How to Teach Your Children About God : Without Actually Scaring Them Out of Their Wits

Rating:
Summary: It's a cute book, but I'm not sure it is all that helpful
Review: Stan and Jan Berenstain, most famous for the Berenstain Bears series, published this nifty little book back in 1971 (it was reprinted in 1984). The title is self-explanatory, but this cute little book raises more questions than it answers, in my opinion. For one thing, the target audience is unclear to me - you would assume from the title that the book is indeed geared toward parents. The cartoon drawings that correspond to the short text, however, would seem to be drawn with children in mind. One might then speculate that the book is designed to be shared between parents and children, but the presence of a couple of mild expletives in the text will no doubt cause parents to keep this book away from the eyes of their youngsters.

The main problem, though, is the fact that this book really does not answer the question it poses. The authors show you why certain approaches to the task at hand (namely, telling Junior who or what God is) do not really work, but there is really no strategy laid out in terms of how parents should answer these questions. One can see what not to do, and this information is actually quite helpful: don't run away from your children's questions about God, don't just throw the kid into Sunday School and expect him to learn everything there (especially if you do not attend church yourself), and don't depend on the good old "Now I lay me down to sleep" bedtime prayer. The authors make an especially good point here. Expecting your child to go to sleep - in the dark - immediately after "praying" that God will take his soul if he should die during the night can actually scare the child - especially if he has no grounding in religion, for he is apt to take the soul-stealing reference quite literally.

The only real advice the authors give relates to dealing with the death of a pet - rather than try to protect or fool the youngster with the old switcheroo, the advice given here is to explain death to the child and allow him the opportunity to grieve for his lost friend. In the end, the reader learns little more than the fact that children will, at some point, ask a seemingly infinite number of God-related questions. Thus, while I enjoyed this short book and found it quite humorous in places, I'm really not sure that parents will find this book all that helpful.