What age to stop forcing teens to attend church?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stop trying to indoctrinate your kid.

Let them play sports and get exercise better for their brain cells.

If you raised an intelligent kid they will leave the church anyway.

Exactly. I PURPOSELY did not baptize my kids and have told them since an early age they can pick their own religion or none at all and I will support them either way.

So sick of the families forcing their beliefs onto their children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are sports being held on Sunday mornings?

Why not?

My kids are on travel teams. Bracket play is always Sunday morning

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop trying to indoctrinate your kid.

Let them play sports and get exercise better for their brain cells.

If you raised an intelligent kid they will leave the church anyway.

Exactly. I PURPOSELY did not baptize my kids and have told them since an early age they can pick their own religion or none at all and I will support them either way.

So sick of the families forcing their beliefs onto their children.

Agree

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We’re Catholic so we have a wide variety of church times (we still miss it on occasion), but I’ve found with faith development that what happens at home is most important. We pray nightly as a family and each of the special liturgical seasons, Advent and Lent, we use a prayer book and reflection questions together. My kids are teens, they give one word answers often, but I can see that relationship with God is building.

I was raised Catholic, gave one word answers and my relationship with God was waning by the minute.

The only way to tell if their relationship with God is building is to tell them they can do whatever they want with respect to religion...if a teen voluntarily attends church or does any of the praying you mention, then you are correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We’re Catholic so we have a wide variety of church times (we still miss it on occasion), but I’ve found with faith development that what happens at home is most important. We pray nightly as a family and each of the special liturgical seasons, Advent and Lent, we use a prayer book and reflection questions together. My kids are teens, they give one word answers often, but I can see that relationship with God is building.

I was raised Catholic, gave one word answers and my relationship with God was waning by the minute.

The only way to tell if their relationship with God is building is to tell them they can do whatever they want with respect to religion...if a teen voluntarily attends church or does any of the praying you mention, then you are correct.

Very true.
I myself didn't know until I went away to college. Didn't go to any church for half a year and found that I missed it. I then hunted up my own faith community, one that my parents may not have approved of.

We do religious activities at home and outside. But i make no assumptions about my kids no matter what they say or do (it's easy for teens to get sucked into being "religious" as part of their persona" until I see them pursuing this of their own freewill once they are independent of me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My parents let us decide for ourselves whether we wanted to go to church as soon as we were old enough to stay home alone if we wanted, so like 10ish. Verdict: one non-religious adult child, one who consistently attends church with her two small children. I think this solution makes the most sense — your relationship with God isn’t dependent on being in church every Sunday in my view (I’m the religious adult child as you may have guessed).


Asking parents to forgo their pre-existing engagement so the child can do sports is a manners issue, however. Can you guess compromise on that? Carpool so you don’t have to miss every Sunday, and when he has games attend a different service than you usually would?

It's not preexisting arrangements. Parents can go at a different time or church.

I would guess that the parents have had a longer connection with the church, than the kid has had with the sports team.

Church is a primary source of social connection, and emotional support, for many adults. Asking a parent to give that up isn't reasonable. Telling a teenager that they do not have to attend services, but they need to arrange their own rides, or fund their own ubers, seems like a reasonable compromise.

This is accurate. For reasons I won't elaborate on, it's very complicated for us to miss but we have here and there...

We've also attended the other service later in the afternoon but it often conflicts with our DDs activity that has already been arranged so she would not miss Sunday morning services.

DCs coach will take his side on the issue even though we discussed with both the coach and DC ahead of time that he may need to miss some games when they conflict with church. We feel like there's been a bait and switch once the season started by both DC and his coach. I don't want to take away anything DC loves, so I am trying to figure it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are sports being held on Sunday mornings?

Bc its damn near impossible to get gym time for all the sports that require them.

And not everybody goes to church. And if church is more important, than you can sacrifice basketball or wrestling or volleyball or whatever it is that requires the court on a sunday morning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop trying to indoctrinate your kid.

Let them play sports and get exercise better for their brain cells.

If you raised an intelligent kid they will leave the church anyway.

Exactly. I PURPOSELY did not baptize my kids and have told them since an early age they can pick their own religion or none at all and I will support them either way.

So sick of the families forcing their beliefs onto their children.

I sort of disagree, even though I was forced to do a lot of church and youth group as a kid and am not religious now (at least not with organized religion).

Many (most?) Christian churches teach that "all those who believe in God will not perish but have eternal life." If parents literally believe that, how can they not bring their own kids to church to reap those rewards? I don't blame my parents for sharing that with me. They were doing what they felt was best. It's helpful for me culturally to have been to church so many years to better understand the culture and mythology, even though I don't embrace it now.

It can be a wonderful thing to learn about a religion as long as the main teachings are about love. If course that can happen at home rather than in a congregation, though a congregation has many other benefits. Possibly many casual church goers go for the social and community benefits more than the doctrine at a literal level. Personally I think it's better if taught in a way that says "some people believe this" rather than "you must believe this."

[Anonymous]

It's not like he's choosing smoking meth over church. He's playing sports. Let him play sports.

[Anonymous]

Why are you allowing your daughter to do activities on sunday but not your son? You won't change your schedule because it messes up DDs activities but you DGAF about DS sports? Why is DDs so much more important?

[Anonymous]

13 but incentivize them to go to church like perhaps offer them lunch maybe even offer them something extra so it's a family thing. Not just a singular thing, but at the end of the day you can only plant the seeds and you plant the seeds when they're young and hopefully they turn out good once they start making their own decisions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop trying to indoctrinate your kid.

Let them play sports and get exercise better for their brain cells.

If you raised an intelligent kid they will leave the church anyway.

Exactly. I PURPOSELY did not baptize my kids and have told them since an early age they can pick their own religion or none at all and I will support them either way.

So sick of the families forcing their beliefs onto their children.

The open displays of hated toward Christianity are appalling.

Do you hate Islam and Judaism as much?

If only there were words to describe people who hate Judaism. Or Islam. Or christianity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop trying to indoctrinate your kid.

Let them play sports and get exercise better for their brain cells.

If you raised an intelligent kid they will leave the church anyway.

Exactly. I PURPOSELY did not baptize my kids and have told them since an early age they can pick their own religion or none at all and I will support them either way.

So sick of the families forcing their beliefs onto their children.

The open displays of hated toward Christianity are appalling.

Do you hate Islam and Judaism as much?

If only there were words to describe people who hate Judaism. Or Islam. Or christianity.

A few come to mind:

- bigots

- intolerant

- antiSemites

- Islamaphobes

- Nazis

- closed-minded

- hate-groups

- extremists,

Etc.

[Anonymous]

Assuming it’s not a tournament and it is just a practice, we meet halfway. We attend services twice a month instead of weekly and encourage zoom sermon watching. Youth group is in the evening so we push for attendance at that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop trying to indoctrinate your kid.

Let them play sports and get exercise better for their brain cells.

If you raised an intelligent kid they will leave the church anyway.

Exactly. I PURPOSELY did not baptize my kids and have told them since an early age they can pick their own religion or none at all and I will support them either way.

So sick of the families forcing their beliefs onto their children.

+1