We’re using a spare account to avoid having personal family discussions with our main accounts which may contain identifying information. Also, I’m terrible at condensing paragraphs into sentences, so this will be a long post. If you read through it and have advice or a similar experience you want to share, we’d appreciate it.My husband and I both come from religious families. His was involved in the church while he was a kid, but they are fairly relaxed and open minded. My family was and still is very evangelical and allows their faith to shape and influence most aspects of their lives. My husband and I are agnostic.Our children have good relationships with both sets of grandparents. As they get older though, things are becoming more complicated with my side of the family. My parents have a child who is only two years older than my oldest and they are close. They are reaching the age where it is becoming obvious that there are huge differences in how they are being raised. My kids attend a great public school and are involved in youth sports. They have great friendships with other kids with different backgrounds. They are developing their own open minded and curious world views.My parents are raising my younger siblings the same way they raised me. They attend an evangelical private school. My parents are very conservative. Last year, much to my distress, we realized they believe in the whole Q-Anon/ deep state movement. My mother has always been the more outspoken of my parents and she lives in a world where everything is black and white to her. There is no middle ground. Either you believe and practice the same things she does or you’re wrong.Obviously these developments are very troubling to my husband and I. We had already been declining offers to babysit and do not leave the kids unattended with my parents. We agreed to kind of organically start limiting the time we spent with them. The kids have been busy with sports and school and my parents have no interest in being involved with public school dealings.The other day, I was visiting my parents’ home with my kids. At some point, my youngest sibling excitedly told my son that he’d “gotten saved” and asked if my son had asked Jesus into his heart yet. My son simply responded with, “No, I haven’t.” He knows that my parents practice the Christian faith and is also aware that our family does not and that he is under no obligation to do anything that makes him uncomfortable.I sensed that the conversation was going to start swinging towards religion and quickly came up with a time sensitive errand that we needed to accomplish and said our goodbyes.I haven’t gotten any uncomfortable calls from my mother.. yet. But I know it’s coming. I know that she’s convinced she’s right and in her head, if I’m not raising my kids as Christians, then I’m basically damning them to hell and it’s up to her to witness to them and ensure their eternal salvation. I’ve seen it happen time and time again with extended family and friends.The second my mom starts preaching to my kids is the second her contact with our family becomes very limited. It’ll probably happen sometime soon. We want to have a preemptive talk with the kids so they’re not totally confused. How do we explain grandma’s religious extremism to very young kids? They’ve already noticed that we visit less. I don’t want to vilify my parents to their grandkids, but I’m absolutely not letting the kids think it’s their fault that we don’t talk to grandma and grandpa anymore.TLDR: My parents are super religious and we need to help the kids understand how it’s damaging our relationship with them. via /r/Parenting http://bit.ly/2Jt0aPH
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