Religion and Your Kids

I have found that there are alot of pressures on parents to give children the gift of religion.  It is a great idea, I mean instiling faith early in life is never a bad thing the world out there is pretty trying at times and having something to fall back

on is great.  My family is a melting pot of different faith's and growning up I had exposure to many different faith's.  My parent's tried to make sure I got to Sunday school enough to get a grasp of what religion was about, but like other families we were a busy young family and didn't attend as much as we could have.  When we got older, church was a choice for my sister and I and being young teens it fell fairly low on our list of things to do.  But I must say that when I was 17 and one of my best friends passed away from cancer, I was glad my parents gave me that base in religion.  Although I hadn't been to church in a long time, I found myself doing some reflecting and had questions and lots of them.  I found that my exposure as a child and my parent's unbiased opinion of religions helped me through.  At that point in my life I had attended periodically United church, Anglican, Catholic and Salvation Army depended who I was with on any given Sunday.  Through the exposure I had and some discussion with my parent's I found that even though each Faith differed in ways the base core was basically the same and I had some understanding of each of the Churches I attended and ultimately used that experience I had, and what I had learned to help me through a tough time in the week's after my Friend's death.

Now that I am grown up and raising children of my own, I have found that church has played a fairly small role in my life unfortunately.  I have went enough to have each child baptised, but little since then.  There are many reason's why, varying from little time, to work schedule's, to kids schedules.  I have tried to do the same as my parent's did for me, and that is allow my kids to have some exposure in many religions.  My Dad is a practicing Budhist, my Mother is United, my children's God parent's are yet another religion and they quite often pick up the oldest two and take them along with them.  Alothough I am sure there are many out there against not being commited to one Faith, I belive that in order to make your own choice later in life, you need to have exposure to what there is out there to offer.  Each person is different and just because I feel commited to one Faith dosen't mean my children need to be committed to the same one, it may not be a fit for them.  I think that laying down the ground work will help them get the base in the important things such as morals and conscience.  Later when they are capable of making a choice they can decide where their Faith lies and make the choice that fits for them.  

I know this can be a controversial topic and I'm not trying to start anything.  My intentions are purely to share what I learned with other parent's and maybe help them in their day to day struggle as fellow parent's.  I hope that my advice helps someone make their choice easier.