The truth is a funny thing when you’re dealing with kids. What should you be telling them and at what age is seen as a major factor. A while back I wrote a similar post about Ryan asking Katie and myself questions about sex. We eventually settled on answering any questions he had about the subject. Should the same be applied to everything else in life?
I believe so! I believe in a world where information about any subject, be it sex, religion, drugs or things such as Santa Claus, the Easter bunny or the Tooth Fairy should be free and distributed to anyone who has any questions about any of them.
If we live in a world where we keep things from people because “of their own good” all we will achieve is making a generation of people completely ignorant to the way things really are and should be. This is NOT a good idea! My main issues at the moment centre on religion and such things as Santa Claus.
I’ll start with religion. Each week, Ryan’s school has an assembly with some people from the local church to talk to the kids. As atheists, we have decided to pull Ryan out of these assemblies, as they simply do not have any other people from other religions in to talk to the kids, which would go against our beliefs of giving them as much information as possible to make their own decisions regarding this subject.
We would rather there be an assembly or multiple assemblies with different people from different religions talking to the kids about various religious subjects, which will help the kids to make their own decisions about religion.
If you were in my shoes, would you handle my situation differently? What would you do?
Santa Claus, ugh, I hate this subject because it’s even more controversial than my views on religion. We all know that Santa is not real and the idea of Santa is constantly being commercialised by companies to dupe parents around the world into spending billions on their kids and not even getting the credit for it.
When I finally found out about Santa not being real when I was a kid, I started to respect what my Mum bought me. She was a single parent on a low income and providing for two children. At Christmas time this was a hard feat, and looking back upon it, I wonder why she did not tell me sooner.
At any other time of the year, when you might buy a present for someone, would you like to say that the present that you have possibly spent a couple of hundred of pounds on is not from you but from someone else? I certainly wouldn’t, why is this the case for Christmas?
We have told Ryan about Santa as we have with everything else in life, and we have let him make his own decision. The problem that I face today is that we have had a complaint, of sorts, from his school. He has been going around and telling the other children that Santa is not real. This may be the truth, but obviously each parent is entitled raise their kids how they want, but should be discipline Ryan for speaking the truth, if the other parents / teachers do not agree? I certainly will not! I will how ever inform him that he needs to respect other people’s beliefs and he should be careful what he says around others as it may upset them. Should it really be done this way though? Am I alone in thinking this way? I am at a loss.
How would you deal with the issues I have raised here?