Relax, It's Just God: How and Why to Talk to Your Kids About Religion When You're Not Religious - Softcover

Russell, Wendy Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1941932002 ISBN 13: 9781941932001

Publisher: Brown Paper Press, 2015

Synopsis

Gold-medal winner of a Next Generation Book Award, silver-medal winner of the Independent Publishers Book Award. As featured on the PBS NewsHour

“A gem of a book.”― LIBRARY JOURNAL (STARRED REVIEW)

A step-by-step guide to raising confident, open-minded kids in an age of religious intolerance. Relax, It's Just God offers parents fresh, practical and honest ways to address issues of God and faith with children while promoting curiosity and kindness.

A rapidly growing demographic cohort in America, secular parents are at the forefront of a major and unprecedented cultural shift. Unable to fall back on what they were taught as children, many of these parents are struggling, or simply failing, to address issues of God, religion and faith with their children in ways that promote honesty, curiosity, kindness and independence.

The author sifts through hard data, including the results of a survey of 1,000 nonreligious parents, and delivers gentle but straightforward advice to both non-believers and open-minded believers. With a thoughtful voice infused with humor, Russell seamlessly merges scientific thought, scholarly research and everyday experience with respect for a full range of ways to view the world. 

Relax, It's Just God goes beyond the numbers to assist parents (and grandparents) who may be struggling to find the right time place, tone and language with which to talk about God, spirituality and organized religion. It encourages parents to promote religious literacy and understanding and to support kids as they explore religion on their own -- ensuring that each child makes up his or her own mind about what to believe (or not believe) and extends love and respect to those who may not agree with them.

Subjects covered include:
• Talking openly about our beliefs without indoctrinating kids
• Making religious literacy fun and engaging
• Talking about death without the comforts of heaven
• Navigating religious differences with extended family members
• What to do when kids get threatened with hell

About this title

About the Author

Wendy Thomas Russell is a journalist, author and editor. A former newspaper reporter, Russell writes an online parenting column for the PBS NewsHour and is the co-founder of Brown Paper Press, an independent book publishing company. Relax, It's Just God is her first book.

From the Back Cover

RELAX, IT'S JUST GOD: HOW AND WHY TO TALK TO YOUR KIDS ABOUT RELIGION WHEN YOU'RE NOT RELIGIOUS delivers a refreshingly compassionate and light-hearted approach to addressing issues of faith in secular families. For anyone looking to raise critically thinking, religiously literate, and highly tolerant kids capable of making up their own minds about what to believe, RELAX, IT'S JUST GOD may well be considered the secular equivalent of a godsend.

From the Inside Flap

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Talking openly with children about sensitive subjects is hard. It always has been. In my parents' generation, the three-letter taboo was S-E-X. My sister was thirteen when my dad gave her "The Talk." It was the eighties, and my dad dodged it the way any educated man of his time might have. He tossed her a sex-education book and said, "Read this, but don't do it."
Luckily, things have changed. Discussing sex isn't scary now–or quite so scary anyway. Americans are more open with their children than ever before. Modern fathers don't flinch when their daughters ask about that thing dangling between daddy's legs after a shower. Many parents have no more trouble talking with their kids about sex than teaching them how to spell it.
But progressive thinking has a way of replacing certain taboos with others. And today, for a great many parents, there is a new three-letter word: G-O-D.
My daughter, Maxine, was barely five years old when she piped up from the backseat on the way home from preschool one day.
"Mommy," she said, "you know what? God made us!"
I felt like a cartoon character being hit in the back of the head with a
frying pan. My heart raced. I'm quite sure I began to sputter. Visions of Darwin and the evolving ape-man raced through my mind, followed closely by my childhood image of the big guy upstairs in his flowing white robes. I couldn't speak. And, in the awkward silence that followed, I was forced to confront the truth: The idea of talking to my kid about God–and, more specifically, about religion–scared the bejesus out of me.
I swallowed hard and forced myself to speak. "Well," I said, "Who is God?"
Now, I don't remember if Maxine actually said "duh," or whether she simply bounced a "duh" look off the rearview mirror. But I can tell you that the "duh" message came across loud and clear.
"He's the one who made us," she said, her eyebrows knitted. "Okay... well, what is God doing now?" I tried for casual.
Again with the nonverbal "duh."
"God is busy making people and babies," she answered.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brown Paper Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1941932002
• ISBN 13: 9781941932001
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200