What Do You Tell An Inquisitive Child

[LivingLife]

Reflecting back on my earliest memories, I remember asking my mother at age 5-6, where do rainbows come from?

 

She sat me down with a kiddies bible and explained the Noah story.

 

Later on in high school I learned about refraction and dispersion and a whole lot of phun science stuff. Lo and behold I also learned that other things also make "rainbow" colours. We learned of the colour spectrum and the primary colours and how the eye works and that white light is a combination of all these pretty colours. We learned that grass is not really green but merely the reflection of certain frequencies of light while other colours are absorbed by the plant.

 

Wow was mom wrong....

 

The stories parents tell their kids regarding origins and why this, why that are mostly age appropriate lies and although deceptive, one cannot wonder how these traditions were handed down through the eons. The story of the stork was also told as you really cannot expect a young boy to understand the real mechanics behind copulation and reproduction.

 

I remember the first time I read about Adam that knew his wife and though doh! how could he not know his wife, did she surprise him????

 

I was the youngest kid so I never saw the baby bump belly of my mom. I had no personal frame of reference.

 

As it turned out, much of my early knowledge came from my older siblings that shared the gory details amidst giggles and closed doors.

 

So poof went the stork and the rainbow and many of these cute little tales.

 

People in my folks church would share how god spoke to them in the week, I had the kiddies bible with pics depicting moon or sun beams and a passage of some dude being spoken to by god and thought well this is how it happens. I had seen these sun beams and wondered why god was not speaking to me. So I posed the question;

 

"Mom, when is god going to speak to me?", the answer, "One day he will"

 

The sunbeams never seemed to shine on me and if they did, obviously I would not be aware as I was in the light. I was expecting an audible booming voice from the heavens as depicted in the KJV bible, it never happened.

 

The reason I share this, as kids, the mind is very impressionable and even an innocent kiddies bible art piece can make one connect non existent dots.

 

The older I got, the nastier this dude in the sky became, demanding all sorts of homages and sacrifices and rituals. My dad was pretty mean when I was a kid so the image of god was my biological father. My parents had spawned a kid too intelligent for their limited knowledge. Had they seen this potential and gone to the library to look for answers, perhaps I would be a renowned geologist today. I was always collecting rocks and looking under them. But no, they just passed onto me the stories from the "Big Book"

 

Before I write a book, I was 8 when my dad allowed me to drive his car for the first time and I pulled away w/o stalling and went up to 70mph and then stopped at his instruction and pulled over safely to allow him to take over. This was w/o one single lesson and merely me observing what he did with the peddles and gears. I had sat on hip lap while he was driving when I was smaller but of course he still had the wheel, I merely had the illusion of being in control.

 

By the time I was 16, I was given the choice of still attending church and I declined but the indoctrination had been cast in stone and years later I would fall for the con again.

 

Looking at some of the folk that still believe in myths as the real McCoy, I have to wonder how anyone can develop into adulthood and still take these things as fact. Some lies I guess are just more believable than others.

 

In my search for the real god, I was pained when I saw tragedy, a kid drowned while swimming, another kid taken by a crocodile (I grew up near the Zambezi river) a man crying out to die in hospital when I had malaria as a 5 year old (he had managed to explode one of those paraffin blow lamps and had 3rd degree burns over 70% of his body - he eventually died. His screams of agony and his crying made me cry) Where was god in all of this? Vague reasons were given and as a kid I accepted them.

 

I can imagine the first time a kid encountered death say of a grandfather or grandmother and the kid asked where is nana or oupa? What do you tell a 5 year old?

 

Folk invented a heaven, spirits and ghosts and the kid is told their grandparent has gone to a better place despite the continuous bawling of adults that told you this. You watch as the casket descends into the hole in the ground and listen to the words of the preacher "dust to dust, ashes to ashes..." flowers and rose petals and sand tossed in after the casket came to rest at the bottom. What does this all mean?

 

As time passes, we see some friends dying in accidents, some of them innocent victims of another drunk driver and the excuses just keep rolling in when you ask where was god. By now the heaven is a better place seems to be the par for the course answer. The drunk driver survives and serves a DUI term for manslaughter after he is patched up in hospital of course. Is this justice?

 

Still you look to find a rational explanation but there is none. You grow up and before you know it, you are telling the same lies to your kids.

 

This is how the myths of yore were propagated into modern society. As adults we should realise that heaven is mere hopeful thinking, most go with the flow as that is what the majority of folk do.

 

It takes serious effort and will power to reject these primitive concepts and accept your own mortality. My dismissal of the lies was a painful severage but now I am over it.

 

Life is no more than the roll of the dice whether you live long or short lives.

 

Apologetics are simply excuses for the god that was not/is not there.

 

Religion (which is derived form the archaic French word Relegare means bondage) and the trick of the church is to make money off you selling cosmic real estate w/o really answering any of these perplexing questions and keeping you in bondage to your fears of mortality and death.

 

In a nutshell, kiddie lies become adult "truths".

[Margee]

Boy can I realte to this LL.... always waiting for the 'sunbeams' during some real hard times growing up..

 

I have a little boy in my life that I try so hard to be honest with with. I don't want to scare him but when he asked where his other grandma went (when she died very young in her late 40's) I just told him that life is a mystery and that noboby really knows what happens after death.....but to always remember her beautiful laughter and how much she loved you.

 

Reality is so hard and the other way was soooo easy. I want him to grow up and form his own opinions, so most of the time I will answer that he should investigate throughout his life; to study evolution and mystical things and come to his own conclusions.

 

Great post!

[freeasabird]

As far as the ultimate question goes, I have never lied to my son even to provide comfort. A month or so ago when we were talking about death and he started to get upset, I mentioned that some people believe we have a spirit that goes to the spirit world after death, but stressed that no one really knows what happens when you die. It was kind of a Dumb and Dumber moment "so you're saying there's a chance" that provided just enough comfort to escape the moment without lying.

[blackpudd1n]

Tell an inquisive kid the truth. I was one. Eventually, they'll hunt the truth down, and get the shits for being lied to.

 

I read an interesting paper on critical thinking in my last unit at university, and the author made a convincing argument for being able to teach children as young as three and four to think critically, and had spent the last twenty years of her life teaching people of all ages to do so. Children love to question and learn, and I believe that if we just give them simple, pat answers, we stifle their interest in learning about the wonder of everything. Children are also very philosophical from a young age, and I believe we should encourage that.

 

Inquisitive kids, though, they'll always question anyway. there's no easy way out of that one lol.

[FeelHappy]

If your brought up believing it and never question it you will always believe it and pass it on to your child.

 

A few months ago I was talking to my grandmother when she brought up how powerful god is. She said look how many languages there are in the world and all of them came about in a moment when god added them at the tower of babel. 'How can we question a god so powerful', she then asked me.

[Will02]

Inquisitive kids are the very best kind. They desire knowledge and they want to understand how the world works and why things are the way they are. Unfortunately, society wants people who do as they are told without question so in school this inquisitive nature is often stamped out unless measures are taken to nurture and preserve it.

 

How do I know this? They tried to do it to me when I was a child. Even as a christian, I was stubborn as hell and I fought back against their efforts to change me into what they wanted me to be.