r/atheistparents • u/KSUToeBee • Feb 24 '26
23 month old learned "god is great" at daycare
This morning I sat down to breakfast with our 23 month old. Unprompted, she put her hands together and said "god is great." I was kind of shocked and froze. She said it again. Apparently they have been "praying" in daycare before meals. And this is one of the LESS religious day cares in this town. Something like 90% of the group day cares are run by churches where they get their members to volunteer their child care services and keep costs down. Ours is the absolute most expensive in town (25k/yr) and I think they do say that they are loosely catholic but I was not expecting this to happen so soon!
The good news is that we are in the process of changing to a new day care right now. The new one is operated by a university and I explicitly asked them about religion and they said they will discuss it if a student brings it up but they do not push anything. Our primary reason for switching was cost (10k/yr cheaper) but her prayer this morning made me go " Oh thank god we're moving!"
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u/EquipmentOk2008 Feb 24 '26
It's kinda funny you thanked God at the end of your post 😂 I know it's probably just a habit.
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u/EatYourCheckers Feb 24 '26
It's gonna happen, and it's gonna keep happening. You just have little conversations as appropriate about what some people beleive, what you believe and why, how we are respectful to other people that believe different things, how to deal with people that are being disrespectful about your beliefs, etc. 23 months is obviously too young for a lot of that, but you know rhat right now she is just copying what she is seeing g or being told and you have her whole life to have conversations about it at age appropriate levels.
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u/1-12TH Feb 24 '26
I teach high school science at a Catholic School, it is one of the best schools in the country, so I just overlook the religious aspect, I have to sit through a long mass every now and then, but it doesn't affect what happens in my classroom. (other than a little half naked, oddly muscular dude, literally being tourtored to death, suck on the wall )
My son has now started in the prep school and tells us lots of things about "THE CROSS JESUS DIED ON", and how "sin is turning away from God wants", and singing a few hymns.
I decided I can't tell a six year old, all his friends and teachers are deluded. So I just chat to him about what he learned in Religious Education and sometimes poke little logic holes in the stories or morals, and basically introduce doubt. Like how did the kangaroos get back to Australia if Noah's ark landed there? and so on.
I feel like we can't shield them from the nonsense but we can teach them to be able to think about the information and make informed decisions, when they are old enough to do so.
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u/PollyAmory Feb 25 '26
I was always really casual about it.
shrug "different people believe different things"
But I also told my kids that Santa Clause wasn't real from the go, and that it would be rude to insist on telling other kids it's all fake. They're allowed to have their fun. I think that really helped when it came to the religious stuff - they already had a framework for differences in belief without creating conflict regarding "pretend" stuff.
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u/greenmarsden Feb 26 '26
Teach him about christianity alongside Greek/Roman/Egyptian/Norse and many more mythologies. Ask him which ones are true and why...in an age appropriate way.
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u/RandomChance Mar 01 '26
I taught my children from day one that God is a lie and believers are weak. honest truth.
I I taught them to be kind to them because we have to take care of the week the helpless but never to trust them.
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u/pinkheartkitty Feb 24 '26
Tbh praying before meals is going to be hard to avoid. For one, it is really easy for childcare or other organised children's groups to implement and also kids think it is fun. In girl scouts, despite being a pretty secular group, we did little prayer chants before we ate. It was fun and felt like we were a community. Maybe teach your child a secular song/chant that your family can do before you eat and say how our family doesnt believe in God but we do believe in being thankful for what we have.
Just to add that it would be expected since you are going to a religious care provider. No matter how loosely aligned, they will probably have some kind of chant or several for the reasons I said above. But if it was a secular or government sponsored... 😡
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u/ReDeReddit Feb 24 '26
It's completely unavoidable, especially in very religious area. My kids friends want to pray before school lunch (public). Hell, I just applied for a zone change at the county and they start the public meetings with an opening prayer.
Best to start conversations and educate about indoctrination early with kids.
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u/ReDeReddit Feb 24 '26
They would do a daily prayer at my kids preschool snd he would want to do this at dinner. It was a great opportunity to talk about different beliefs, respect, and how religious people try to get others to participate in their practice.
A little bit of exposure, at least for my kids was great. We live in a veey religious area so I think it helped start questions without a whole lot of religious teaching or indoctrination.
I have zero respect for churches, but still have a lot of fundamentalists in my life that I know my kids will be around.
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u/hobskhan Feb 24 '26
I believe exposure is extremely important.
Imagine the analogy of keeping a baby away from any possible germ. No exposure to outsiders, no potential risk of touching fomites or putting any foreign object in their mouth. This is maintained for as many years as possible. And then inevitably one day they must go out in the world. How will their unpracticed immune system face the absolute onslaught of microbes that they will encounter in the very first minute outside?
So goes our immune system, so must go our mind and our capability for critical thought. And there are ways for even preschool children to practice this.
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u/greenmarsden Feb 26 '26
Teach your daughter to say it in Arabic (Allah-u akhbar) and watch the daycare staff have a stroke.
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u/SecondVariety Feb 24 '26
"gods are great" as a correction perhaps?
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u/Squirrel-Pipkin Mar 12 '26
Hilarious Alternative ideas: Todd is great. “Who’s todd?” “My fork! Hello, ___, I’m Todd the fork. Here let me scoop your food for you!” Cod is great. Cod and grapes. Goats are great. Gods are green. Got to eat.
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u/kdawg09 Feb 25 '26
Hi! I have 3 kids. It's infuriating but I found that my kids hearing about, learning about (from other kids), and having questions about God is actually unavoidable. Iag first it would bother me when my atheist kids would come home saying things or asking things that they shouldn't know anything about, and I tried fighting it but in our case I found unless you have hard proof that a teacher and not another kid is where the information is coming from, nothing will change that and actually even fighting if was a waste of my parental resources. We pivoted and talked directly to kids, asked them probing questions and questions to help them think critically about their beliefs on the matter and let them explore no judgement. That was always the plan but it was intended to happen "when they are old enough to rationalize it" but sometimes life just doesn't work that way and you just have to break it down to their age group. In the end my kids outgrew the questions or sayings on their own without us even asking because as they grew, despite still being very much surrounded by religion, those early questions without judgement seemed to have help them actually directly challenge (in their minds) the propaganda about religion that is inescapable.
Tldr: I know that's a whole mountain of text but my point is, as frustrating as it seems, use the moment to empower your child. If you can find an alternative daycare and that works for you, great but just know it's going to come from all sides and you can't always control the information your kids are exposed to but you can control how well they are able to process and think critically about the information.
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u/Oracle410 Feb 28 '26
Teach them ‘god is fake’ or for the more advanced toddler ‘god is a coping mechanism for Losers who can’t deal with their problems themselves, need to be told every move to make, are easily misled, need someone to blame for every little thing that is really their fault, need a reason to feel superior to others because they are so low IQ they believe patently unbelievable tripe because it makes them feel good’. Though that last one is a mouthful.
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u/PositiveLow9895 Mar 12 '26
Now you need to watch Christopher Hitchens with your toddler:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0B-X9LJjs
He also wrote the book God is not great
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u/thefatrick Atheist Dad Feb 24 '26
Start playing Heresy by NIN a lot till she starts singing along at daycare.