As I sit down to write this; my oldest daughter is on the verge of being 10 years old. She’s reaching a time where she is starting to question about other religions. I’m getting tired of the “But Mom all my friends are…” It’s so important at that age is it not.  All her friends are into something and I’m leery about letting her go to a place that teaches different beliefs then mine. I wouldn’t mind as much if she actually was doing reading on the subject and decided it was the right spiritual path for her but she isn’t. It’s more a form of rebellion then serious study. Mom believes such so I’m going to start looking into other things.

Now it’s my view that parents have a duty to introduce their children to their religious path and until the child is legally an adult the parent has every right to tell the child “You will not study that religion under my roof.”  I’m not that strict. She has a book on the subject but she has read maybe one chapter. But let’s face it as soon as our children are no longer under our care they have every right to follow whatever spiritual path they wish. It’s my hope that it’s an ethical, moral, and tolerant path for my daughters and yes I hope they follow my path but I can’t force it to happen and I wouldn’t try. I just insist that for everything she reads on the spiritual path that she wants to look into, that she also reads something on the religion I follow.

Now from the title you are probably thinking I am the Christian parent and my daughter is looking into Paganism. It’s actually the opposite, I’m the pagan and the path that all her friends are into is Christianity. This though is aimed towards Christian parents and I wrote it the way I did for a reason. We both have the same concerns we want our children to grow up to be moral spiritual people and it’s our hope they belong to the same religious group as we belong. I have no right to try to lure your children into my path but on the same note you don’t have a right to convert my children to your path.

Unfortunately children sometimes ask difficult questions do they not. I have once been threatened with arrest if I continued contact via e-mail with a young man because his parents didn’t want me to influence their son. I did not instigate the contact and I did not know their son was 16 at the time. He had contacted me and told me he was looking into Wicca and considering he was only 14 miles away from me I got excited and answered back. “How long have you been studying?”  Blah blah blah. Questions along those lines and I copied his initial e-mail so it should have been obvious I did not make the initial contact. But I was threatened with jail time if I contacted their son again. To me that was very rude, they didn’t say “Hey my son is 16, please don’t contact him” it was “He’s 16, you contact him again and we will see you in jail. “ The sad thing is I have a feeling that they would see nothing wrong with trying to “save” my children. As a parent, I understand their concerns.

So what are Christian parents to do if their children are attracted to paganism.  Well if they are under the legal age of consent, you can ban them from studying it although that opens you up to them wanting to study it more because it’s banned or you can accept it and talk to them about it. Does it seem to be a sincere spiritual quest or are they wanting to do it cause it’s “cool.”  If the reason is cause it’s "cool", it’s more then likely a phase. See following a pagan path requires study and we aren’t just talking one book, we are talking a lot of studying. One thing you might have them do is read my “So you want to be a witch” article. If that doesn’t scare them add my lesson plan for those who want to become Wiccan. If those don’t scare them off they are probably serious about it. And please read them through first. There is nothing in any of these articles to convince anyone to follow this path but there is plenty in them to make a person realize it’s not something you just dabble in if you are serious about it as a religion. If you want the honest truth, I’m very tired of the one-book wonders. I want to raise expectations where my religion is concerned not aim for the lowest common denominator. But whatever you do it’s your duty as a parent to be true to your beliefs about how your children’s spiritual development should be at
that age.

Now what to do if your child is over the age of consent? How about accept his or her choice even if it’s not the one you approve. Listen to your child and question. Your child may not do more then tell you that he or she is starting to follow some pagan path unless you question. See my Mom and I have had a misunderstanding for years. I thought she didn’t want to hear about my beliefs and she thought I didn’t want to talk about them. It wasn’t I didn’t want to talk about them but I wasn’t going to force my beliefs n her and I respected her so I wasn't going to talk about something that often that obviously made her uncomfortable. I’ve been a witch 12 going on 13 years and I studied for a year or so before I decided on this path. It’s a big part of my life. I know she is disappointed I don’t believe as she does and that I don’t go to church and help out with the Methodist Women like she does. But I am happy on the path I stumbled onto so long ago. It is regret though that so much time was wasted from what appears to be a misunderstanding.

I do suggest if your grown child does approach you and says ”Mom. Dad, I’m a pagan,” that you listen, question, and talk. When talking try to avoid comments along the lines of  “I can’t believe you are looking into this crap.”  Unless of course your goal is to ruin any and all trust between you and your child. (And that example is taken from a real instance of a grown woman telling her mother she was Wiccan. Her mother called it crap, of Satan, and commented on how the daughter’s children could be taken away from her because of her beliefs. Yes her Mother was angry but her reaction hurt her daughter as you can well imagine.) Of course how you handle it is up to you.

Read more of Sheila's articles, poetry and more at Whispers of a Stone Circle and American Witch and Pagan