blackcat, it sounds as though your family's mixture of belief/inquisitiveness is similar to ours.

In our case, we treated this as a matter of VERY gentle 'coaching' and a sort of social life-skills learning opportunity, aside from the obvious drive that DD had to understand religious faith and different belief systems.

She was much more intellectual than 'spiritual' about the entire thing-- it was quite clinical to her. She approached this as a historian/archaeologist, and not as a mystic, if that makes any sense at all.

She wasn't searching for her own Truth, but for an understanding of the "what" of others' beliefs-- and the why of them, which was obviously much more challenging, but led to some very interesting discussions. All of it arose rather naturally out of her insatiable curiosity regarding the nature of global conflicts and geopolitical strife-- NO discussion of which can truly be complete without understanding the role of religion (and differences) in that history.

Great Courses has some good comparative religions materials-- often local public libraries have these available for check-out.

We made it VERY clear that in spite of being spiritually color-blind ourselves, we aren't ardent about that agnosticism, by any means, and that on some level we have some envy for those who do have such faith. However, NOT everyone has a "God-shaped hole" in themselves. I explained this to my child from a scientific/clinical sort of stance. Atheism/belief seems to be at least partly genetic. Having both believers and atheists in one's genetic family tree often means that it's a bit unpredictable. One's belief system can be fairly idiosyncratic or unconventional under those conditions.

I explained that I couldn't tell her what her own spiritual life needed to be-- that nobody ever can tell that to another human being.

I suppose that means that we did some indoctrination on a humanist side-- but it was mindful and transparent in motivation. We leveled with her, in other words.

She did in fact make up her own mind at about 12 years old. Or rather, she had been pulling those threads together into her own tapestry since those conversations at 4-7yo, and finally found the thing that "matched" for her at about 12. I think that it has surprised her that we are entirely supportive of her desire to go to worship and take part in a faith community. It makes me happy that my daughter is comfortable enough that I take her beliefs seriously so that she talks to me sometimes about her spirituality. Not with an eye to conversion-- but as an act of sharing parts of herself.

That's a pretty good place to get to. I don't know if how we treated her curiosity at 4-7yo made the difference, or what-- but that is the place that we were then, and this is where we are now.

DD is unabashedly liberal and social justice is, in and of itself, an article of faith for her-- which means that we happen to be quite fortuitous that she has found a faith community that 'fits' her so well. My family believed in training (and pruning/scaffolding) for spiritual life-- we did not do that. We basically watered and met obvious needs, and let things grow as they would.


Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.