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For atheist parents: How do you address the problem of religious children being mean to your kids?
My fiance and I are both pretty strong atheists and are going to be starting a family soon. I remember an incident where my younger sister was told by her best friend that they couldn't be friends anymore because our family didn't go to church (they were seven!), and she was utterly devastated. I've experienced plenty of problems, but none when I was that young. But given that this happened in a moderate town in liberal Massachusetts, I doubt incidents like this are uncommon. And though I've thought about it quite a bit, I'm still not sure how it should be dealt with.
Do you educate them so perhaps they can get their peers to think twice? Talk to the bullies? Talk to their parents? Has something like this happened to you, and if it has, what did you do and what happened as a result?
Thanks!
Disgusting and intolerant? Its entirely different than most other forms of bullying.
In most cases, you can talk to a child's parents. If, for instance, I had a child being told they were ugly or stupid, it would be easy to talk to their parents. How many parents encourage the idea that children should be told they are ugly? However, if a child tells another they are going to hell or that they are evil or that they can't be friends, do you honestly believe their parents don't hold similar beliefs?
How is wanting to HELP your child deal with a specific kind of bullying disgusting or intolerant? Did I suggest we burn the bullies in the village square? Geez.
2 Answers
- 9 years agoFavorite Answer
@Eric L K : you dont get out much i'm guessing?
Study: Religious People Trust Atheists About As Much As They Do Rapists
- ?Lv 69 years ago
You should deal with them the same way you'd deal with Atheist bullies that they'd encounter.
That you think bullying is substantially different because of religious belief and lack thereof is quite frankly disgusting and intolerant.
Edit: No, it is not different. I would wager to say that about 99% of bullying stems from the same thing, which is just kids wanting to make themselves feel bigger and stronger. They might use different facades like popularity or even religion, but that is just the surface, in substance, they are the exact same.
You should deal with all bullies the same way. Sometimes the parents won't discipline their kids, this holds true with bullies who use popularity just as it holds true with bullies who use religion, I know from experience. If they don't help then you just need to go higher and try something else.
And by the way, in my 11 years of public schooling (still there, sadly), I have never encountered "religious bullying." Rather it is the children who speak openly about their faith that are denounced and bullied, even when they do so in a very kind way. Even me, a very shy kid who wants to be a priest, some people seek me out and interrogate me and tell me that I am backwards and making the wrong decision (basically complete strangers, mind you). There is the rare kid who denounces someone to hell, but it just isn't taken seriously. That should hold especially true if you are raising your child as an Atheist.
And to the below poster, I could care less what "theblaze" has to say on the matter. All of my best friends are Atheists and Agnostics, I know first hand they can be wonderful people.
