'Mummy, where did the first lady come from?'

[WigWamBam]

Well, it was Daddy she asked, actually - and of course his response was a very well-considered one ... "Ask your Mum".

A few weeks ago she was asking similar questions and I tried to explain a little bit about evolution and how people gradually evolved from apes. I thought I'd managed to explain it pretty well in simple terms, but she didn't really "get" it, and three days later was asking whether my Mum had been an ape when she was little.

She's just 5 - well, on Friday. How do I tell her in ways she can understand? I believe that if a child asks a question they deserve an answer, but I don't know how to word this one!

Oh, and I don't have a religious faith so don't want to be going down the Adam and Eve route.

Could you show her a book on evolution. You know, the ones which show pictures of apes developing into humans.

There must be a childrens version out there.

Oh I remember this one with ds1. I went down the evolution route (little iggies in the sea and they crawled out and grew legs and then they got bigger and then they were apes and ooer all their hair fell off and they walked on two legs and one day...there were people) and a couple of days later he greeted my Mum with "Grandma - did you know you used to be a hairy monkey?"

I think you're doing it exactly the right way - it's just such a massive concept for a 5 year old brain to handle. Maybe a book from the library with one of those evolutionary time lines in it?

Thinking about it they've got tadpoles in her classroom at the moment, and they've just got their back legs ... I wonder if I could use that to show how things can change and evolve over time ... mmm ...

WWB, my daughter has been asking similar questions recently. She doesn't understand it either and keeps asking things like "so when did my tail fall off?".

(my dd is just 5 too!)

It's such a big concept, isn't it - and so hard to put across!!

Thanks for the suggestions ... does anyone know of a decent book?

We have this a lot lately.

We mostly talk about evolution and the 'scientific' version of things due to having no faith.

I think that although it is a concept my dd struggles with, her understanding has grown each time the topic is revisited so worth persevering.

We have talked about how SOME people believ in the Adam and Eve theory as a good (?) way of introducing some understanding/empathy for other's beliefs, however.

Oh yes, I agree - we do talk about what other people believe, and how we have to respect and understand those beliefs. Her school are a little more heavy-handed with the religious stuff than I would like (not a faith school, before anyone gets upset) and we've talked about what others believe and what I believe quite a lot. She knows the story of Adam and Eve ... but she knows that we don't believe it's true.

I cannot stand the way dd's school (she is now home ed) bigged up the whole Christian thing. I remarked upon this several times and met with "oh yes but we've done diwali, etc."

Er, so why does my daughter go on and on about Jesus and God and Mary and not Diwali then?

It has taken us ages to give her back a balanced perspective. She knows that we don't believe in heaven, etc. but she chooses to believe parts of what she has been taught which is fine by us.

So, the cat is in heaven where there are fairies and clouds (no God and no fear of retribution!) and we were made from cells...

It's this that makes Home Ed hard work!!!

We've had the same thing, nannyme. They "do" all the other festivals but so far without putting it into the perspective of any kind of faith - they tell it like a fairy story. Which is fine - but they then present Christianity as an absolute. She used to come home telling me that they have had to make "promises" to God, or that someone had been telling them about how much we should love Jesus and, like you, it has taken a while to give her a balanced perspective.

But that's a whole other thread