It's wise of you to recognize they'll be exposed to and pressured intensely by this cult.
I urge you and everyone in a child's life to prepare kids or grandkids well before the onslaught, so that they are protected intellectually from mind control regarding this and any issue, by teaching them how to think critically in general, and to teach them how to specifically debunk this and other cults.
Here is an analogy:
My atheist parents knew that my older brother and I would be exposed to religion and peer pressure (orchestrated in the background by religions, by the way they talk to their flock) to be religious, as soon as we went to school and were around other kids raised with religion. This was in the 1960s, when almost no one was atheist in American suburbia.
My parents were rightfully frightened we kids would start becoming religious from the influence and peer pressure of other kids at school. They didn't want us to be the delusional, illogocal, scientifically misinformed, manipulated, uncritical robots that they had been pressured to be when they were growing up, by their respective religious upbringings, only to discover they'd been lied to and emotionally and psychologically abused by their religions and religious families, teachers, and priests teaching them a bunch of nonsense. Without their realizing they were manipulated robots.
So before my brother and I entered kindergarten, every night at the dinner table, starting around age 3-4 ( I heard it starting around age 2, as my brother was 3 years older than me), they taught us about the irrationality, danger, and insanity of religion, and how religions manipulate, lie, and attack and dissuade critical thinking.
My parent's explanations were broken down into child-size baby steps of information and reasoning, so it was a slow, patient, steady, nightly process at dinner.
They taught us how irrational and unscientific it was to believe that there was an invisible man in the sky that created the universe, and taught us how the universe was actually created ("big bang" theory).
Of course, for example, to explain "invisible" to a 3 year old takes weeks and months to fully explain. But children that young can indeed learn the big concepts my parents taught us.
It is not only possible, but necessary, to prepare children for the harmful influences in the world such as religion.
Many people think they should let kids grow up and decide for themselves.
This is utterly stupid, as my parents explained. Religion is organized to manipulate, influence, and capture, grab and steal the minds of people from the youngest age, from birth onward. It is completely irresponsible for any parent or adult in a child's life to leave a vulnerable child or adult unprepared for this theft of mind and attempts of lies and manipulation by religions.
Children are so often talked down to, and not assumed to be intelligent. Kids are far more intelligent and capable of thinking than they are given credit for. They just need things to be explained to them broken down into baby steps, so they can learn and understand each detail. And then receive lots of repetition and reinforcement to provide context and reminders in a world that is constantly going to be vomiting up religious arguments and manipulations at them. This applies as much today to groups that dishonestly call themselves "spiritual, not religious." The delusions and denial is persist. That is how much religion grabs hold of people's minds, and won't let go.
My parents explained the difference between the meaning of the word "theory" as used in science (theory of evolution, theory of gravity, big bang theory, etc.) versus as used in the general lexicon.
They taught us how sexist it was to claim that an all-knowing invisible man in the sky created and controlled everything, how delusional amd tempting it was to believe we could talk to him and that, as our imaginary friend, he would answer each of us individually, how all of that was made up in people's minds -- those conversations with "god," etc. They talked about how delusional, gullible, and manipulated all of our neighbors were to believe all those religious lies.
They talked about how inaccurate it was to claim that the world was made in 7 days, that a woman could be made from a man's rib, etc. They went point by point through every nonsensical thing on the first page of the bible. Gradually. They joked and laughed at the absurdity and stupidity of it all.
They taught us how religions manipulate people, with pomp and circumstance, robes, religions using solemnity and taking their nonsense with the utmost seriousness, emotionally manipulating with music, art, stained glass, soaring cathedrals to inspire awe and intimidation, rituals to get people to obey and turn off their minds, and create life-long, deeply ingrained emotional attachment to rituals starting at a young age that make it difficult for people to ever break free.
By the time I was in kindergarten, none of my peers could have persuaded me to believe any religious anything, or persuade me to attend one of their religious services. I was bullet-proof against religion and vehemently anti-ritual of any kind.
I was well-versed in and fearless about critical thinking. I had no difficulty speaking up against religion, and explaining the problems with it. By first grade.
Every child should get this kind of training before kindergarten. It's protection for one's mind.
Including, now, about sexism, and about the cult of biophobia (the irrational fear of nature, including of one's own biological sex.)
Toddlers are being exposed to the cult of biophobia on Sesame Street. And in preschool. And no doubt, in daycare before that. And in foster care.
Kids need to be proactively taught about their bodies, and this irrational, dangerous, anti-nature, unscientific cult just as my parents taught my brother and me about the dangers, irrationality, emotional and psychological manipulations, and sneakiness of religions, well before kindergarten. If kids are in daycare, preschool, foster care, or being raised by anyone else, their family or household need to be teaching them about the cult of biophobia from the earliest moments on: how to recognize it, critique it, debunk it, and talk back to it persuasively.
Yes kids can learn this and do this before kindergarten. It's the responsibility of the adults in their lives to teach them how to do so. Not wait fearfully for their kids to fall prey. We must innoculate them against the mind control methods and lies that will be used on them, by this and potentially any other trend. We must quiz kids to be sure that kids can confidently talk back to every talking point biophobes make. ("What would you say to a teacher or principal who tells you 'It's polite to use preferred pronouns?" "Preferred pronouns are lies about someone's body, because someone might feel alone and upset if they were told the truth. But it is unkind and unethical to lie to people. It is not kind or respectful to ask someone to lie, just because that's what someone wants to hear. I don't believe in lying to anyone, including myself. I don't want to gaslight myself or anyone else.")
Every child by kindergarten should know well what the physical differences are between girls and boys. They should know what the words sexism, discrimination, and peer pressure mean.
They should know that "preferred pronouns" is a deceptive mind control technique ("force people to say something they don't believe, until their mind caves in and starts 'believing' or accepting it, to go along"). Etc.
Kids can learn this stuff, and be protected intellectually from it, if only the adults in their lives will slowly and steadily explain it. Start anywhere with this topic, whatever comes to mind.
Best wishes as you hopefully innoculate your grandsons, and teach their parents how to do so with you.
Then it will be possible to look to their futures with a fair amount of confidence that they will be able to successfully recognize and navigate this.
Wow, what an incredibly stressful time for you all. I have 3 grandsons who will no doubt get caught up in this insanity. I'm really afraid for them.
It's wise of you to recognize they'll be exposed to and pressured intensely by this cult.
I urge you and everyone in a child's life to prepare kids or grandkids well before the onslaught, so that they are protected intellectually from mind control regarding this and any issue, by teaching them how to think critically in general, and to teach them how to specifically debunk this and other cults.
Here is an analogy:
My atheist parents knew that my older brother and I would be exposed to religion and peer pressure (orchestrated in the background by religions, by the way they talk to their flock) to be religious, as soon as we went to school and were around other kids raised with religion. This was in the 1960s, when almost no one was atheist in American suburbia.
My parents were rightfully frightened we kids would start becoming religious from the influence and peer pressure of other kids at school. They didn't want us to be the delusional, illogocal, scientifically misinformed, manipulated, uncritical robots that they had been pressured to be when they were growing up, by their respective religious upbringings, only to discover they'd been lied to and emotionally and psychologically abused by their religions and religious families, teachers, and priests teaching them a bunch of nonsense. Without their realizing they were manipulated robots.
So before my brother and I entered kindergarten, every night at the dinner table, starting around age 3-4 ( I heard it starting around age 2, as my brother was 3 years older than me), they taught us about the irrationality, danger, and insanity of religion, and how religions manipulate, lie, and attack and dissuade critical thinking.
My parent's explanations were broken down into child-size baby steps of information and reasoning, so it was a slow, patient, steady, nightly process at dinner.
They taught us how irrational and unscientific it was to believe that there was an invisible man in the sky that created the universe, and taught us how the universe was actually created ("big bang" theory).
Of course, for example, to explain "invisible" to a 3 year old takes weeks and months to fully explain. But children that young can indeed learn the big concepts my parents taught us.
It is not only possible, but necessary, to prepare children for the harmful influences in the world such as religion.
Many people think they should let kids grow up and decide for themselves.
This is utterly stupid, as my parents explained. Religion is organized to manipulate, influence, and capture, grab and steal the minds of people from the youngest age, from birth onward. It is completely irresponsible for any parent or adult in a child's life to leave a vulnerable child or adult unprepared for this theft of mind and attempts of lies and manipulation by religions.
Children are so often talked down to, and not assumed to be intelligent. Kids are far more intelligent and capable of thinking than they are given credit for. They just need things to be explained to them broken down into baby steps, so they can learn and understand each detail. And then receive lots of repetition and reinforcement to provide context and reminders in a world that is constantly going to be vomiting up religious arguments and manipulations at them. This applies as much today to groups that dishonestly call themselves "spiritual, not religious." The delusions and denial is persist. That is how much religion grabs hold of people's minds, and won't let go.
My parents explained the difference between the meaning of the word "theory" as used in science (theory of evolution, theory of gravity, big bang theory, etc.) versus as used in the general lexicon.
They taught us how sexist it was to claim that an all-knowing invisible man in the sky created and controlled everything, how delusional amd tempting it was to believe we could talk to him and that, as our imaginary friend, he would answer each of us individually, how all of that was made up in people's minds -- those conversations with "god," etc. They talked about how delusional, gullible, and manipulated all of our neighbors were to believe all those religious lies.
They talked about how inaccurate it was to claim that the world was made in 7 days, that a woman could be made from a man's rib, etc. They went point by point through every nonsensical thing on the first page of the bible. Gradually. They joked and laughed at the absurdity and stupidity of it all.
They taught us how religions manipulate people, with pomp and circumstance, robes, religions using solemnity and taking their nonsense with the utmost seriousness, emotionally manipulating with music, art, stained glass, soaring cathedrals to inspire awe and intimidation, rituals to get people to obey and turn off their minds, and create life-long, deeply ingrained emotional attachment to rituals starting at a young age that make it difficult for people to ever break free.
By the time I was in kindergarten, none of my peers could have persuaded me to believe any religious anything, or persuade me to attend one of their religious services. I was bullet-proof against religion and vehemently anti-ritual of any kind.
I was well-versed in and fearless about critical thinking. I had no difficulty speaking up against religion, and explaining the problems with it. By first grade.
Every child should get this kind of training before kindergarten. It's protection for one's mind.
Including, now, about sexism, and about the cult of biophobia (the irrational fear of nature, including of one's own biological sex.)
Toddlers are being exposed to the cult of biophobia on Sesame Street. And in preschool. And no doubt, in daycare before that. And in foster care.
Kids need to be proactively taught about their bodies, and this irrational, dangerous, anti-nature, unscientific cult just as my parents taught my brother and me about the dangers, irrationality, emotional and psychological manipulations, and sneakiness of religions, well before kindergarten. If kids are in daycare, preschool, foster care, or being raised by anyone else, their family or household need to be teaching them about the cult of biophobia from the earliest moments on: how to recognize it, critique it, debunk it, and talk back to it persuasively.
Yes kids can learn this and do this before kindergarten. It's the responsibility of the adults in their lives to teach them how to do so. Not wait fearfully for their kids to fall prey. We must innoculate them against the mind control methods and lies that will be used on them, by this and potentially any other trend. We must quiz kids to be sure that kids can confidently talk back to every talking point biophobes make. ("What would you say to a teacher or principal who tells you 'It's polite to use preferred pronouns?" "Preferred pronouns are lies about someone's body, because someone might feel alone and upset if they were told the truth. But it is unkind and unethical to lie to people. It is not kind or respectful to ask someone to lie, just because that's what someone wants to hear. I don't believe in lying to anyone, including myself. I don't want to gaslight myself or anyone else.")
Every child by kindergarten should know well what the physical differences are between girls and boys. They should know what the words sexism, discrimination, and peer pressure mean.
They should know that "preferred pronouns" is a deceptive mind control technique ("force people to say something they don't believe, until their mind caves in and starts 'believing' or accepting it, to go along"). Etc.
Kids can learn this stuff, and be protected intellectually from it, if only the adults in their lives will slowly and steadily explain it. Start anywhere with this topic, whatever comes to mind.
Best wishes as you hopefully innoculate your grandsons, and teach their parents how to do so with you.
Then it will be possible to look to their futures with a fair amount of confidence that they will be able to successfully recognize and navigate this.