Is that Heaven up there?

Lying in bed last night, about to fall asleep, Ashley asks about how I want to handle magical issues (mainly heaven) regarding our future child.  Assuming a hypothetical death of hypothetical hamster, do we explain the reality of the situation to the child or do we allow the comforting thoughts of heaven? Ashley’s already assured me that she’s using heaven.

Following the hypothetical death of the hypothetical hamster, the kid would more then likely move on and not think about the hamster all that much as time went on, leaving hamster-heaven back in childhood along with Santa Claus.  However, what would happen if we had to explain the death of a person.  Let’s pretend I die, (can’t kill the wife off in hypothetical examples) the emotional intensity of picturing a parent in heaven will most likely last far beyond childhood.  That would seem more real then hamster-heaven did.  Now our child has a predisposition for being religious. Whatever our child ultimately believes is up to them, but I would hate for them to fall to magical thinking simply we intentionally misled them.

Understanding religion is very important, but how do you teach your child about religion without just teaching religion?  I really don’t know how I feel about this and I don’t know how helpful the thought of heaven truly is.

Magic Military Man

Happy Veteran’s Day. It’s not the most exciting holiday, I don’t get off work and I don’t know anyone in the military. The holiday people, whomever they are, need to do something to jazz up the holidays that don’t always connect with people. The Veteran’s Days people should create a mythology about a soldier that comes to your house in the middle of the night and leaves toys and candy. It would probably make kids more excited about joining the military later in life.