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I have a 16 month old, so I'm struggling with these same questions. Here's what I'm thinking (now), with the caveat that this is subject to change a dozen times

by hluska 9y ago

I have a 16 month old, so I'm struggling with these same questions. Here's what I'm thinking (now), with the caveat that this is subject to change a dozen times in the next week. :) Study: My parents never forced me to study and I turned out okay. Instead, they used to praise me for working hard while working obscenely hard themselves. For me, this combination of strong models and positive feedback accomplished more than forcing me to do homework ever could have. Religion: I was raised in a very religious family. My Mom grew up extremely religious and my Dad converted. Thing is, I was never told what to believe. Both of my parents wanted my sister and I to be critical of our religion and think carefully about what was just doctrine from a different era and what was true morality. In the end, I pulled away from my religion because I couldn't see through all the mindless restriction and the hypocrisy. However, now that I have a daughter, I am religious again. In fact, she's getting close to her baptism. The way I see it is that if I raise her religiously, she has a chance to be religious when she gets older. Or, she may choose a more secular life. Either way, she has a choice. If I don't raise her within our religion, she still has the choice, just a more difficult path. I think parenting is about giving our little people options. It is not about telling them what to think. As for media, I wouldn't dare put parental control on any form of media. Instead, I would prefer that Lauren grow up knowing that there are predators online, but that she should trust her judgement and tell me or her mom if anything confuses/scares her. Frankly, I hope that Lauren is smart enough to beat any kind of parental control scheme that I could come up with. But, if she is and she gets in trouble, she might be scared to tell me. Straight up, I want her to tell me that she tell me that she is being bullied, or pressured into sexting. And, if she's afraid that I'll get mad because she broke the rules, I'll lose that.

chesterc 9y ago
How is growing up outside of religion a more difficult path to freedom of religion than growing up within one? Wouldn't growing up in one religion be more constraining to her with regard of all other religions? There is one step from being non-religious to any religion, but to move from one religion to another you have on you the burden of having to leave your current religion.
- hluska 9y ago
  I'm a sample of one so take this with a giant, highly critical grain of thought, but for me, being raised within a religion gave me the freedom to see that all religions are fundamentally the same. They have different names for things and in some cases, certain stories resonate better with me. But deep down, the Zen expression 'ten thousand forms, one suchness' absolutely applies. My phone is about to die, so I'll cut it off, though I suspect that I'll revisit this throughout the day!
- hluska 9y ago
  By the way, thanks for your perspective and the questions it made me start thinking about. As I mentioned in my original post, I will likely change my mind about everything several times.
gduncan12 9y ago
I grew up with my parents trying to force me to be religious. Sent me to religious school from K-12 and went to temple a lot (Jewish). As someone who naturally gravitated toward problem solving and logic (engineer), I was always skeptical of religion and the more I learned about it the more I was exposed to things that just made no logical sense and it became pretty obvious to me early on that this is all stuff that some group of people made up a while ago and I don't need to base my life around it. Furthermore, I don't need religious text to teach me how to be a good person. For example on "holy" days where the community spends all day in temple reciting the same prayer 50 times over and over again, I would much rather volunteer at a soup kitchen or maybe plant trees or do community service, that is much more rewarding to me than praying to something that no one even knows exists. That being said, I don't care if anyone else wants to be religious, I am not trying to convert anyone to atheism, as long as their beliefs don't pour over into my life. This is where tension has built up with my mom who continues trying to force me to be religious even as I am into my 30s now. I do not try to convince her to be atheist so I don't understand why she feels she needs to force it upon me. We don't really talk much anymore because of it which is a shame because otherwise we got along. Anyway, I hope you let your child choose whatever path he/she decides is best without forcing anything upon him/her.
- hluska 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing your story and I'm sorry that your Mom still tries to pressure you. I haven't been a parent for very long so I don't really know what the hell I'm talking about, but based on my experience, it's got to be really hard to let go when your kids become adults. And, I love nobody like I love my daughter, so in all honesty, I don't know what I will be like when she does things that I disagree with. On the topic of religion, I like to think that I'll be fairly liberal. I hope that I will show her one system while she is young and then back off when she is in her teens to let her find her own way. But, unfortunately, parenting has shown me one thing. It turns out that, for all that I like to talk about science and to the extent that I consider myself 'rational', I am mostly an ape. I am fiercely and irrationally protective of her. And I am just as fiercely and irrationally proud of each and every one of her accomplishments. Still though, I have a tremendous amount of respect for her, so I promise you (and her) that I will do my best to let her make her own decisions. However, seriously, thank you again for sharing your perspective with me. I'm sorry that you are going through this, but I will remember this comment and I promise that I will consider your words any time I want to pressure her to believe what I do. Thank you very much.

by hluska 9y ago

chesterc 9y ago

How is growing up outside of religion a more difficult path to freedom of religion than growing up within one? Wouldn't growing up in one religion be more constraining to her with regard of all other religions? There is one step from being non-religious to any religion, but to move from one religion to another you have on you the burden of having to leave your current religion.

hluska 9y ago
I'm a sample of one so take this with a giant, highly critical grain of thought, but for me, being raised within a religion gave me the freedom to see that all religions are fundamentally the same. They have different names for things and in some cases, certain stories resonate better with me. But deep down, the Zen expression 'ten thousand forms, one suchness' absolutely applies. My phone is about to die, so I'll cut it off, though I suspect that I'll revisit this throughout the day!
hluska 9y ago
By the way, thanks for your perspective and the questions it made me start thinking about. As I mentioned in my original post, I will likely change my mind about everything several times.

gduncan12 9y ago

I grew up with my parents trying to force me to be religious. Sent me to religious school from K-12 and went to temple a lot (Jewish). As someone who naturally gravitated toward problem solving and logic (engineer), I was always skeptical of religion and the more I learned about it the more I was exposed to things that just made no logical sense and it became pretty obvious to me early on that this is all stuff that some group of people made up a while ago and I don't need to base my life around it. Furthermore, I don't need religious text to teach me how to be a good person. For example on "holy" days where the community spends all day in temple reciting the same prayer 50 times over and over again, I would much rather volunteer at a soup kitchen or maybe plant trees or do community service, that is much more rewarding to me than praying to something that no one even knows exists. That being said, I don't care if anyone else wants to be religious, I am not trying to convert anyone to atheism, as long as their beliefs don't pour over into my life. This is where tension has built up with my mom who continues trying to force me to be religious even as I am into my 30s now. I do not try to convince her to be atheist so I don't understand why she feels she needs to force it upon me. We don't really talk much anymore because of it which is a shame because otherwise we got along. Anyway, I hope you let your child choose whatever path he/she decides is best without forcing anything upon him/her.

hluska 9y ago
Thanks for sharing your story and I'm sorry that your Mom still tries to pressure you. I haven't been a parent for very long so I don't really know what the hell I'm talking about, but based on my experience, it's got to be really hard to let go when your kids become adults. And, I love nobody like I love my daughter, so in all honesty, I don't know what I will be like when she does things that I disagree with. On the topic of religion, I like to think that I'll be fairly liberal. I hope that I will show her one system while she is young and then back off when she is in her teens to let her find her own way. But, unfortunately, parenting has shown me one thing. It turns out that, for all that I like to talk about science and to the extent that I consider myself 'rational', I am mostly an ape. I am fiercely and irrationally protective of her. And I am just as fiercely and irrationally proud of each and every one of her accomplishments. Still though, I have a tremendous amount of respect for her, so I promise you (and her) that I will do my best to let her make her own decisions. However, seriously, thank you again for sharing your perspective with me. I'm sorry that you are going through this, but I will remember this comment and I promise that I will consider your words any time I want to pressure her to believe what I do. Thank you very much.