Children, religion, and critical thinking.

[rivka]

Elsewhere, someone presented a dilemma: her mother-in-law enjoyed taking her son to church and he enjoyed going, "the problem I'm having though, is my husband and I are really against some of the things they teach (I won't go into specifics, but for example, I eavesdropped and heard one sermon where they were blasting homosexuals). Now that my son is nearly 2.5 I'm worried he's actually listening and picking up on this stuff." She went on in a later post to explain that she is an atheist, but has always intended to expose her child to different beliefs. She wound up concluding that the best thing to do would be to ask her husband to find a liberal church "so he can take our son too and show him another side."

I replied to her:

I don't know how well such a young child would be able to understand and process differences between, say, a conservative and a liberal Christian church. Does he really have the cognitive capacity to compare them and realize, "this is the other side to the story, there are two ways of looking at things and I can choose which one to believe"? I think of that as being more of an adolescent ability.

I have a very bright two-year-old, and I've realized that she takes everything she hears at face value. Even in children's book passages where we are clearly meant to infer that someone is saying something untrue, she accepts the statements as fact. I know that in a year or two she'll be much better at picking up context clues that she isn't meant to take something literally - but I expect that it will take much longer for her to understand that something which is presented as absolutely, dogmatically, no-room-for-doubt true (by an authority figure and by someone she loves) may not be true at all.

I would have less immediate concern about your mother-in-law's church's teachings about homosexuals (which are repellent to me, but it's not like your son is really old enough to understand any of it), and more concern about the messages he is probably getting about salvation and hell. Is he being exposed to vivid, fear-based descriptions of the punishments and suffering of hell? 2.5 is probably old enough to pick up the message that people who don't go to church - like you - are bound for hell, which could be very frightening for him.

She thought I was way off base:

Well, if he's hearing at one church that you'll go to hell if you're gay and he's learning about loving everyone, even if they are different at another church, yeah, I think he'd notice the difference. Like I said, I have very vivid memories from that age and I was aware of a lot more than people thought I was, which is why I never underestimate what kinds of feelings or thoughts kids are capable of. You'd be surprised what people talk about when they think a young child isn't listening or won't understand! And people tend to talk down to children because they think their understanding is minimal, when it really isn't. I wasn't an exceptionally bright child, but believe me, I felt like people treated me like an ape when I was 2 and 3 years old. I believe a 2 year old can understand that 2 men or 2 women can love each other romantically and can understand if someone is talking bad about people like that.

I certainly don't think I'm guilty of underestimating the intelligence and comprehension of toddlers. I was a very bright kid. I have a very bright kid. But as smart as I think Alex is, there is no way that I would regularly expose her, at her age, to points of view that I wouldn't want her to believe. I don't think she has the critical thinking skills to handle it.

We've been reading a "Charlie and Lola" book in which Lola gets fixated on a particular library book and doesn't want anyone else to check it out. Alex loves the book, asks for it repeatedly, seems to follow the plot, and quotes big chunks of the text. But when I ask her, "Is it okay for the other little girl to take that book home?" she answers, "No, that's Lola's book." Lola asserts that strongly in the text, and so Alex assumes it to be true. She understands that someone might say something counterfactual in order to be silly, but she's too young to understand that someone might have an unreasonable, incorrect point of view. (Piaget, from his grave: "I could've told you that.")

So no, I don't think that she'd be capable of comparing Universalist messages she was exposed to on Sunday morning to fundamentalist messages she heard on Sunday night, identifying the discrepancies between them, evaluating the credibility of each set of sources, and freely discarding elements that didn't fit with her values. I don't think she's capable of understanding that a crowd of otherwise good, kind people who are very certain about their beliefs might all be completely wrong. And it kind of boggles me that any parent of a two-year-old does think that.

Ultimately, I think it's great to expose children to a vast range of opinions and beliefs, including completely wrongheaded ones. I'm sure we'll eventually find ourselves having a conversation with Alex about why So-and-so's parents think we're going to hell, and why our family and our church doesn't believe that. But that's going to have to wait until she's developed some basic critical thinking skills, and honed them on less frightening topics.

Comments

[abbylee]

Yes, I think she doesn't understand that even if her 2 year old can grasp that the two churches are saying different things that he can also understand that they contradict each other. Especially because the two churches are likely to talk in different terms - to him it is like hearing from one place that all apples are red and the other is saying that all apples are fruit. He's likely got the cognitive ability to extrapolate that all apples are red fruit, but not to think to himself "wait a minute, some apples are green."

Kids that age certainly grasp a lot more than many people give them credit for. And things that adults don't think are very important can stick very vividly in their memories. But that also doesn't mean they have strongly developed cognitive abilities.

I'm also somewhat annoyed by the perspective that teaching your child about tolerance is "another side" as if you're explaining that some people like vanilla and some like chocolate or some go to Church X and some go to Church Y. But that anger likely has more to do with my reading of the situation than the actual reality of it.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I'm also somewhat annoyed by the perspective that teaching your child about tolerance is "another side" as if you're explaining that some people like vanilla and some like chocolate or some go to Church X and some go to Church Y. But that anger likely has more to do with my reading of the situation than the actual reality of it.

No, I'm right there with you on that one.