A couple weeks ago I wrote about my qualms in preparing a December celebration party for our secular parenting group. Part of my worries were thinking that educating kids about religious traditions/practices could be an act of inadvertently condoning religious belief. I wrote more about my dilemma here:
I asked myself: if I set out a bunch of nativity sets for the kids to play with, am I reinforcing the idea that there really was a virgin birth?
I think I may have been overthinking things a bit — especially considering most of our kids were more interested in spinning the dreidel than debating the pros and cons of the Torah. But I’m glad that I have these inner struggles when it comes to raising my little freethinker. I want to raise my little girl with an awareness of how human beings have used faith and dogma in an attempt to answer life’s hard questions — but I also want her to have the critical thinking skills to recognize where these faith systems have failed in their answers and have hurt others. Teaching her about religion isn’t the same as indoctrinating her into a belief system.
If you’re interested in the activities we ended up doing for our December celebration night, here’s the post where I elaborated on what we did to learn about Kwanzaa, Chanukah, and Christmas.
The post is a part of the Parents Beyond Belief blog, where I’m a contributor, along with other facilitators of secular family/parenting groups in the States. We’re in need of more Canadian voices, so if anyone out there looking to start a secular parenting group in your area, contact me!