Gotta get them early. My 6 year old wants to be a solider or police officer and talks about Jesus and God a lot.
As an anti-establishment and atheist household. He’s not getting this from us. He’s picking it up at school.
I don’t try to fight him on it. But I don’t condone blindly following and challenge my kids to be introspective on their beliefs. If after taking the time to really think things through he decides to stay the course at least it was his decision.
Anyhow these tactics are intentional and always present throughout life. The best thing to arm a child with is feeling comfortable to ask “why”.
The best thing to arm a child with is feeling comfortable to ask “why”.
This can be a double edged sword with very talkative or inquisitive kids.
My kid is too damned smart and wants to know how everything works, so they ask why. But often we don’t know, or they’re not satisfied with the answer and keep asking why. If screens didn’t disregulate them so much I’d go tell them to look it up, but I til then I have to answer the string of 10,000 whys (to later get told I’m wrong by the kid who had no idea what we were talking about 20 minutes ago, and is now an expert despite not looking into it at all …) and mentally scream because I refuse to douse that curiosity, even if I run out of patience for it at times.
One of the factors that has contributed to the sorry state of American voters is the distaste among conservatives for teaching critical thinking skills, because that fosters questioning authority, ergo disobedience.
But when we don’t have it, then the most confident, loudest-voiced narcissist has an instant army of conditioned followers.
See also the tendency in fundamentalist religions to discourage serious questions about the dogma.
Young kids are attracted to actiony state roles (e.g. police, firefighter, astronaut) because they’re visible early on. As teens they develop a better sense of what their interests are and what roles would be a good fit.
And then capitalism throws that all away, gives the cool jobs to cronies, and forces them to be grocery baggers, office clerks and customer service agents that work phones.
Gotta get them early. My 6 year old wants to be a solider or police officer and talks about Jesus and God a lot.
As an anti-establishment and atheist household. He’s not getting this from us. He’s picking it up at school.
I don’t try to fight him on it. But I don’t condone blindly following and challenge my kids to be introspective on their beliefs. If after taking the time to really think things through he decides to stay the course at least it was his decision.
Anyhow these tactics are intentional and always present throughout life. The best thing to arm a child with is feeling comfortable to ask “why”.
When my kids were younger they had a lot of those same comments. I would talk about the christian god in the same way I talked about Zeus.
This can be a double edged sword with very talkative or inquisitive kids.
My kid is too damned smart and wants to know how everything works, so they ask why. But often we don’t know, or they’re not satisfied with the answer and keep asking why. If screens didn’t disregulate them so much I’d go tell them to look it up, but I til then I have to answer the string of 10,000 whys (to later get told I’m wrong by the kid who had no idea what we were talking about 20 minutes ago, and is now an expert despite not looking into it at all …) and mentally scream because I refuse to douse that curiosity, even if I run out of patience for it at times.
I’d take the risk.
One of the factors that has contributed to the sorry state of American voters is the distaste among conservatives for teaching critical thinking skills, because that fosters questioning authority, ergo disobedience.
But when we don’t have it, then the most confident, loudest-voiced narcissist has an instant army of conditioned followers.
See also the tendency in fundamentalist religions to discourage serious questions about the dogma.
Oh I treat those all as teachable moments. The hard part is keeping them from getting themselves in trouble.
I just don’t want my kids to get shot.
Young kids are attracted to actiony state roles (e.g. police, firefighter, astronaut) because they’re visible early on. As teens they develop a better sense of what their interests are and what roles would be a good fit.
And then capitalism throws that all away, gives the cool jobs to cronies, and forces them to be grocery baggers, office clerks and customer service agents that work phones.
That pretty much encompasses the entirety of my parenting approach. Good to see! Your kid(s) are lucky to have you :)