Should you wait to talk to a child about atheism?

[Esquilax]

I think the problem with questions like "should we talk to X group about atheism?" is that it conflates atheism with a lot of the things that a number of atheists value, but are not necessarily tenets of atheism. Talking about secular values, freethinking, the importance of inquiry free of fallacy or bias, those are the things that "talking about atheism" would entail in the minds of most atheists here, but they aren't actually atheist things at all. They're good life things, that enable us to live together as a society, not tenets of the dreaded Atheistic Religion.

Seems to me that, despite our best efforts, some of us get a little more infected by the religious conspiracy theory of how that conversation might go, than we should. Generally when we hear the religious talk about "teaching the children atheism," what we get is an oversimplified version of what they themselves do with their kids; the straight up command that there is no god, and that's what the children believe now. Of course, that completely misrepresents atheism, and you can throw in as many corollary lessons about "believing in nothing" or "relative morals" as you like for flavor, but I think it pays to remember that none of that is remotely accurate. A conversation about atheism to a child, judging from the atheist parents that have come in thus far and my own plans for my future kids, contains no discussion of atheism at all.

All it is, is a discussion about the importance of skepticism free of bias and indoctrination. That could hardly be seen as objectionable, unless there are some concepts that you want your children to blindly accept without ever investigating. At that point, that conversation might be stepping on your toes, but then... I kinda want it to, if that's what you're planning.