Should you wait to talk to a child about atheism?

[Crossless2.0]

When it came to my son, who has a mild case of Asperger's, I decided that he was too literal-minded (especially as a young child) to be left to the devices of some of my fundie in-laws. His mother and I spoke to him early and often about what other people believed -- not just Christians but the basics of some of the other major faiths, at least to the extent that we could speak of these movements given our limited exposure to them. We tried to present these views without caricaturing them, and I often made my son sit down and listen as I read to him from a children's edition of the Bible -- not among his fondest memories, he informs me. I took him to a few church services in different Christian congregations (Catholic, Lutheran, Evangelical) so he could see what he was 'missing' by our not belonging to a church. We were also upfront about our own skepticism of these faiths and provided our reasons as occasion permitted. More importantly, we tried to provide him the tools (logic, understanding the nature of good evidence, etc.) to think about these things for himself. Even as a boy, he had a strong interest in science (biology especially) and history, so as time went on it became more about steering him toward good sources. He's a demon for self-motivated research, so the rest kind of took care of itself. He was a religious skeptic at a young age and remains so today (2nd year college student).