{"id":3505,"date":"2010-04-01T01:10:19","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T06:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=3564"},"modified":"2010-03-23T11:50:05","modified_gmt":"2010-03-23T16:50:05","slug":"a-walk-on-the-pagan-path-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2010\/04\/01\/a-walk-on-the-pagan-path-4\/","title":{"rendered":"A Walk on the Pagan Path"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
For this month\u2019s article, I wanted to discuss being a pagan parent. Being a parent in general can be such an extraordinary experience. I think we parents can agree that there are plenty of rewards and heartaches. As parents, we have so many choices to make about what type of parents we want to be. One of these decisions may involve how we will approach the spirituality topic with our children. This decision can vary among different belief systems and paganism is certainly not excluded. <\/span>For my children, so far in their young lives, they have been exposed to a lot more than I ever was. I feel they have better grounding spiritually than I did in my younger days. My children\u2019s ages are 14 and 8 years old. I considered myself a Christian up until 6 years ago. However, I wasn\u2019t active in a church and only attended church services once after I started having children. My children attended a Christian ran daycare center and if there were ever any spiritual discussions at home or with family it was always focused on the Christian belief system. Even during this time, I encouraged my children to think for themselves and formulate their own ideas about their beliefs. I encouraged them to question everything. Since we did not live a strong Christian valued life, I guess it really didn\u2019t matter to them when I no longer used Christian terms or considered myself as one.<\/span><\/p>\n

A while after I started studying paganism, I introduced it to my children. I mainly explained to them that I was on a different spiritual journey and I wanted to explain the term paganism to them and how it differed from Christianity. As a child, Christianity was shoved down my throat. This was taught to me to be the only religion in the world and anything else was a deceitful act by the devil. Once I started doubting Christianity, I knew that I didn\u2019t want my children to be sheltered when it came to their own beliefs. I really wanted them to understand the term Freedom of Religion. Therefore, even today as I practice witchcraft and read all the many books I possess, I do this openly in front of my children. I explain to them what I am doing and why. I allow them to ask any questions they may have. One thing I don\u2019t do is have them participate with me. I let them get involved if they show interest. <\/span><\/p>\n

At first, I wasn\u2019t sure if this was the right approach to take. However, I see now that this was the best option. If I had always been pagan and then had children, I have no doubt that they would have been raised as pagans. But, since this was clearly not the case, all I knew to do was to leave a door open and a window cracked. They would enter on their own or they would pass it by altogether. On that note, I have seen great interest from both of my sons. My 14 year old has had endless discussions with me on various pagan topics. He is trying to figure out where he stands on his beliefs. He has even danced around the idea of atheism, but came back to me with more questions showing a bit of uncertainty on this idea. He is always curious as to what I am studying and enjoys the discussions triggered from my current insights. As for my 8 year old, he doesn\u2019t discuss spiritual topics too often, but when he does, it makes me stop in my tracks because it is often out of the blue that he brings things up. He has informed me that he believes there are many deities and he enjoys talking one on one with his natural environment. He also has found a strong liking to my set of runes. He tells me he doesn\u2019t understand why he likes them but he feels good when he holds them in his hands. I find that I enjoy seeing my children explore their spiritual side. I am glad I have provided them an opportunity to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now I would like to hear from other pagan parents. Share with me how you have approached paganism or any other spiritual belief with your children. If you currently do not have children, share with us your plans on how you will handle this in the future. Feel free to share how you share paganism with any children.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you all for all the wonderful comments left for last month\u2019s article. I have enjoyed reading the comments left and appreciate you taking the time to share your opinions with me and the other readers.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For this month\u2019s article, I wanted to discuss being a pagan parent. Being a parent in general can be such an extraordinary experience. I think we parents can agree that there are plenty of rewards and heartaches. As parents, we have so many choices to make about what type of parents we want to be. One of these decisions may involve how we will approach the spirituality topic with our children. This decision can vary among different belief systems and paganism is certainly not excluded. For my children, so far in their young lives, they have been exposed to a lot more than I ever was. I feel they have better grounding spiritually than I did in my younger days. My children\u2019s ages are 14 and 8 years old. I considered myself a Christian up until 6 years ago. However, I wasn\u2019t active in a church and only attended church services once after I started having children. My children attended a Christian ran daycare center and if there were ever any spiritual discussions at home or with family it was always focused on the Christian belief system. Even during this time, I encouraged my children to think for themselves and formulate their own ideas about their beliefs. I encouraged them to question everything. Since we did not live a strong Christian valued life, I guess it really didn\u2019t matter to them when I no longer used Christian terms or considered myself as one. A while after I started studying paganism, I introduced it to my children. I mainly explained to them that I was on a different spiritual journey and I wanted to explain the term paganism to them and how it differed from Christianity. As a child, Christianity was shoved down my throat. This was taught to me to be the only religion in the world and anything else was a deceitful act by the devil. Once I started doubting Christianity, I knew that I didn\u2019t want my children to be sheltered when it came to their own beliefs. I really wanted them to understand the term Freedom of Religion. Therefore, even today as I practice witchcraft and read all the many books I possess, I do this openly in front of my children. I explain to them what I am doing and why. I allow them to ask any questions they may have. One thing I don\u2019t do is have them participate with me. I let them get involved if they show interest. At first, I wasn\u2019t sure if this was the right approach to take. However, I see now that this was the best option. If I had always been pagan and then had children, I have no doubt that they would have been raised as pagans. But, since this was clearly not the case, all I knew to do was to leave a door open and a window cracked. They would enter on their own or they would pass it by altogether. On that note, I have seen great interest from both of my sons. My 14 year old has had endless discussions with me on various pagan topics. He is trying to figure out where he stands on his beliefs. He has even danced around the idea of atheism, but came back to me with more questions showing a bit of uncertainty on this idea. He is always curious as to what I am studying and enjoys the discussions triggered from my current insights. As for my 8 year old, he doesn\u2019t discuss spiritual topics too often, but when he does, it makes me stop in my tracks because it is often out of the blue that he brings things up. He has informed me that he believes there are many deities and he enjoys talking one on one with his natural environment. He also has found a strong liking to my set of runes. He tells me he doesn\u2019t understand why he likes them but he feels good when he holds them in his hands. I find that I enjoy seeing my children explore their spiritual side. I am glad I have provided them an opportunity to do so. Now I would like to hear from other pagan parents. Share with me how you have approached paganism or any other spiritual belief with your children. If you currently do not have children, share with us your plans on how you will handle this in the future. Feel free to share how you share paganism with any children. Thank you all for all the wonderful comments left for last month\u2019s article. I have enjoyed reading the comments left and appreciate you taking the time to share your opinions with me and the other readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}