Raising Freethinkers

I’m very lucky to get some nifty products, services, and sites to review here on my blog, but sometimes I just really go crazy, good crazy, about something. That has happened with a book that I was asked to review thru the Family Review Network. It’s Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief. This is a must read book for parents in my opinion!

This book is a wonderful guide to nonreligious parenting. For families like mine, who are not religious, this is a great find. (We are not alone – a recent survey shows 1 in 6 US residents now consider themselves to be non-religious.) Raising Freethinkers offers suggestions for teaching your children to be question askers and have the ability to answer their own questions. It gives ideas for helping them understand the world we live in without just blindly accepting the “rules” of some other person or group. Honestly though, even if you are religious this book can give you a lot of insight into helping your child reach their fullest potential.

Each of the chapters gives an introduction on the topic, some Q&A, then some actual activity ideas to do with your kids, plus resources for even more information and help on that topic. Even though T is older there are still so many useful things in this book that I have already started using. It was also interesting to see some of the techniques and ideas we have been using his entire life talked about – confirmation feels good now and then. This isn’t a parenting book that is better for a certain age group at all, it’s for all parents. Heck, even grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other caregivers would all benefit from this book.

As a homeschooling family many blindly assume we do it for religious reasons, but this is not the case with our family (and many others). This book fulfills homeschooling needs for us even for that reason. There are just ideals upon ideals of ways to help T open his mind and question the world around him. Along with being able to help T it can help me also. I firmly believe that every single day is another day to continue learning and growing as a person. Just because I am an adult (when did that happen?) doesn’t mean I can’t keep learning and working on being the best possible person I can be. Parenting is a tough road, but if I close up and don’t keep my own mind open then how can I expect my son to be able to be open minded either?

The book is available at Amazon (click here to order) and other online stores as well as regular stores. I would also encourage you to ask your local library to order this book to share with others in your community.

Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief
Authors: Dale McGowan, Molleen Matsumura, Amanda Metskas, Jan Devor
Pub Date: 2009
ISBN: 9780814410967

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Tagged as: family, homeschool, review

DG

this is such an important aspect of learning and I’m glad you blogged about this book! children should not just be parrots –memorizing facts and repeating them. acquiring knowledge and then assessing it is just so essential to any good educational foundation. yay young freethinkers! :) great post!

dreamzz12{at}aol{dot}com
dirtyplebeian

I think I’ll have to check this out! Above all else I hope that my children grow up with the ability to think and decide for themselves. I think that’s the best gift I could give them :)

thefatesarevicious at yahoo dot com
brandy

i agree me and my husband are both independant and free thinkers. i wish the same for my children.
thanks for bringing this book to light.
bwalleshauser AT yahoo DOT com
sleepingKelly

I’m going to add this to my wishlist. I once asked my dad (for a college paper) what his parenting goals were, and he said “to raise independent thinkers.” Ever since then, I knew that would be my goal for my future children. Of course my daughter came out stubborn as a mule so I don’t think it will be an issue!
Angie Marion

Thanks for the great review! I am not religious but I do believe in God. But I don’t want to influence my beliefs on anyone else. We all have our own minds.

I also love learning – I seek out new things to learn… it’s a great thing to do!

Angie
Lori

This book sounds really great. Even though we’ve got some Judaism roots around here, we really aren’t religious people, either. I know that this is an extreme line I’m taking, here, but I can’t imagine what some parents are thinking when they teach creationism/intelligent design and don’t allow kids to question our existence. Total tangent, but I got into a bit of a debate this morning with another parent at preschool and needed to vent, sorry.

lkziegler[at]gmail[dot]com
Mir

Thank you for the review! This seems like an excellent book. My husband was raised in a religious family but is non-practicing, I’m non-religious and we’d like to raise our little girl to make her own informed choices and decisions. A book would certainly help us on that journey.
watari

Thanks for the information, this is very important.
We can’t forget about our future which lies with our childrens.

shindepo@gmail.com
She Became A Butterfly

sounds like a neat book on a subject not widely written about. i’m glad you found some value in it.

she
pookielocks at ymail dot com
MonkeyBaby

this looks great! we are buddhist/pagan/freethinkers and most definitely want to raise our child as a freethinker. i’m glad there are resources like this out there.
ojisan

This is a very important thing, is one of the first step to have a education, social, moral…; of quality.

onegaisan@gmail.com
neko03

looks like a great book
KawaiiNeko2008 (at) aol (dot) com
Paradox

I’m glad there are books like this out there. I read the first few pages of the book on Amazon and it quoted some disturbing parts of a Christian “self-help” guide that basically was saying that it’s best not to think for yourself… What is the world coming to?

paradoxrevealed (at) aim (dot) com