Christian Angry Birds

[LadyJane]

Critical thinking and helping her with her questions will be super beneficial here. Discover the answer and truth to her questions together to show her how to research and find logical solutions.

My daughter seemed to feel the same as yours at the age of 6, with grandparent agendas with their grandchild. I never withheld others viewpoints, or even gifts. I just offered mine just as much. We would watch interesting shows, research interesting things on the internet and talk about things in everyday life. History, science, art- it all plays a role into critical thinking and truth. Now, at 8, she is super-awesome at coming to conclusions and thinking things through by herself- and she amazes me!

The other night she found a children's bible her grandparents gave her, she hadn't seen it in awhile because it had made its way to the bottom of an endless pit of books in the basement. She was flipping through and reading and she stopped at the story of Cain and Able. She was laughing and asked why they put such a graphic story in the book for kids younger than her. I asked her what she thought about it. She said, "Well, I can just turn on the news to hear this- nothing is different now except this is like a newspaper from thousands of years ago. It's not a lesson from God but a story about what happened to these people."

Your mother-in-law gets her ideas and beliefs from a bronze age book that is based on witnesses from history. It's historical and fictional. Nothing more. Angry birds don't really die because they were never real to begin with. It's animated. The dead animated animals don't go to Heaven or hell, and that's the truth. When we know the truth it's hard to believe the make-believe.

[Impulse]

(16-08-2011 10:39 AM)Raven Wrote:  I had an issue come up several days ago with my 6 year old daughter. My husband is agnostic and I'm atheist. My mother-in-law is a conservative Christian who believes that Jesus is coming back soon and that the "end times" are upon us. My children stay with her sometimes when I'm gone doing my army duties for the reserves and apparently she has been preaching to my daughter to win a convert.

My daughter was playing "Angry Birds" on her iPad and asked me about the birds. "Do the birds go to heaven when they hit the pigs and die?" I told her that it was just a game but she insisted that if the birds weren't Christian that they wouldn't go to heaven. I asked her where she got that from and she said it was from her grandmother (my mother-in-law). She has been working on my daughter when I'm not around telling her about Christianity and how her mother (myself) is going to hell because I don't believe in god. I tried to tell her that it was just her grandmother's opinion and that some people don't believe in god but she insisted that god exists. Her grandmother has been praying with her before bedtime when she stays there as well.

I grew up with anxiety issues due to being raised in a hell fire and brimstone church and it took me 35 years to come out of that system. I don't want my children to have the same fears of hell and damnation that I acquired but my mother-in-law sees this as a mission to save her grandchildren.

My daughter was also upset about the pigs dying in the game so I told her that they believed in god but they're Jewish but not kosher. LOL. That answer seemed to satisfy her but she still keeps asking me questions. Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with my in-laws incessant discipling of my children?

If that was my mother-in-law and my child the angry bird the mother-in-law would need to be concerned about wouldn't be any of the ones in the game!


My advice would be to first discuss things with your husband since it's his mother. Make sure you reach a mutually agreeable approach. I would start with simply asking the mother-in-law politely to butt out. After that, if she doesn't comply, then your agreed upon approach with your husband would come into play. That might include, for example, disallowing any alone time with your daughter.