or nike, no?

We live in a pluralistic society, children want to know from us, primarily what we believe as their parents. At daycare or school if they are being "force-fed" some ideas you don't believe in (of course you should discuss this with the staff, yet...consumer culture is force-feeding us all around!), then you can and should be able to tell your own story and your child will most likely want more than anything else to come to understand it - yours!

My parents had two different religions, neither of which they were that attached to. Instead, they chose to 'grace' us with ideas of tolerance, a smattering of the pagan roots of Christianity, a good dose of history, and finally, atheism. Still, by the age of 10, I was very interested in world religions and of my own accord decided to visit a variety of places of worship...