How does religion factor into your parenting - if at all?
ANGEL
2012/06/01 11:55:19
With all the hullabaloo over Time Magazine's cover story about "attachment parenting" (cover photo of the mom breastfeeding her 3 year old), which led to a number of articles on different philosophies of parenting, I was wondering how much religion might factor into parenting, if at all.
There are many Christians, whom I know, where religion is very much a factor in their parenting. Scientology offers a series of courses on raising children - although the courses are not 'religious' in nature - but more 'common sense'. I was brought up Jewish, and while there was certainly the Jewish culture, I can't say that religion seemed to influence the parenting techniques my folks adopted.
Does religion factor into your parenting? If so, how so?
There are many Christians, whom I know, where religion is very much a factor in their parenting. Scientology offers a series of courses on raising children - although the courses are not 'religious' in nature - but more 'common sense'. I was brought up Jewish, and while there was certainly the Jewish culture, I can't say that religion seemed to influence the parenting techniques my folks adopted.
Does religion factor into your parenting? If so, how so?
In the first place, our hope is that our children share the same faith we have, so we spend a lot of time teaching them the details of our faith and practicing it with and in front of them. A friend of ours shared the term "more is caught than taught" with us years ago, so we try to live out our faith so they will "catch" it. Secondly, we feel the morals taught in our faith are very important, but that the most important thing is heart change, not just behavior modification. So we organize much of our discipline (both formative and corrective) around the gospel of Christianity, which both instills the right way to act, and also provides the will to choose correctly. We believe scripture (when appropriately interpreted and applied) provides the best moral "how to" manual on raising children.
We have decided to homeschool our children so we can have more time with them to teach and model our faith to them. We make this decision yearly with much prayer and counsel with other friends. Our family activities are also centered around or guided by the question "how could this strengthen or encourage our children's faith?"
We believe what we do with our children has consequences beyond our lifetime. So the foundation we give to them can affect our family tree for...
In the first place, our hope is that our children share the same faith we have, so we spend a lot of time teaching them the details of our faith and practicing it with and in front of them. A friend of ours shared the term "more is caught than taught" with us years ago, so we try to live out our faith so they will "catch" it. Secondly, we feel the morals taught in our faith are very important, but that the most important thing is heart change, not just behavior modification. So we organize much of our discipline (both formative and corrective) around the gospel of Christianity, which both instills the right way to act, and also provides the will to choose correctly. We believe scripture (when appropriately interpreted and applied) provides the best moral "how to" manual on raising children.
We have decided to homeschool our children so we can have more time with them to teach and model our faith to them. We make this decision yearly with much prayer and counsel with other friends. Our family activities are also centered around or guided by the question "how could this strengthen or encourage our children's faith?"
We believe what we do with our children has consequences beyond our lifetime. So the foundation we give to them can affect our family tree for the next hundred years or more.
That's a bit more detailed, but I could elaborate further if you like. If there is any particular topic of parenting you want me to discuss, or method of discipline, interpretation of scripture, etc. that you want more detail on, just ask.
As always, thanks for your question. Have a blessed day.
The only thing I'd like to add to that last point is that what we do with our children, the foundation we build, has consequences that will not only affect the family tree, but branches out and touches the lives of others, as well.
What is your definition of "hatred", and how have you observed the vast majority of persons of faith teaching our children to hate all that is different? Different from what? Lastly, have you researched ALL religions, all variants of all religions, and found each and every one of them to teach nothing but hatred of anything that is different from them?
Additionally, I'd like to ask you to justify the statement that teaching religion to children is brainwashing. I doubt you will be able to defend that statement short of making the assertion that teaching anything at all to any child is "brainwashing" of some sort, but I would like to see your reasoning that gets you to that point.
yes, i teach my children love, kindness, acceptance, sharing, manners, honesty, trust, etc etc but that has nothing to do with religion, more just common sense and decency
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i dont know what parenting practice i will adopt but i am sure that the father and i will come up with some sort of agreement on how we would like our child raised.