this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
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There are a lot of moving parts here.
My parents and grandparents are fully aware of my lack of belief. So my parents won't be shocked that my children don't believe. I don't mind letting e.g. my mother tell them about Jesus because realistically, humans believe what their environment believes and for my children, I am mostly their environment. So I don't think some exposure to christian beliefs will have a bad influence and my counter-influence would be present, so my children can choose.
My so's parents and grandparents don't know about our lack of belief. Her mom is aware of my lack of belief in a religion. Now that makes the whole children thing more complicated but... We are a couple thousand kilometers away... So... I hope they accept that we don't want to provide our children with any religious education until they are ready to understand it. So at an age at which children are able to lie in the worst case.
I took the same approach and my kids started believing when they were in elementary school. My mom was taking them to church sometimes more for the social aspect (my mom wasn't directly preaching to them at all), so the influence was relatively weak. It caused some problems for a while but neither of them believe as teenagers now.
Just as a word of warning, you may run into situations where your children's beliefs are different from yours and worse yet, they are getting conflicting information from multiple trusted adults. It can be very uncomfortable and confusing for them to the point that it's very upsetting because kids often idolize the adults closest to them when they are that young.
It's very important to talk to them, but you need to tread very lightly. I ended up telling them my beliefs and telling them that it's up to them to choose what they believe in life, even if what they choose is different from mine.
Good luck!