dual religion families?

[puffingirl]

DH identifies as Christian and I'm a Buddhist though we haven't really talked about anything religious with DD yet (she's 2.5) as it's not a huge part of our daily life right now and we don't belong to a religious community. This weekend we were walking around and saw a beautiful chapel and DD wanted to check it out, so we popped our heads in for just a minute since services were starting in a few minutes. She was entranced by the music, beauty and lights and is now talking and asking a lot about church. We're a tiny bit lost on how to talk to a toddler about all this, especially because we're of different beliefs and practices. Anyone have a good suggestion on a book or something for raising kids (especially really little ones) in dual religion families?

[wombatclay]

I'm pagan, dh is christian. Several of our friends are also in interfaith marriages. Often interfaith marriages work well until the topic of "what about the kiddos" comes up! Smooth sailing after that often requires an open communication between partners, a willingness to compromise on some things, and an openess to chane if things aren't working.

So I know it seems like things are being tossed back into your court, but what are your hopes for your family in terms of religion? And does your partner share these hopes? Do you want your dd to learn both christian and buddhist practices, celebrate christian and buddhist holy days, attend religious services in one or both faiths, have a general exposure to many faiths but no single faith "id" celebrate traditions in just one faith, etc? How you respond to her interest now depends on which path you want to explore.

You could get a book like Sacred Places by Jane Yolen (a series of illustrated poems, each focused on a different religion) and talk about how different people have different paths to the divine... and each week visit a ceremony at a different place of worship, pointing out the things of beauty and worth in each and sharing the poem about that faith.

You could also get a book like "How to be a perfect Stranger" and simply answer her questions directly in a sort of factual "some people believe X" manner. You could then just drop the issue. However, she'll probably have questions pretty often growing up and if you hope to take a "religion neutral" path you may want to find a support group (agnostic or humanist groups are not uncommon in some areas).

You might decide that this is a good time to create a spiritual home in a christian community and raise her within this framework. Perhaps this chapel could be that home. Or you might decide to find a buddhist community and raise her within that framework. Whichever option was choosen you'd then need to decide if you would introduce the other parent's faith, and to what extent. Alternating weeks or holy days? Adding ritual/tradition only at home? Making one path the "family religion" and the other a source of "family traditions"? This seems to be the place where open communication is crucial in exploring what each partner wants for their children. Often people don't realize how important something is to them until they realize that they "can't" share it with their own children!

If you do find that you and your partner have strongly held hopes, it can help to really dig down and figure out what exactly is the meaningful piece... is it the religious significance of a holy day or the cultural overlay that is most meaningful, for example.

In our family we attend Unitarian Universalist services in a UU community that is strongly buddhist/humanist. The kiddos attend the RE program and UU religious ed seeks to introduce children to a wide variety of world religions so that they can craft their own religious path At home we celebrate pagan holy days and pagan traditions/rituals as a family. We like that the UU church provides a weekly rhythm and a wider spiritual community so the children have many examples of how faith can be lived and we like the home focus of the pagan seasonal rhythm. Right now, this works for us.

But we are very close to two different families (both a blend of christian and jewish) who have gone with the "one over the other" approach. In one family the children are being raised catholic. They attend church and follow the traditions of that faith. They are open about the fact that "dada isn't christian" but they don't do anything to introduce jewish traditions. The other family is the opposite, with the children being raised jewish with their father attending church on his own each week but otherwise not involved in the family religion.

And we have friends who have tried the "every other week" approach as well as the "no specific family religion" approach.

Ok... this has turned into a much longer post than planned! Hope some of it makes sense or is helpful!

[puffingirl]

Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply, with personal experiences and book suggestions! I don't think we entirely know yet what we want for DD or our family. I'm very comfortable with the local UU churches and would be fine with that. DH isn't totally sure, but he's never really had a faith community. He group up in a non-religious family and feels like he missed having some sort of framework and came to Christianity later in life, on his own. I've bounced around in spiritual traditions and my biggest hope is to just give DD a lot of exposure to the different pathways with the message that they are all one and ultimately she can choose what she wants. It's a challenge though to find the language to talk about it with a toddler. With the recent chapel experience I was stumped about how to talk about the concept of God within the framework of "some people believe" and how to bring it all up for the very first time. We've talked about people, like Jesus and St. Francis, and practices like meditation and yoga but God hasn't really come up yet. It's left us scratching our heads a little. DD is incredibly chatty and really wants to know about anything new that she sees so we've been dragging out art books that have pictures of churches because she wants to see the stained glass windows and playing all different kinds of spiritual/religious music for her at home. It's amazing to feel so stumped about something that had felt settled for myself for quite a while.... Thanks again for your book suggestions--I'll be getting them soon.

[EnviroBecca]

We are not exactly a dual-religion family; I practice an organized religion (Episcopal) and my partner does not, so our child came to church with me but wasn't baptized until he was old enough to decide for himself that he wanted to do it.

One thing you might try is reading to your child from the Bible and from Buddhist books anything that is story-like that she might understand at least partially. That has given my son and me many interesting ideas to discuss: Do I believe that the whole universe was created and populated in six days? No. So how WAS it made, and what role did God play? Jacob was our ancestor; does that mean we should be "on his side", or was it wrong for him to trick Esau out of his birthright? I wrote about our experiences reading the Bible on my site. We don't have a children's Bible--I just read him a translation in clear, modern language--but he's a kid willing to listen to chapter books without pictures; if yours isn't there yet, you might want to look for children's books about Buddhism.