Owning Our Beliefs

 

We live in a very progressive part of a very progressive city in this country, which is fine even though Amy and I are actually fairly conservative. We love where we live and we love who we are raising our kids around.

I have noticed, though, an increasing intensity by which certain beliefs are freely expressed to and among kids, as opposed to left unsaid to be addressed within a family conversation. With our kids being so different in age, this progression is pretty noticeable. 

I consider this largely good news, in that important topics are no longer seen as taboo but are freely discussed. And, part of the good of living in a diverse community is your kids being exposed to diverse opinions.

While my own personal worldview is strongly held, that is balanced with my desire to keep an open mind. So I don't mind and in fact like that my kids hear opinions that may be different than mine. 

What I think is important, though, is that kids learn how to test and discern beliefs rather than just parrot what they hear. So, when one of my kids lectures me about something they've learned at school, my instinct isn't to correct them if I think they don't have the whole story. Rather, it's to inductively draw out how they came to that statement, what that statement actually means, and what are the ramifications of that statement.

Take for example one day Asher came home from school this past spring and informed me that "capitalism is evil" in a very matter-of-fact way. Rather than laughing or repudiating the statement, I asked him what capitalism is and why he thinks it is evil. We had what I believe to be an age-appropriate conversation for a 9-year-old. The conclusion of the discussion, by the way, is that there are aspects of capitalism that allow or even encourage greed, and that is evil. Which I agree with. But which is, in my mind, different than "capitalism is evil."

That's just one example. But it's illustrative of what I believe to be my role as a parent, not to feed them what I believe or disabuse them of what they have been fed, but training them to own their beliefs through careful examination and open-mindedness. I care about what they believe, to be sure. But I care more than they believe what they believe because they have been humble and thorough about it.

By the way, as a coda I'm happy to report that our teens, 8 and 10 years older than Asher, have largely internalized this predisposition towards open-mindedness, curiosity, and substance. They tell me that when they hear their friends speak as fact certain statements they've heard from their parents or on the news, they will tell their friends that they find such statements interesting and ask them to explain what they mean. It is not a confrontational request, but rather one borne of interest in learning more and gaining a sense for the background or logic that would undergird such an assertion. Alas, all too often their friends are unable to summon even one additional sentence beyond the original comment. Which is not to say those beliefs are not dearly held. But it's cautionary that they do not appear to be built on much.