Help for parents

my name is Jo, and I have two very young daughters and an 8 year old stepdaughter. My girls are still too young to understand about religion, but my stepdaughter it seems is hopelessly brainwashed already by her southern baptist mom and stepfather and all of his family. We live in the bible belt, which doesn't help. I try to do what I can to be a cool, consistent, moral, caring atheist stepmom, and I always answer her questions honestly. We have surfed the net together studying evolution and the forces of nature, but I feel like I need better tools as a parent. She really wants religion and all that it offers her (heaven, etc...) to be true, and believes that you have to believe in order to be a good person. There are a lot of videos to watch, and books for adults, but not much that is appropriate for little kids. Zeitgeist is awesome, but they could have done without the cusswords. Even the video opening on this site is really all adults. I was wondering how many of you have this issue, and how you handle it. Thank-you!!!! any ideas/links would be great, Jo

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kat Cooper on March 28, 2009 at 3:28pm
Re-read the book I gave you, Parenting Beyond Belief, see if there's anything in there you may have missed on some other things you can do.
I'm always looking for things for you, when I find them, I send them.
You've actually got a lot more tools to use than I had when the boys were growing up.
There was NOTHING for me then, I just had to deal with each situation as it came up the best way I could.
Elementary school teachers teaching them the song "Away in a manger" and many other Christian Christmas carols for the public school Christmas pageant, a Jewish teacher decorating her classroom for Hanukkah and teaching ALL of her students about Judaism, other kids calling my sons Satan lovers, telling them they were going to hell, and either the teacher stood by and did nothing, or they joined in and also told my sons they were going to hell.

I will keep searching for you as I always do, but I am hopeful that others here will already have some great stuff or ideas to share with you.
As soon as I found this site, I joined, then sent the link to you. LoL :)
Permalink Reply by Kat Cooper on April 2, 2009 at 7:16pm
Doesn't anyone else have any help or suggestions, ideas, for parents trying to raise their kids atheist in a god fearing world?

Jo and I are sisters, we live in a very religious community, teachers freely discuss their beliefs with their students in public school.
Help is needed to find ways to keep our kids on the free thinking path, to try and combat the things teachers in pre-school, kindergarten and all of the way up through high school, do and say with our kids.

Any help or ideas you can offer will be great.
Permalink Reply by Dan on April 16, 2009 at 1:52am

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