Q&A: How should we, as atheist parents, talk to our kids about god and religion?

Answering as a Catholic here. 🙂

Even people raised religious have to own their faiths at some point. Every religious person at some point in their life questions why they believe what they believe, and whether they will continue believing, or question more, or stop.

Our children, raised Catholic, are free to investigate and ask questions about other people’s beliefs. We hope and pray they don’t leave our faith, but my husband and I (and a lot of other Catholics/Christians like us, surprise, surprise!) don’t squelch education or discussion. Contrary to what most people think about us, we are doing our best to raise critical thinkers here. We don’t want our kids following a religion “blindly”. We want them to know exactly what they believe and why they believe it.

Part of their education is knowing that there are others who don’t believe in God, or even a God, that there are people who believe in other deities or may profess to believe in the same God but whose beliefs don’t necessarily align 100% with ours. That’s fine. We believe it makes them stronger Catholics when they’ve asked questions and received answers and investigated them on their own.

We cannot be so afraid of our kids not following in our footsteps, so to speak, and “leaving” whatever belief or non-belief system that we’ve raised them in, that we neglect our duty of raising people who can think for themselves. In this I think that you and I have similar goals. My suggestion is — and I realize I don’t have detailed answers for every question you have — keep things simple when they’re young, and don’t stress out too much.

We tend to answer kids’ questions as they come. The younger they are the simpler the question and the simpler the answer required. I don’t believe in giving too many complicated answers when they’re young and risk further confusing them. They WILL ask more complex questions as they get older. I don’t want to overwhelm or scare them into not asking questions. The only way we can raise truly critical thinkers, is to give them the time and space to develop in their thinking/questioning/research skills.

Good luck with parenting/parenthood, and enjoy your child’s inquisitive mind! It’s a precious thing.