I hope the Gorilla will look for opportunities in his daily comments to bring more lucidity to this idea, i.e., if he agrees with such reasoning.

As far as the faith goes, I believe you can only model it too them. For instance the boys father is an atheist and how does he behave to his boy? With lots of anger and maybe retaliation and definately controlling. So would that lead the boy to want too be atheist like his day. Or maybe he’d rather be like his mother who may be more forgiving & less controlling. Does’nt seem like a hard choice to me!
I pray with my kids almost nightly & I read the bible to them. But ultimately it is their decision whether they want to believe what I do or not. My hope is that they will have seen how my faith has guided me & my decision making over the years, but most importantly how it has led me to love them deeply, that they too will “want” to have faith in Christ!

For Ken’s comments about how the parents are almost always wrong. Yes I’d say that is true, of the ones that are uniformed! But for those that make the effort, and yes it takes much effort & time, I would say the opposite is true!

And finally about the young children that Ken speaks of.
Yes I agree that they pocess all those qualities and the best one left out I believe is, they forgive easily! But I would have to disagree with them being the best teachers. Not because we can’t learn from them but because we are given the responsibility to teach them. My youngest at one and a half, although very sweet at times is also very selfish at times and will take anything she wants from her 3 yr. old brother because she thinks it’s her right to do so. So we have the wonderfull, and yet very trying at times, job of teaching them otherwise.

Sorry about spelling & grammer. Those were my worst subjects!

Children too have this intuition. In fact, they hear it loud and clear until we “teach” them to listen to us - their parents and teachers - rather than to their inner voice. We think our job is to guide them through life. But their intuition will guide them much better and faster than we could.

The best parents will allow their children to make all their own decisions. This includes what to eat, what clothes to wear, what schools to go to, what friends to keep, etc.

A child should not be forced to agree with anything - especially with his parents convictions. For one thing, using force will usually create more of the same behavior we are trying to change. For another, parents are almost always wrong.

We parents should be watching our children for clues to how we should live our own lives.

The youngest children are the best teachers. Notice how tolerant they are, and how quickly they stop crying, and how easily they laugh, how they do not judge us, how motivated they are to learn everything, and how passionate they explore their world.

We are the ones who need to learn what we have forgotten. The children still remember.