E is for Ethics

Facebook is wonderful! I am able to learn of news items, new books, music, comedy, etc. quickly and easily through my friends on facebook. One book I recently became aware of is "E is for Ethics". After perusing the website and reading a few pages via amazon.com, I decided to become a fan. Now, I've actually purchased the book at my local bookstore and am happy to add it to our collection of books we use to teach morals to our kids.

The other books in our collection include:
If You Had to Choose, What Would You Do?
What Do You Stand For? For Kids: A Guide to Building Character
Character Building Day by Day

E is for Ethics is a collection of short stories with moral dilemmas included in them. Each story is followed by some discussion questions and some relevant quotes. One thing I like about the new addition to our collection is that the stories are short and to the point. This leaves more time for discussion...and I'm assuming that most people's kids are like my kids and the story will be embellished upon as the discussion progresses. All the "what if's" can be very interesting and add to the thoughtfulness of answers kids come up with.

I haven't had a chance to read all of the stories yet. However, I did find a couple where I would change the wording of the discussion questions following the stories. Some of the questions tend to be a little bit too black and white for me. I would rather have the questions be relevant to each situation and help the child learn to think for themselves how it might relate to other situations instead of leading them to "always" do something a certain way. To me, teaching a child to "always" do something a certain way is creating a sheep instead of a thinker.

Other than that, I think this is a great addition to our collection. We'll add some of the stories from this book to our routine values discussions and see what our kids come up with. They always amaze me :)

To end this post, here's a quote from the "Respect" story:

"To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater." Anonymous



*** I forgot to mention, all of these books are on kindle! I love this because I have them on my iPod touch and we can read the character building exercises even when we don't have the books with us. I had the the hardcopy of the books first, but definitely recommend the kindle edition if you have the ability to use it. It's so convenient!

Foundation Beyond Belief Launch

I am proud to be part of the blog bonanza to launch the Foundation Beyond Belief...what a great post for my first official blog post of 2010!!! Once again, Dale McGowan has found a need in the humanist community and has taken it upon himself to fill it. He did a great job when he edited Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers and I am positive that Foundation Beyond Belief will find the same success.

What is Foundation Beyond Belief you ask? It is a non-profit charitable and educational foundation created (1) to focus, encourage and demonstrate the generosity and compassion of atheists and humanists, and (2) to provide a comprehensive education and support program for nontheistic parents. Each quarter, the foundation will feature 10 charitable organizations. Members of the foundation can sign up for an automatic monthly contribution and choose how they want it distributed. On the education side, the foundation will help create and fund local groups for the education and social support of humanist/atheist parents...AWESOME!!!

The overall mission of the Foundation Beyond Belief is: To demonstrate humanism at its best by supporting efforts to improve this world and this life; to challenge humanists to embody the highest principles of humanism, including mutual care and responsibility; and to help and encourage humanist parents to raise confident children with open minds and compassionate hearts.

Sounds great to me!! I think this has success written all over it. Check out this introductory video:



I will be using this as another learning opportunity for my children. Each quarter we will make our choices on the distribution of our donations as a family. Check it out today!!

Happy Holidays

Happy Chrisma-Hanu-Rama-Ka-Dona-Kwanzaa everyone!! Here are two of my new favorite holiday songs :) I hope you all enjoy yourself today whether you celebrate Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Saturnalia, or any other holiday :)

Our Solstice Celebration

The events that caused us to consider having a Solstice celebration occurred during the last week of school for our kids. Once we decided that we would celebrate, we had to put something together quickly. First, I want to say that we will still celebrate Christmas. I've written about this in the past, but will provide you with a quick summary. My husband's and my family celebrate Christmas. For us, it is a holiday about friends and family. I truly enjoy looking for the perfect gift for each person and get excited when I get to give people their gifts. It's the time of year when the days are shorter, but we can pass time by baking cookies with our families or drinking hot cocoa while looking at Christmas lights. These are the things that I have always enjoyed about Christmas. In fact, the way I celebrate Christmas with my kids is very similar to the way my family celebrated when I was little. The only small difference is that we don't go to church or have a birthday cake for baby Jesus....I always thought that was a little silly anyway. If you really think about it, Christmas has been a secular holiday for a LONG time. Even a Christmas tree isn't Christian...it's forbidden in the Bible (Jeremiah 10: 2-8).

When we were planning our solstice celebration, I knew I wanted it to stand apart from Christmas. Just as I started planning, I discovered Human Light, a holiday celebrating "Humanists vision of a good future." The more I read and learned about it, the more I felt like it was the perfect fit for our family celebration. (Happy Human Light by the way....December 23rd is the official day to celebrate). My husband is working today, so we had our celebration on December 21st, but incorporated ideas from Human Light into our festivities.

It all began the afternoon of December 21st. The four of us jumped into the car and headed to downtown Spokane. Our first stop was "Santa Express". Kids can shop with volunteer elves and pick out gifts ranging from $0.50-$7.50 and the proceeds benefit Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery. This was chosen for two reasons. First, it benefits a charity that we support. Second, it helped our kids get excited about giving to other people. Both of our kids were thrilled with what they were able to buy and wanted to open gifts that day...but we're going to wait for Christmas. We wanted the day to be about spending time together as a family and thinking of ways to give to others.

After we left Santa Express, we walked around downtown enjoying the decorations as well as each other’s company. We discussed and all agreed that our favorite Mexican restaurant would be our next stop. After dinner, we went home and had a little ceremony of sorts. I had some special candles on the counter and each of our kids was allowed to light one...for a 9 & 7 year old this was a very grown up thing to do. Upon lighting the candles, we read from Affirmations: Joyful And Creative Exuberance by Paul Kurtz. Here's a small sample of what we read:

"Humanists are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems."

"Express and affirmative attitude towards other and ourselves."

"Have the courage of your convictions, do not be afraid to express them."

After each statement, we discussed what it meant and whether we believed it to be true. In our house, our kids are free to disagree with us and we with them. If we disagreed about something, we talked about it and tried to understand each other’s point of view. Each year, we will choose a different reading to discuss. For my readers who are theists, in no way do I feel this book, or any book, should be followed explicitly without question. In fact, one of the values I treasure is critical thinking...Question Everything! The point here was to help our kids understand what my husband and I do believe and the reasons we believe those things.

Following our discussion, we each chose a charity or cause we wanted to support in addition to the regular charities we support. Our choices this year were:

Second Harvest Food Bank
Boston Terrier Rescue of Western Washington
Washington Trails Association
Foundation Beyond Belief

(If our kids didn't know the specific name of a charity, we asked them what causes they wanted to help. Then, we searched for charities that support that cause. Charity Navigator is a great resource when looking for responsible charities.)

Then, it was time to decorate the solstice tree! I had wanted to get a living tree that we could decorate each year, but I have never had luck with indoor trees. So, we decided to get a small artificial tree that will be our solstice tree every year. This tree was to be decorated differently than our Christmas tree, though. I placed a piece of cardstock in front of each family member along with crayons, glue and glitter. We were going to make our own ornaments representing what we believe! I think we came up with some pretty creative ideas.

A drawing of earth with the words "Stop Global Warming" written on it.
A drawing of a worm that represented composting.
A drawing of a battery with the words "Conserve Energy" written on it.
A drawing of a peace symbol.
A drawing of a light bulb with "New Ideas" written on it.
A drawing of a question mark with the words "Question Everything" on it.
A drawing of an acorn with "Think for yourself" written on it.

I could go on, but I won't. I was so proud of the creative ideas we all came up with and our kids were delighted with their ornaments. After the season is over, I plan on saving our ornaments and making a scrapbook page with them. Each year, we'll look at our past ornaments after we finish decorating our solstice tree. It will be fun to see how they change from year to year.

Now that the ornaments were completed, it was time to place them on the tree. Once each ornament found its special spot, we turned on the lights and sang, "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles. Our kids LOVED this...my son started playing air guitar and my daughter had an imaginary microphone :) They insisted that we take picture of them singing in front of the solstice tree.

The closing of our afternoon of festivities consisted of watching the newest episode of Mythbusters together while drinking hot cocoa. As we were tucking our kids into bed that night, both of them expressed their enjoyment with our celebration. They can't wait for next year’s solstice celebration!

Which holiday to celebrate?

In the past, my husband and I haven't celebrated solstice with our kids. I always point out other religious holidays and we talk about the stories behind them, but Christmas has been the holiday we celebrate. This year a few things happened and we decided to create our own celebration on the day of the solstice. The following list of events that happened in the past month led us to this decision.

First, we've been disappointed with our children's school because of the way they have approached the holidays. Suffice it to say that their idea of teaching about multiple cultures is to teach kids how different countries celebrate Christmas. Our kids' holiday programs focused on Christmas and my son's program had a song about Mary & Baby Jesus. This would be fine if they also taught about other religious holidays so that the kids (and some parents) would understand that not everyone in the world believes exactly the same things that they do. There is a young Sikh boy in my son's class who does not celebrate Christmas and did not take part in the holiday program. It is appalling that a child's own school excludes him and doesn't seem to have regrets.

Second, during the last week of school, my daughter came home with a thoughtful question. Her class had been discussing Christmas and one of the children said that everybody believes that Jesus was born on Christmas and that is why they celebrate, and the teacher did not correct the child. So, my daughter wanted to know why we celebrate Christmas if we don't believe in Jesus. A valid question considering the fact that her teacher led the class to believe this was true.

Third, my son also came home during the last week of school and wanted to talk to us about something. First, I should say that my son has always been open about the fact that our family does not believe in any gods. My daughter is more quiet about it because she is worried about the repercussions from her friends. Until now, my son has not had a problem with peers. (Other than the one little boy who started a Bible study on the playground in an attempt to convert him and wrote him a note with a copy of the sinner's prayer. This hasn't really been a problem, though. It has actually made from some great discussions.) However, one day our son came home from school and told my husband and I that another little boy was calling him names because he doesn't believe in god. At the time, he couldn't think of what the names were. The next day, he came home and told us the names this little boy was calling him were Jew and Atheist. Clearly, this little boy didn't know what he was talking about when calling my son a Jew...kind of makes you wonder what's being said in his house. My son tried to explain to him that Jewish people believe in the same god that Christians do...they just don't believe that Jesus was his son. The little boy didn't want to listen to my son and went on calling him names. I guess it's hard to teach children that it's OK for people to be different when the teachers won't even acknowledge that fact.

Lastly, our bookworm daughter had been reading A Solstice Tree for Jenny earlier in the season. I had bought it when our kids were young along with a collection of various holiday books, but this was the first year she was able to read it on her own. After she read the book, she was thrilled about the idea of a solstice tree and wanted us to get one. She loved the idea of making our own ornaments and giving gifts to charity. What a thrill that is for a parent :).

Thus, after all of these separate occurrences, we decided that we'd have a solstice celebration this year. We wanted to teach our kids about the reasons ancient people began celebrating at this time of year and also about what we believe. My son had never heard the word atheist until this month. We've worked hard to teach our kids about many different belief systems and hadn't taught them about what we do believe. I guess I didn't want to indoctrinate them like religious people indoctrinate their kids. Our kids have repeatedly been advised that they don't need to automatically believe what we believe....they need to look at all the evidence and make their own decisions. But, how are they going to know if they agree with us, if we don't teach them what we believe and why we believe it?

In my next post, I'll discuss how we celebrated solstice and why we will also celebrate Christmas. It was a great experience and we will definitely continue our new tradition in the future.

Why Approve Referendum 71?

Here is a great handout about why one should approve Referendum 71. It was downloaded from Approve71.org. The only arguments I've heard against Referendum 71 have been irrational and biased. I've challenged people to come up with rational arguments, but they can't because there aren't any.

Vote Approve on Referendum 71
PROTECT ALL FAMILIES


There are over 12,000 people in Washington state registered in domestic partnerships. These families live in every county, in all parts of the state. The domestic partnership law ensures that all of these families have the same protections and responsibilities as their neighbors, regardless of where they live.

Gay and lesbian families need domestic partnership laws to provide essential protections for their
families. Committed couples who want to take care of each other should be allowed to visit each other in the hospital, take family and medical leave when a loved one is seriously ill, and have insurance coverage. By voting to Approve Referendum 71, you will vote to ensure that all families are provided the same protections under the law.
Families with children need the protections provided by domestic partnership laws, especially when a parent dies. By voting to Approve Referendum 71, you will vote to ensure that all children are provided the same protections under the law.

Seniors need the protections provided by domestic partnership laws. For seniors, domestic partnerships mean that their hard-earned social security, military or pension benefits are not put at risk. By voting to Approve Referendum 71, you will vote to ensure that all seniors are provided the same protections under the law.

Police officers and firefighters who risk their lives to protect our communities need domestic partnership laws if they are hurt or killed in the line of duty, so that their families are taken care of by their pension or workers’ compensation. By voting to Approve Referendum 71, you will vote to ensure that all of our communities' first responders’ families are provided the same protections under the law.

By voting to Approve Referendum 71, you will vote to ensure that all families should be treated fairly, especially in times of crisis.

PROTECT ALL FAMILIES EQUALLY UNDER THE LAW
Vote Approve on Referendum 71

The Good Book

This is hilarious! A new facebook friend posted this today and I had to share :)