Pagan Parenting: Passing down Lore.

Me with my eldest as an infant.

Family stories are important. You find quite a few people happily sharing stories of their childhoods with their children as they grow. In some cases, stories going back three generations are getting told. In the really lucky cases, stories go back farther. The family stories help children understand the culture of the family and their place in it.

Equally important is the stories that go with the family's religious inclinations. They help foster a sense of ethics in children and give them tools to better understand how the world works. In some families, this comes from the family bible and the church they are a part of. In other families, this comes from the tales of the gods and the temple they attend. All of this is informed by the faith community they are a part of. This can be a profoundly educational and enlightening experience.

It gets harder when you move into smaller religious practices. Suddenly, the population of people who are going to help you explain how the world works gets markedly smaller. What is a pagan parent to do when their six year old is asking them "Who takes care of the Sun at night?" as you are putting them to bed? You have a few different options. One is to fob the conversation off to another time (which is usually the best option when it is time for the wee one to be going to bed). A second is to give a "You don't worry about that, the Sun is just fine on the other side of the Earth." or something similar. An answer that is a non-answer. A third answer is to introduce them to the old tales of the gods or modern ones that speak of how they attend to the world.

[As an aside, when my boys became afraid of the solar eclipse, I told them that Sunna was letting Mani visit her. Something a lot more reassuring than the Sun being eaten by a wolf or a dragon. Also much closer to what their science teachers are going to be telling them. Makes for less arguments about what is true, because my eldest has hit that age of questioning.]

The biggest thing in answering such questions and sharing the wisdom of our ancestors with the younger generations is to remain consistent and clear. Equally important is to keep in mind what your children can understand. A six year old will have an easier time handling the idea that Sunna minds the Sun than the complicated matter of astrophysics and stellar dynamics. As children get older, the questions get more complicated. Somewhere, you're going to hit a wall. You're going to reach the question that you can't answer.

That's ok. This is where you encourage them to think about and explore the world. If they are asking questions about morality and you're not sure how to explain something, explore the topic together and work together to find the answers you need. The internet is a glorious tool for research and education. It is just as helpful and educational to go to the local library and seek out the aid of a librarian to find books on the topic in question. There are many holes in the knowledge we inherited. It is our job to fill them as best we can. In some cases, this may mean building new stories (Mani visiting Sunna for the eclipse) and in some cases, it may mean learning about difficult topics and working to find your own conclusions. And that's just fine because it is a living faith tradition that adapts and changes to the needs of the practitioners.