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"How was the earth created, Mommy?"

I got an interesting question from School Girl this morning. While we were in the middle of the “hurry-up-brush-your-teeth-and-get-dressed” tango, she asked, “Mommy, how was the earth created?”

Now, that rang a couple of alarm bells in my head. First, the Big Questions normally come at the end of the day, as we’re getting ready for bed. I’ll admit, in the past few months we’ve been talking about some Big Questions indeed. But nothing like this.

I do know that School Girl’s classmates are mostly Christian churchgoing folk, including her best friend. We’ve been practicing the “you don’t have to participate, but you do have to be polite” school of dealing with saying grace at a friend’s house for lunch/dinner. We’ve talked about her friends’ not wanting to do things outside the house on a Sunday in terms of “family time”. In fact, we have family time on Sundays as well, which doesn’t include certain activities.

Today, we talked a little about the “big bang” theory in 6-year-old language, which got her giggling. And this afternoon, we’ll see what happens.

(Cross-posted from something on Evil Mommy a couple of days ago)

Tags: Big, Girl, Questions, School, kids, science

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Comment by Karen Mohler on August 17, 2009 at 2:39pm: We also are facing a move in the near future. When that time comes, I'm seriously considering homeschooling...

The questions that she has about her adoption are more along the lines of "what happened in the hospital when I was born?" Unfortunately, neither my husband or I were there, so we can't really answer those; and the person who does know is currently not in contact with us. Honestly, I'd almost rather have a discussion about God and other invisible friends at this point.

Comment by Louis on August 17, 2009 at 2:01pm: I think I can sympathize with your concern. It's difficult to tell a child to wait until they're old enough to understand when there are a dozen idiots in the rafters ready to sell god.

Comment by Karen Mohler on August 17, 2009 at 1:56pm: We do that now - we had talked a little bit about the creation of the universe (aka the "Big Bang") before, although I don't think she connected that with "how the world was created". She's also heard a couple of other creation myths before (the Iroquois, Cherokee and Buddhist stories), but again, I got caught by surprise at the whole wording of the question.

As of now, I still don't have an answer as to who exactly started that conversation. I've got some good guesses - as I mentioned before, we live in a very religious community - but nothing certain. the only thing I know for sure is that it most likely wasn't my daughter.

Science and math will be easy enough for us - she adores math, at least for now, and most of my family are either working in the sciences (in our case, chemistry) or are retired chemistry/physics teachers.

The Big Questions I was referring to have to do mostly with my daughter's adoption. Unfortunately, as I told her at the time, I'm not the one who can answer the questions she has.

Comment by Louis on August 17, 2009 at 12:39pm: Have you thought about supplementing your kid's eduction?

I myself don't plan on having kids, but should that ever be the case I know that I will have to supplement their education almost by necessity. I figure a system of allowance proportional to amount of science/math work done would encourage a healthy critical mind and a solid breadth of science.

Richard Dawkins is writing a childrens book that I plan to buy regardless.

Though I suppose explaining that, "The Universe was created 14 billion years ago when all the matter in the Universe as a super dense collection that reached a critical point causing it to explode outward. Individual parts of this primordial matter began to coalesce and combine into the basic elements. Across the infant Universe, clouds of matter gathering together built up mass, pulling in more mass as its gravity increased, forming galaxies. One of these clouds is our Milky Way galaxy; in the Milky Way these clouds condensed further. A Protoplanetary disk formed around our particular cloud and lighter atoms such as hydrogen and helium spun into the center, condensing into our sun. Around the sun, other particles of dust came together to form smaller protoplanets like the Earth. During this time, Earth and another protoplanet Thea collided, destroying Thea but leaving a debris ring that would later become our moon." Is a bit much for a child.

Comment by Karen Mohler on August 17, 2009 at 11:57am: Especially this particular part of Littleton. Roxborough is a "manufactured community", but it's almost big enough to be an incorporated town - just as soon as the residents here agree to pay taxes. ;) There is one church, and the vast majority of DD's classmates attend there; it's held in the intermediate school right now, but there's plans to build a gigundous church right in the middle of the Ute tribal lands. My daughter's BFF is in a Mormon family, who surprisingly have been the one group that hasn't pressured us into attending church. We've been invited, but it's been incredibly low-key.

For a lot of reasons, I'm hoping for Lawrence. It all depends on which side of Topeka my husband winds up working. If it's the east side, I'm guessing we'd be good.

Comment by Sparrowhawk on August 17, 2009 at 10:23am: Are you moving to Lawrence? If so, this kind of thing might get better once you move. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Colorado strikes me as a very religious area, especially around Littleton