On a lighter note... Kids and religion, or "Kids Say the Darnedest Things"

Life goes on, despite the way our lives have been turned upside down by knowing anything could happen at this point (see my last post). Things continue to be silly, fun, crazy, and upsetting, in turns.
This post is about something on the lighthearted side of things.

I know I'm not the only one who's wanted to curl up in a little ball and disappear when one hears the things their foster child says to their (birth/first) family about what the foster family has told him or taught him. Or even just implying they've been taught something that goes against what their birth/first family did or believed. Here is a recent favorite. On the phone the other day, Big Guy said:


"Mom, I don't believe Jesus is the son of G-d. It doesn't make any sense."

I wanted to die. Oy vey, just what we need... Now mom is going to think we are brainwashing him with our heathen Jewish ways! He was on speaker phone with mom, as always, so I tried to steer the conversation in a direction that would make it clear that we were encouraging him to think for himself. Mom didn't seem upset, she half-heartedly tried to argue but she didn't understand Christian theology clearly enough to really accurately portray what Christians "should" believe. I don't think she was upset at all, but she told him he should go to church where he can learn about Jesus. Big Guy has never asked to go to church, so we've never taken him.

The truth is when we've been asked we have been very honest with Big Guy about what we believe, which is that Jesus was a real man and probably a very good man but was not the son of G-d any more than we all are. We've also told him it is totally fine for him to believe differently, and we've patiently and without bias (to the extent possible) explained what Jews believe and what Christians believe (and even a little about Muslims and Buddhists lately). He's asked if he can be Jewish and we've told him he can't make that decision until he's older. We've asked him about his experiences going to church and sometimes even turned the TV onto the gospel channel for him. We've taken him to synagogue only for festivities, never for religious services... though we could if we wanted, if he consented (he just does not have the patience to sit through hours of chanting in a language he can't understand so I'd never do that to him). He takes part in rituals in our home as much as he wants, but there is never any pressure whatsoever. We will take him to the home of Catholic family members for Christmas and Santa will deliver his gifts there. We will also give him gifts for Chanukah, so he'll be one spoiled little boy in the month of December!

One thing I live about Big Guy is he has many big, deep, theological discussions with us. He has a lot of thoughts about life and death and G-d and religion. Lots of questions, too. Sometimes when we talk about religion and spirituality, I just shake my head at the "low IQ" designation he was given.

Other embarrassing moments have been when Big Guy tells mom that she does things wrong because we do things differently. We are very careful not to say she did things wrong when we explain to Big Guy why our rules or customs are different, but it still gets portrayed that way when he speaks to her sometimes. I remember the first such instance was when he said "Why did you give me Haw@iian Punch? It's poisonous!" because I had explained that we don't give kids "juice" that has food coloring in it because we think artificial food colorings are dangerous chemicals for kids if they consume too much of them.

Do you have any stories like this? Please share, and give me something to laugh about!

Big Mama & Fat Mama

Remember this post about how Big Guy couldn't decide what to call us? Well, I just remembered I hadn't shared here about his most recent idea of what to call us. A few days before he went to the hospital, he asked me, completely seriously... "Can I call you Big Mama and Fat Mama?" He wasn't joking, nor was he attempting to be offensive. I burst out laughing. No, honey, you cannot call us Big Mama & Fat Mama.

I asked him which one of us would be which, but he couldn't decide. And I'll readily admit, after all, we are both big and fat.

One of Big Guy's biggest obsessions when he was first with us was talking about how we were fat. We taught him the word chubby, which he didn't know (he's 9 but has a very limited vocabulary for a child of his age and intelligence level). We tried to teach him that fat is not a bad word, just like gay (another word he used as a pejorative) is not a bad word. It's just an observation, and though we shouldn't tell someone they're fat because it might hurt their feelings, it's not really an insult. We made it clear it doesn't hurt our feelings and that we're comfortable talking about the fact that we're fat and he's skinny, which is a topic of serious fascination to him. He loves science so we've talked about what calories are, why peoples' bodies are different, etc. Sometimes it's just as simple as saying "G-d makes people with all different kinds of bodies, isn't that cool?" Other times he wants a science-based explanation of why he's not fat. Good thing I'm in the healthcare field!

Signing off,

Big Fat Mama