To ask religious MIL to respect our views?

[Namedilema123]

PIL are Christians. DH is atheist. Im not atheist but not religious at all and find it all a bit culty.

MIL is always talking about Jesus and God to my 4yo and 2yo. She plays religious nursery rhymes when she looks after them. For Christmas has bought them a Childs First Bible and Child's First Prayer Book. How do i broach this subject? It makes me feel so uncomfortable. Its not so much the religion itself but more it being taught as blind fact, rather than just stories or that some people believe it, others don't. would be much happier if other religions were spoken about too. Or AIBU?

Being familiar with the stories in the Bible is an important cultural asset, same as knowing the Greek myths or Shakespeare. I wouldn’t worry unless she is frightening them with stories about hell or whatever.

Religious people exist and will always talk about their views to your children. Just accept that. They won't became christians just because of nursery rhymes.

What about Santa and the tooth fairy? Are they not allowed any beliefs until they are old enough to critically analyse them?

Interestingly my 7 year old doesn't believe in Santa or the tooth fairy but is open to the idea Jesus was/is real. He is at a non-denominational school (ha ha) and I'm not religious, neither is his Dad or any family.

For the people who think it is ok to share their Christian or other religious views with other people’s children, are you ok with someone telling your 3 year old that there is no such thing as a god and the human race is destined for failure as long as we expect some magic fairy in the sky to solve our problems?

No purpleartichoke but thats not age appropriate for the child. I don't think age appropriate religious stories are a problem and if OP thinks they are then I assume they are home schooling their kids as otherwise they won't be able to avoid it.

I personally find that unless the parents constantly reinforce the faith the grandparents are promoting the chance of their child growing up religious is zero. We are surrounded by a secular society and secular schools, the chance that your MILs POV will stick is virtually nil.

I’m a Christian. We have books about other religions in our house. Although my children go to church and are in a devout household, I still tell my toddlers that some people don’t believe in God or believe something different and when they are older they will decide for themselves. But children can experience God for themselves and can hold different views from their parents. Of course as a parent I tell them what I believe but that doesn’t have to stretch to withholding any other options from them. So if my atheist dad told the kids he thinks God isn’t real, we’d discuss it. I would be angry so long as he wasn’t disrespectful in the way he delivered his belief.

That should say “wouldn’t be angry”, obviously!

We are surrounded by a secular society and secular schools,

If you’re in the U.K. it isn’t secular and there is no such thing as a secular school. Even non-faith schools are required by law to have “a daily act of broadly Christian worship”. The only 2 ways to avoid that are to home educate or to exclude your child from (in our case) several parts of the school day.

I taught my child that the bible was a nice book

You clearly haven't read it!

Wow... what's the worst that could happen? Your children develop a set of moral values like the ones taught in those children's bible stories? They focus pretty heavily on respect and love and compassion and I'm certain that's what granny will be focussing on too with children that age!!!!!

I’d recommend you have an open discussion with your mother-in-law - let her know that you’re fine with religious education as long as she’s not forcing her beliefs on your child. Have a chat with your child too and remind them that their grandparents have different beliefs but you as a family disagree.

I'm atheist and I think it's fine. She's given her a fictional book like any other. No need to make a big deal of it.

I had a similar dilemma with my own dear Ma when my two were young. Decided to roll with it but when they were old enough, reinforced the message that God and Jesus are ‘what Grandma believes in’ and was quite happy to let them read the Bible, go to church with her etc. I was brought up in a staunchly Catholic household and the only effect the attempted indoctrination did was make me run far far off to the hills.

It was balanced by the fact they were brought up in an Atheist / Agnostic household. Now dd1 is particularly good at RE because she’s had exposure to religion since being very young and to her it isn’t some alien concept. no signs of any brainwashing yet.

DH and I are both religious. DD went to a faith school. She's an atheist now, but still respects our beliefs. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I think understanding the perspective of others from a young age is good. Ours were regularly taken to a Gurdwara by friends who babysat when they were younger and into their teens. They much preferred it to our Catholic church as they got better food afterwards. They haven’t chosen to become Sikh. Then one of them doesn’t really consider themselves Catholic either. What they have is a good understanding of various religions.

What's the problem?

They raised your DH and he turned out atheist!

School will teach them about other faiths.

They're fine!

I think it’s fine. I lived through Sunday School and a number of happy clappy Christian camps and turned out a massive skeptic.

The most important thing is teaching your children to think critically and independently while respecting people’s views.

Although as other posters have said, if there is any fire and brimstone stuff going on that is not acceptable.

All the major world religions have the same core values

Misogyny, homophobia, intolerance towards non believers, barbaric punishments?

What's the problem?

They raised your DH and he turned out atheist!

I know of several people who were ‘raised’ under various guises of Christianity or Islam who all went through several years of turmoil, guilt, fear and obligation as they tried to reconcile those beliefs with their own personally evolving world view and moral compass before rejecting religion outright. It was not an easy journey and they feel great resentment that they were forced to take it due to early age indoctrination. The ‘it does no harm’ brigade might want to think about that before asserting that a child can just casually abandon an encouraged/enforced belief like they have just grown out of a favourite toy.

I think the best way to counteract this is not to go after Christianity specifically as that just gives it a special place amongst beliefs. Instead I'd focus on treating it in a comparative mythology kind of way. Buy books on lots of other major religions, and also things like paganism, Greek mythology etc. Read them with your kids and if you think their understanding is good enough point out the differences and similarities, talk about how one religion evolved from another etc. I was raised a Christian and attend church every week until I was a teenager. My partner and I are now both atheist - in fact I would say I'm closer to antitheism - but we both find religion absolutely fascinating and spend a fair amount if time studying and discussing it. A lot of the playgroups we've visited with our son have been run by churches where they tell bible stories/ sing religious songs. This year they gave all the children a children's bible for Christmas as well. I was initially worried as well that it would seep into his consciousness some how, but actually I think that they better informed children are about all religions the easier it is for them to spot inconsistencies and think critically about the content of those beliefs. My hope is that my son will grow up to have a very thorough understanding of all the major world religions, and respect people of those faiths, whilst personally seeing those gods as no more likely than Zeus or Odin. Don't give Christianity any special status by making it the one Big Religion that you rail against - treat it as equal to any other mythology that most people don't take as fact. Also, when your children are old enough read the actual bible with them, not the sanitised children's version. I'm not convince dp that a lot of Christians have actually read it cover to cover - it's pretty nasty stuff! There's a podcast available on YouTube called the atheist experience which is a good resource for discussing the bible. The host Matt Dilahunty often asks callers "if you're so sure this is the Good Book, would you be happy for me to come over and read passages of my choosing to your children?" As a pp said, the only thing I'd take special care to address is any talk of hell which is a disgusting thing to threaten anyone with and frankly if your MIL were to ever discuss hell with your children I'd stop letting her have any unsupervised time with them.

I don't have anyone in my DS's life who pushes religion on him (apart from one of his school friends) but I came upon a solution to this by accident. We were leafing through a Horrible History book about vikings and we learned that vikings believed that clouds were the brains of dead giants. DS had already learned about clouds and rain (thank you Blaze and the Monster Machines) and was really shocked that the vikings thought something so blatantly wrong. That led to me explaining how people in the past made up stories to explain what they didn't have the scientific knowledge to understand fully.

So ever since when questions about religions or god come up I refer back to giant brain clouds. At this time of year a lot comes up about the cheezest christ baby. So I explain about the axial tilt and how most cultures in the high northern hemisphere developed mid-winter celebrations to help them through winter and stories to explain the phenomenon, Yule, Saturnalia, Dong Zhi, Shab-e Yalda, etc. That Christmas is the name our culture uses due to the dominance of the christian myth of the birth of Jesus, even though there is no actual way that happened in mid-winter, if it happened at all which isn't likely. Then we explore what aspects of our Christmas come from where, Christmas trees being Germanic/eastern European, Santa who first came to vikings in Scandanavia, Yule logs/holly/mistletoe being celtic, festive lights being an almost universal part of the celebration of the passing of the darkest night, etc.

Knowledge really is power when it comes to religion. Knowledge of the real scientific phenomena. Knowledge of as many of the different stories as possible that various cultures have used to explain what they couldn't understand. Knowledge of all of the different ways these stories have been adapted and bastardised to make them more palatable and believable as human understanding grew in ways that would otherwise diminish their relevance. Knowledge of the different ways that religion sought to suppress real knowledge when it contradicted their stories.

As for dealing with your in-laws, I tell my DS that people's beliefs are important to them, so try to respect that. But if someone doesn't respect what he believes, he is free to be frank. Get your DH to talk to his parents, as it should be him dealing with this rather than you. Ask them to respect your family philosophy, explain that if they won't you will have to respond accordingly in ways that you would rather not. If they start telling your dc about Jesus, you can interject and explain that he almost certainly never existed as there is absolutely no primary or secondary evidence of him, no evidence of many of the events that supposedly happened in the new testament, that the various texts of the new testament contradict each other and that there is evidence of the main seven times between 325 and 787 that the bible was re-written to suit the rulers of the church at the time and shape the basics of the various Christian religions we now know. Your children don't need to understand it all, the odds are that once your in-laws are faced with the consequences of how disrespectful they are being, they will stop.

I was raised Catholic, DH CofE.
Both of us are now on the fence.
We think we raised our kids to be tolerant of all faiths and religions and to seek to find out more about them.
DD is Pagan
DS1 Atheist
DS2 CofE
It makes for some interesting conversations over dinner!

All the major world religions have the same core values

Misogyny, homophobia, intolerance towards non believers, barbaric punishments?

Don't forget jealousy. Jealousy is a big thing with gods. They're quite big on slavery too. And loads of rules about diet and sex. Absolutely obsessed with what you can eat and who/when you can shag.