When to tell your family.
Moderator: Moderators
When to tell your family.
Post #1Does anyone have an opinon as to what age is appropriate to tell your child you are an atheist and don't beleive in God.
What we do for ourselves dies with us,
What we do for others and the world remains
and is immortal.
-Albert Pine
Never be bullied into silence.
Never allow yourself to be made a victim.
Accept no one persons definition of your life; define yourself.
-Harvey Fierstein
What we do for others and the world remains
and is immortal.
-Albert Pine
Never be bullied into silence.
Never allow yourself to be made a victim.
Accept no one persons definition of your life; define yourself.
-Harvey Fierstein
-
Vladd44
- Sage
- Posts: 571
- Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:58 am
- Location: Climbing out of your Moms bedroom window.
- Contact:
Post #11
Must....not....drink ....the tea.Confused wrote:Thats because your gf is poisoning you. It makes it very difficult to think clearly let alone imagine solutions to complex things (except the moms bedroom window you are stuck in).
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.[GOD] ‑ 1 Cor 13:11
WinMX, BitTorrent and other p2p issues go to http://vladd44.com
WinMX, BitTorrent and other p2p issues go to http://vladd44.com
Post #12
I can't remember at what age I heard my parents tell me about their beliefs. I think my mother told me she was buddhist when I was 11, and my dad told me he was Agnostic when I was 14, or about three years after they knew I was agnostic.
I don't think my parents really cared about me knowing about their beliefs, they were open about it, just having a hands-off aproach when it came to my beliefs, saying that it is my choice, and that I can believe what I feel like.
I don't think my parents really cared about me knowing about their beliefs, they were open about it, just having a hands-off aproach when it came to my beliefs, saying that it is my choice, and that I can believe what I feel like.
-
realthinker
- Sage
- Posts: 842
- Joined: Wed Jul 04, 2007 11:57 am
- Location: Tampa, FL
If not what you believe . . .
Post #13What are you telling them if it's not what you believe? When your kids have questions about what goes on in a church or what happens when someone dies, what are you telling them? Or rather, if you don't have kids, how do you think you might handle that?
Spirituality is a real human need. People need to feel comfortable with their existence and their mortality. If you're not going to address those concerns with religion, you'd better have another answer. That's the atheist's challenge. If not religion, what else? The maturation process is fundamental, and the anxieties are going to be there.
I'd push any parent, religious or not, to study the thoughts and behavior of the usual childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood and be ready to recognize those anxieties and deal with them as they arise. Especially if you don't have the doctrine of a proscribed faith to fall back on. If you leave them to deal with it on their own you never know what you might have on your hands when it's over.
My parents learned that when I told them one day, when my father asked me if I'd prepared my weekly tithe, that i don't feel I should contribute to something I don't believe in. They weren't prepared, and my father simply glared at me and said, "What the hell do you think you know!" He didn't ask a thing. He simply dismissed my feelings and questions entirely. At that moment he lost his chance to be my authority on anything. He lost his chance to understand my anxieties, to pull me back into the fold.
Spirituality is a real human need. People need to feel comfortable with their existence and their mortality. If you're not going to address those concerns with religion, you'd better have another answer. That's the atheist's challenge. If not religion, what else? The maturation process is fundamental, and the anxieties are going to be there.
I'd push any parent, religious or not, to study the thoughts and behavior of the usual childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood and be ready to recognize those anxieties and deal with them as they arise. Especially if you don't have the doctrine of a proscribed faith to fall back on. If you leave them to deal with it on their own you never know what you might have on your hands when it's over.
My parents learned that when I told them one day, when my father asked me if I'd prepared my weekly tithe, that i don't feel I should contribute to something I don't believe in. They weren't prepared, and my father simply glared at me and said, "What the hell do you think you know!" He didn't ask a thing. He simply dismissed my feelings and questions entirely. At that moment he lost his chance to be my authority on anything. He lost his chance to understand my anxieties, to pull me back into the fold.
