Anonymous wrote:I would be unhappy with any sort of prayer or grace before meals, but a prayer specifically to Jesus would be a deal breaker. Not only do I not want my child praying to a deity that is not part of our religious heritage, it is totally tone deaf to the diversity that likely exists within the classroom.

I would complain, loudly, to the director.

This.

As a compromise, saying that you are thankful before a meal is sufficient to get the point across for toddlers. Any religious reference (e.g., to Jesus) is completely unacceptable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Penh, I'm hindu and my child goes to a Catholic preschool. They pray before meals, I don't care. I went to a Catholic preschool and was taught by nuns until Kindergarten. I am not religious at all, I don't remember it at all. Your child will be fine.

Sure, but you chose to go to a Catholic preschool. In doing so, you knew there would be Catholic prayers/activities. It'd be very different if someone went to, for example, a Bright Horizons that appeared to be completely secular, and only later found out there was denominational prayer at the school. That is wildly different.

Yes, but my point is that the child won't even remember it. OP seems concerned that this will greatly impact her child, and it won't.

OP. Good news! One easy conversation with the director and they've agreed to stop praying before meals. I don't know that we would have removed her if they hadn't agreed to stop/change the practice, but we were pretty uncomfortable with it, so it's a big relief. Thanks all for the feedback/ideas/support.

The main issue is that this is a secular daycare without any mention of this in their information. Not okay. I agree with the PP who said you should find out if this is isolated with a particular room or teacher or part of the overall curriculum for the school.

My kids went to three different preschools. One of them was secular but had a general "blessing" before meals -- it was a simple song thanking the earth for giving us food. The second had no blessing of any kind. The third was Jewish and had a Jewish prayer (we are not Jewish, and the preschool did only minimal Jewish education -- celebrating holidays and some basic traditions but nothing in the classes about belief systems, etc.).

I personally like the idea of having a moment of "thanks" before a meal, and I think it helps signal to young kids when it's time to begin so that they wait for their friends and the teachers to give the "okay." But if it's not overtly a religious school, then the ritual should not be at all religious in nature. There are lots of opportunities for sayings or poems or songs that do not include religious overtones, even if the general concept of a blessing before a meal is Christian or Jewish in nature.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are we talking "God is great. God is good. Thank you God for our food"

Or "Dear Lord, we thank Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour for the blessing of this dish"?

Big difference.

Neither is appropriate in a secular setting.

Are you sure it is actually secular? It could be non denominational.

And if it is a private school it does not really matter if it is secular or not.

What was the prayer OP?

Anonymous wrote:Are we talking "God is great. God is good. Thank you God for our food"

Or "Dear Lord, we thank Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour for the blessing of this dish"?

Big difference.

Neither is appropriate in a secular setting.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If this is a private organization, they have a right to define “secular” as they please. You have a right to take your child out. If you have a contract, you possibly could break it over this. They are, however, under no obligation to obey your definition of “secular”. You can try to negotiate with them (e.g., reword the prayer), but they are under no obligation to accede to your demands.

I agree.

OP, you say that this daycare is "secular." What makes you say that? Have they actually called themselves "secular?" Is this one of the large chains (Kindercare, Minnieland, etc.?) Do you know if this is just occurring in your child's classroom (perhaps the teacher has taken it upon herself to teach the children about her religion?)
"

I believe OP said that she wasn't sure if it was just her classroom or the whole center. But if the teacher took it upon herself to teach about religion (or more accurately to conduct denominational prayers), I would think that most center directors would not think this was appropriate.

A center in DC almost certainly has families from many different religious backgrounds and many of those families would not appreciate -- and would not expect in a non-denominational center -- religious prayers being conducted at the behest of a particular teacher.

At our center, they take a very secular approach to the holiday season -- ie the kids will draw tsnowmen, trees, dreidels and the like -- but there is real mention of religion.

Dreidels are religious. Latkes and gelt are not.

Dreidels are a symbol of the holiday (just like trees for Christmas) but they aren't really religious -- certainly nothing like having a denominational prayer.

The only thing that could even remotely be considered religious on a dreidel is that the 4 Hebrew letters on the dreidel are an acronym for a "great miracle happened here," a reference to the Hanukah story. But, plenty of "dreidels" don't even have the letters on them -- at that point, it is nothing more than a spinning top which has no religious significance at all. Even if the spinning tops the preschoolers are coloring have the Hebrew letters, it's not like the teachers are using them to tell the Hanukah story. And kids at that age barely know their English letters, they almost certainly won't know the Hebrew letters and certainly won't know what it means.

But to the extent a preschool decided that -- in order to remain secular -- they wanted to avoid dreidels and instead just use latkes/gelt to symbolize Hanukah, that's ok by me.

OP - you need to first find out if it's the room or the center. If it's the room, then it's because the teacher is Christian and you need to talk to the Director about making her stop.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If this is a private organization, they have a right to define “secular” as they please. You have a right to take your child out. If you have a contract, you possibly could break it over this. They are, however, under no obligation to obey your definition of “secular”. You can try to negotiate with them (e.g., reword the prayer), but they are under no obligation to accede to your demands.

I agree.

OP, you say that this daycare is "secular." What makes you say that? Have they actually called themselves "secular?" Is this one of the large chains (Kindercare, Minnieland, etc.?) Do you know if this is just occurring in your child's classroom (perhaps the teacher has taken it upon herself to teach the children about her religion?)
"

I believe OP said that she wasn't sure if it was just her classroom or the whole center. But if the teacher took it upon herself to teach about religion (or more accurately to conduct denominational prayers), I would think that most center directors would not think this was appropriate.

A center in DC almost certainly has families from many different religious backgrounds and many of those families would not appreciate -- and would not expect in a non-denominational center -- religious prayers being conducted at the behest of a particular teacher.

At our center, they take a very secular approach to the holiday season -- ie the kids will draw tsnowmen, trees, dreidels and the like -- but there is real mention of religion.

Dreidels are religious. Latkes and gelt are not.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is this a home daycare or a center?

It's a daycare center.

Public or private.

I know several private daycare centers in this area that aren’t church affiliated, but the owner is religious.

My child’s old daycare would have the kids say “thank you for the food we eat”

I’m in a family who prays before all meals. And I thought it was pretty unnecessary.

However, I liked that it was inclusive. Thank ‘you’ could be thanking anyone and everyone. God, teacher, etc. A way to show appreciation and practice Thank You.

Are we talking "God is great. God is good. Thank you God for our food"

Or "Dear Lord, we thank Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour for the blessing of this dish"?

Big difference.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If this is a private organization, they have a right to define “secular” as they please. You have a right to take your child out. If you have a contract, you possibly could break it over this. They are, however, under no obligation to obey your definition of “secular”. You can try to negotiate with them (e.g., reword the prayer), but they are under no obligation to accede to your demands.

I agree.

OP, you say that this daycare is "secular." What makes you say that? Have they actually called themselves "secular?" Is this one of the large chains (Kindercare, Minnieland, etc.?) Do you know if this is just occurring in your child's classroom (perhaps the teacher has taken it upon herself to teach the children about her religion?)
"

I believe OP said that she wasn't sure if it was just her classroom or the whole center. But if the teacher took it upon herself to teach about religion (or more accurately to conduct denominational prayers), I would think that most center directors would not think this was appropriate.

A center in DC almost certainly has families from many different religious backgrounds and many of those families would not appreciate -- and would not expect in a non-denominational center -- religious prayers being conducted at the behest of a particular teacher.

At our center, they take a very secular approach to the holiday season -- ie the kids will draw tsnowmen, trees, dreidels and the like -- but there is real mention of religion.

Anonymous wrote:If this is a private organization, they have a right to define “secular” as they please. You have a right to take your child out. If you have a contract, you possibly could break it over this. They are, however, under no obligation to obey your definition of “secular”. You can try to negotiate with them (e.g., reword the prayer), but they are under no obligation to accede to your demands.

Well, words do have meaning. I am not sure you can could call a place that has prayers to Jesus "secular." But, I would assume this center is not affirmatively advertised as secular. Rather, there is likely simply no mention of religion at all and OP therefore assumed, not completely unreasonably, that it was a "secular" center. In the latter case, I agree she really wouldn't have a contract based claim to force the daycare to change. I think she would have a decent argument that she should be able to remove her kid without penalty -- and would hope the center wouldn't fight her on that -- but it wouldn't be clear cut.

If the center really did specifically advertise itself as secular, I think she would have a much stronger case. She should certainly be able to remove her kid without penalty. I don't know that she could get (from a legal or practical matter) specific performance to force the center to change/eliminate the prayer, but she would have a decent argument on a breach of contract claim. I'm not sure how you would calculate damages and if you ever reached this point, it would probably be better for everyone to go their separate ways.

More fundamentally, I don't think anyone was thinking about this from the legal perspective. Rather, people were looking at it from what is right and reasonable in a lay sense.

Anonymous wrote:If this is a private organization, they have a right to define “secular” as they please. You have a right to take your child out. If you have a contract, you possibly could break it over this. They are, however, under no obligation to obey your definition of “secular”. You can try to negotiate with them (e.g., reword the prayer), but they are under no obligation to accede to your demands.

I agree.

OP, you say that this daycare is "secular." What makes you say that? Have they actually called themselves "secular?" Is this one of the large chains (Kindercare, Minnieland, etc.?) Do you know if this is just occurring in your child's classroom (perhaps the teacher has taken it upon herself to teach the children about her religion?)
"