Hinduism for Kids Unveiled:

A Comprehensive Guide for Parents

to Introduce Their Kids to the Fascinating World of Hinduism

This exhaustive guide on Hinduism for kids helps parents to learn about the 5 kinds of challenges that they face while introducing Hindu Dharma to children.

and shares proven strategies to Introduce Hinduism to Your Child

In this in-depth guide, you will learn

What are the challenges in teaching Hindu Religion?
How not to teach Hinduism to your child?
The art of Introducing Hinduism to Your Child
Amazing facts about Hinduism
Reasons behind Hinduism Beliefs
Parenting in Hindu Religion

So if you are ready to go ‘all in’ with Hindu Religion, this guide is for you

Contents

Chapter 1

5-I Framework

Chapter 2

Ignorant Attitude

Chapter 3

Illusion of Knowledge

Chapter 4

Inauthentic Content

Chapter 5

Indescribable Ideas

Chapter 6

Insecure Behaviour

Chapter 7

3 Fundaentals

Chapter 8

Create Experiences

Chapter 9

The Way Forward

NOTE – This whole guide is distributed into two parts.

Part #1 Challenges

Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Part #2 Solutions

Chapter 7, 8, 9

Chapter 1:

5-I Framework

In August 2022, when we started our research on How parents can help their children to learn about the Scriptures, Stories and Symbology of the Hindu Religion,

we identified 5 major challenges that parents face in teaching Hindu Religion and culture to children

We called it the 5i Framework

Most of these challenges cannot be solved without a community

So we decided to share our research in public in the form of guides to help the masses to understand these challenges and their possible solutions.

Here in this guide on Hinduism for kids, we are sharing the 5i Framework

If you are a parent, you will learn here about the following 5 challenges that parents face in connecting their children with Hindu Religion and Culture.

Ignorant Attitude towards Hinduism
Illusion of Knowledge of Dharma
Inauthentic Content
Indescribable Ideas
Insecure Behaviour of Parents

Chapter 2:

Ignorant Attitude towards Hinduism

Suppose,

all of a sudden,

one day, your son asks

“Why can’t you allow me to eat meat on Mangalvar (Tuesday), when I can do that on any other day of the week?”

And you wonder, “My god, this generation do not have respect for elders. I never dared to ask such questions to my parents.”

Actually, It is not at all about the generation gap, He is simply giving you an opportunity to convince him to continue believing in your beliefs

and it is his right to ask such question

So, nothing abnormal at his end

If someone needs help here, it is you

What you really need is to ask this question to yourself

and once you have this query on your mind, surf the internet for just 15 minutes to get a basic understanding of

– three types of bhojan (food) i.e Satvik, Rajasik and Tamasik as stated in our culture

– and the concept of the upvasa

and I bet, you will have a jolly good answer to share it with your son

Do you know why this was difficult to answer at the first place

because you never asked these questions to yourself

You just need to stop ignoring your rituals, scriptures, culture, and traditions

And you will have all the answers

Now do not start blaming yourself,

Most of us are doing that

Why . .

because making the generation gap the scapegoat is much easier

If you observe, our religion is not primarily about obeying our parents

It is about questioning

From Devi Parvati, to Yaksha to Arjun everyone is asking questions

If your child is asking question, it does not mean, one is disrespecting you

What you really need is to prove is that you can be a Guru or not

Conformity is not a virtue in our culture

This is the land of Shastrartha

We do not respect the likes of Ashtavakra, Gargi or Ubhaya Bharati for being obedient, we respect them for being inquisitive and for their candid questioning.

In our culture curiosity is the virtue and not being complacent.

Our great ancestors must not have discovered things like Yoga, Dhyana [Meditation], Jyotish, Kaamsutra, Tantra, Shalya Chikitsa, and much more with complacency.

They did it with curiosity and were able to spread it because our culture supported inquisitive behaviour

But ironically, most of us neither understand the gravity of these works, nor we have a sense of pride in these achievements.

‘Ignorance is not always bliss’.

Be more vigilant.

The first challenge that a parent need to counter is to fight with this ignorant attitude and become inquisitive about the Hindu Wisdom

that we want to pass on to our children

Chapter 2:

Illusion of knowledge of Dharma

If I ask you the name of the bird who fought Ravan at the time of Sita Haran

You may tell effortlessly, “oh it was Jatayu”

But If I ask you, “Who was the mother of Sita?”

Now this is kind of a litmus test

Think of it, I have even got Kunti and Janaki as answers

Someone even said, “There was no mother, she came from the earth”

So I rephrased my question, “As we consider Raja Janak her father, I am essentially asking the name of Raja Janak’s wife”

and you will be able to answer it only If you are really invested in Ramayana

But most of us are not

We are dependent only on the TV shows or animation movies

and that is why, it will be difficult for you to answer it without external help

Let’s try it one more time, now in a different format

If I ask you to pick a story from ancient Hindu Scriptures,

any story of your choice, to tell it to your child,

which story would you choose?

Mind it,

you should be able to tell the whole story without any external assistance (not even the internet)

Come on

Pick one story

. . . . . I am waiting

Now when you have chosen the story

let me tell you

When we asked the same question to 100 different parents, 59 parents chose a story of one of the following four gods

Lord Krishna, Lord Ganesha, Lord Hanuman, and Lord Rama

I wonder

when there are so many Gods and Goddesses,

Sur, Asur, Rishi, Muni,

divine animals like Kamdhenu and Uchheshrava

or birds like Garuda or kakbhushundi,

Raja, Apsara, Gandharva, Kinnar, Valakhilyas, and much more

how come only these 4 gods are dominating the whopping 59%?

The answer was simple

Fetching something from the cache memory is much easier in comparison to retrieve something from the permanent memory.

In recent times animations on Lord Krishna, Lord Ganesha and Lord Hanuman have become very successful.

So they have impacted your cache memory very heavily.

And we do not forget Lord Ram courtesy to Ramanand Sagar ji who made a block buster TV serial on Ramayan

We were also able to recall Ramachandraji a little faster because the news media does not let us put Ram ji out of our cache memory owing to his property which some people always want to keep in dispute.

So you see, most of us know about our gods, scriptures, stories, or symbology only when it has an animated movie or a TV serial associated to it,

and we acquired an illusion of knowledge.

without even having sufficient information,

what an irony

If I try to draw a parallel to the Yaksha Prashna, where he asks

‘What is it that will come to everyone but no one believe that it will happen to the one’ and the question answers into Death

Likewise, we can say, ‘what is it that no Hindu knows but everyone believes that one knows’ and the answer can be ‘Knowing Hindu Scriptures’

Chapter 3:

Inauthentic Content on Hindu Religion

There are 5 kinds of content creators at the internet who are writing, creating, or curating stories from Hindu Scriptures

and you need to understand, which content is good for your kid or for your consumption

1 Growth Creators

Whether he is a firang sitting in Australia or a native Indian girl in India itself, a growth blogger essentially does not care about the Hindu Religion or Hindu Cause

For them it is just business

and that is why there focus is always on numbers and keywords

They want to create or curate more stories, from wherever they can get a hand on so that their blog has more content and discoverability.

They do not care for authenticity or purpose.

Here the Kaliya Daman Story can easily become the Evil Snake Story, and you may not know the name of the snake even after the story.

2. Passionate Hindu Creators

These people share these stories or information for their own happiness. The growth and business is the byproduct for them for doing, what they love.

They put in hard work to investigate and research the stories in trying to create authentic content.

These are the go to people when you want to share authentic stories with your children, but there are two major drawbacks

a. Most of them are not savvy marketers, so it is very difficult to find them

b. Their personal beliefs heavily influence their content.

[NOTE -We are trying to create a list of 50 such content creators. If you know any Blogger, YouTuber, Podcaster, Book Author in this category, please do write to us with their name, email and weblink and we will include them in the list. Creators can also self nominate]

3. Sect influenced Creators

When a visionary religious leader appears among people, they get mesmerised by her or his talks and they start following the Dharma as that visionary influencer sees it.

Gradually this influence might convert into a whole sect. There are several sects today within Hindu religion.

All say, go into the prabhusharan

and to learn how to do it the best way, join us

So if you follow a particular sect, you may automatically be following to these creators.

It can be a whole debate on whether it is right or wrong to follow a sect or its creators, but they say Shraddha and Gyan are two different things

and we do not want to challenge one for the sake of other.

Even Uddhav could not win from Gopis

4. Nationalist Creators

This kind of content debunk propaganda against Bharat, our Sanskriti and Hindu Dharma, shares moments of pride, tells real meaning of rituals, showcase real statistics and events

So in a way it is good most of the times

But sometimes this may also lead to bigotry and Politics

We need to remember, Hindu Dharma is all about questioning and not about bigotry at all.

So we should consume this content with an open eye.

and wherever we find bigotry infusion, we should not share that content with children

[Mind it, having pride is not bigotry, having pride is fulfillment. Bigotry is when we consider that only we are right or where we do not allow anyone else to speak about their beliefs or when we demand someone else to believe in our beliefs]

5. The False Narrative Creator

You must have heard words like Fake news, Rhetoric, Propaganda etc

This is all about an art of making fake things look real

And it is so prevalent now on the internet that a whole new skill has emerged to counter these things which is known as ‘Media Literacy’

It is obvious to see that it is not easy from both ends

Be it creating or be it countering

Creating narratives is a high rated skill and not only Sanatan Dharma, every other religion is fighting with these fake narrative creators

Almost always, this is sponsored content created by very high IQ people and that is why such content always have the best quality of story line, music, audio-video effects, video quality etc

These creators do not offend your belief, they rather work on your subconscious in a subtle way, and soon you start questioning your beliefs and gradually you may also go against your beliefs.

So it is very important to identify such content and stay away from it.

Now when you know that various kinds of content is being created, isn’t it important to pick the right stuff for your child

But this first part is only about defining problems and challenges

Successive chapters in part 2 of the guide will share solutions for these challenges

Chapter 4:

Indescribable Ideas

A lot of false narrative creators would tell you not to introduce your children to Hindu Dharma by calling it difficult and indescribable [tricky things that are not easy to explain to a child].

So they give you examples like

You should not overburden your child by teaching Sanskrit, one of the most difficult language
How will you explain your child about the birth of Draupadi out of fire, or Lord Narsingh came out of a pillar or Lord Rama leaving Devi Sita and other similar things
Then they also ask similar questions to put forward their false claims about rapes and incest and much more about Hindu Gods

Now one of the four things will happen

1. You will accept their claim without any evidence and will consider Hindu Dharma indescribable and will remove it from your child’s reach [and then they an teach your child whatever way they want especially through books and guided program]
2. You have accepted their claim but now you want to give a reason, so you go for a research [with a budget of just 15 to 30 minutes] and will consume only selective stuff that supports your belief aka their claim and once your so called research is over, you will now share only peripheral stuff from Hindu Dharma to your children.
3. or the third one which is very very rare that you really get curious to understand it and you realised all that play of narration creating is happening through translation so you started reading Samskrita to understand the real meaning and now you know how people are being brainwashed by false propaganda against Hindu Dharma
4. The last option is to opt the Bhakti way, where you will not listen to any negative thing about Hindu Dharma and will become very selective to consume only the content by your chosen sect

But you see, there is a fifth way too.

If you can be a part of an independent community that is focused towards explaining Hindu Dharma to children in an easy and fun way.

The difficulty is that it is not available right now.

And no one alone can build it

Can you help us in building this community . . .

Welcome aboard.

Chapter 5:

Insecure Behaviour in Hindu Parents

Courtesy to the fake narrative creators,

for a very large number of Hindu parents,

teaching their very own Hindu Dharma to their own kids has become a taboo

and

They believe that if their child will follow any rituals of Hindu Dharma, their friends from other religion might consider it as bigotry

They push their children away from their roots as they feel, it is not safe to practice Hindu Dharma as an expat in some other country

Sometimes they may do such things even in the home country just to please their friends from other religion

Surprisingly these friends have not bind themselves from practicing their faith

The irony is that they are connecting this disconnection from their roots as a way to modernity

What can we really do with this kind of insecure behavior

This is by far, one of the most difficult challenge to manage

one that even a community cannot solve

because learning is voluntary and if you do not want to learn, no one can teach you

Thank you for being so curious and come up to here to learn all about the challenges in teaching Hinduism to kids

and now we will try to understand solutions for those.

Chapter 7:

3 Fundaentals for Hindu Dharma

To conquer the challenges that often arise when teaching Hinduism to young minds, you need a strategy

But in this world of instant gratification we need everything in an instance

That is why we want our kids to behave well without putting in efforts

We are kind of looking for value-added, cultured kids as a ready made solution

Does it even look like a fair expectation

If you understand that there will be no magic spell and if you are ready to learn and explore possibilities, this guide may give you a lot of ideas

let’s get started

To connect your kids with Hindu Dharma, you should know that every religion has 3 fundamentals

Rituals
Stories
and Philosophy

In general, parents only teach a few rituals and forget to touch even the stories

Very rarely you may find parents who are trying to teach philosophies of Hindu Dharma to their children

How can we improve that

Let’s check them one by one

1 Ritual Augmentation Mindset for Hindu Dharma

Let’s first understand, what are rituals and how an we augment them for our children

When we do Pooja [worship] at home or at a temple,

we wear a tilak, put a mauli on our wrist, perform archana, take aarati and do a lot of other things in a sequence

All such sequence of religious ceremonies are called rituals

So if we are doing upnayan sanskar, or some sorts of vedik yajna [sacrifice] or shraddha for our loved ones who passed away

all these are rituals in Hindu dharma

We need to understand that the world has changed

The opportunity cost for children for going to a pooja at the temple has significantly changed

Your daughter will not go to the temple for Sweets anymore because your refrigerator is full of all sorts of chocolates, cakes, sweets, and drinks

here you have to explain the importance of Prasadam to her

Your son will not go to the temple for that low quality plastic toy from the hawker outside the temple as his cupboard is already filled with LEGO, Pokemon, and other high quality toys

You have to explain the importance of visiting temple

You do not just need to get them curious about your rituals,, you have to empower them

Can you teach them the related Mantra to chant when they finish their daily pooja, or when someone tie mauli on their hand, or when someone put tilak at their forehead

oh yes,

we have mantras for almost every ritual

and knowing these Mantras will enhance the experience for your child

and yours too

Can you make their visit to the temple more interesting
Can you create a Scavenger Hunt to play at home that connects them with Dharma
Can you tell them about our symbology in an interesting way

and don’t worry, we are here to help you on that

2 Create an Authentic Story Pool of Hindu Scripture Stories

Once you have started teaching Rituals, you should support that momentum with a set of authentic stories.

There are 4 ways to do it

Follow a Dharmaguru or a Sect
Learn directly from the Scriptures
Curate it yourself or
Simply join a community

Learning from a sect is fine when you cannot put a lot of efforts but then this word ‘authentic’ becomes a bit tricky.

However, If you want authentic content, the only way is to explore the ancient text yourself

But Hindu Dharma is not a one book religion.

Here you may find Veda, Samhita, Smriti, Itihasa, Purana, Folklores and much more, all in Sanskrit

If you read translation, you loose authenticity, you will have to learn Sanskrit

Now you see, so many books that too in Sanskrit, not easy to consume, right

The easier way would be to curate authentic and passionate Hindu Creators

But what could have been even more easier to create an authentic story pool

In our opinion, the easiest yet most authentic way would be to join a relevant community

If you can find such a community, this will help you on everything

3 Consume the Hindu Philosophy

Now when you already exposed your child to Hindu rituals, created an authentic stories pool

Now is the time to focus on Hindu Philosophy

This is an accumulation of wisdom that Rishis from this land worked upon to make the life of a human being better

Let’s take a couple of examples

There are 8 segments in Ashtanga Yoga

yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi.

Then why only the following 3 are famous

Because of the two buzzword ‘easy’ and ‘fashion’

When Yogasana became Yoga [and rest are left]
When Pranayam became Breathing Exercise
and Dhyana became ‘zen’

It all became fashionable

But have you wondered why other 5 not being talked about in the same proportion by the world,

because the rest of the things are hard core philosophy

Without passing through Pratyahar and Dharana, you cannot reach Dhyana

But the fashionable world did not have the patience to go through Yam, Niyam, Sainyam

Following the fashion is easy and trendy, so we easily accepted Meditation because it is jazzy forget about authentic or not, doesn’t matter

What we want to convey is that if you try understanding wisdom from ancient Bharata, make sure you try understanding its philosophy

Let me give you another example

Yantras are our ancient powerful technique for increasing concentration

If only, you try to understand the philosophy of Yantra, Mantra and Tantra, you may experiene another way to a spiritual journey

else it may simply appear like black magic

It was such powerful philosophy that the practitioners made it forbidden to teach it to the general public

After Yoga and Meditation,, now Tantra is becoming famous

to the tune that people are coining new fake forms that has never been mentioned even in our scriptures

If you are from the west, you may understand what am I talking about

It has a Tantrik Word in it but it is fake and it will not help you in long run

We recommend you o understand the philosophy behind ancient Hindu Practices of living a better life

Chapter 8:

Creating Experiences of Hindu Dharma for children

When I was a kid,

I would definitely visit Chhatri wala Mandir in my hometown on every Krishna Janmashtami,

Every year on this day, a small mela [fair] was organised where a lot of jhanki [exhibits] were shown where young children will get ready to play as Krishna ji, Radhaji, Giriraj ji, Damodar ji and many more other Gods

But I was just waiting for the Kailash Parvat

It was nothing but a room where the floor was covered with big pieces of Ice

It was very slippery in there and there were many volunteers inside to slide you through the Kailash parvat

It was always a dazzling experience for me.

This definitely connected me strong with the idea of janmashtami

can you share some such experience in the comments

Creating such an experience is not easy but you can always be creative to build experiences for your child

Apart fro the 3 examples that we shared in the precious chapters,, here below are a few examples

4. Create a Scavenger Hunt around Hindu Scriptures, Stories and Symbology

Suppose you are going to your nearby temple,

the one where you are regular

So you already know all the places, pratima, and Murti there

Now if you can create a Scavenger Hunt beforehand and give it to your children when they reach there,

it will be an experience that they will love

You can also play Scavenger Hunt at home, try creating one for your child

You can have a look at one of the Printable Scavenger Hunts that we have created to play at home.

5. Create a Trivia Quiz around a Hindu Deity

One thing you have to keep in mind, when you are making a quiz for your child

Do not make it a knowledge quiz

Children will continue playing the quiz only if they can answer and you already know that they do not know much about your religion

So do not make it boaring for them.

Ask questions that they can answer and use this opportunity to teach them a thing.

You may learn this concept by our product Trishna for Krishna

This is one of our most interesting product. One part of this product has Trivia Question cards. You can use it to develop curiosity in children about Lord Krishna

6. Create an Escape Room on a Hindu Story

A typical Escape Room is a sequence of puzzles that need to be solved by children

It can be a digital or a real world experience that can be created at various difficulty level.

These Escape Rooms can give a heavy dose of critical thinking to your children.

We have created Journey of Dhruva, an Escape Room that is suitable for anyone between 8 to 99.

we are releasing in December.

Subscribe to our newsletter to get the information when we release it.

If you have more such ideas, please do not hesitate to share them with us in comments. You may also send us an email

Chapter 9:

The Way Forward

Now when you know the major challenges and you know about the possible solutions too,

What is

the way ahead from here

it can essentially be to build a community

to create a conducive environment for children to explore Hinduism

and to build solutions that can help our children to develop the futuristic skills

Mokshaverse

is the name of an effort

to build such a community, will you help us

The community will do the following things as mentioned below

1. User Curated Content

Suppose you are trying to curate a list of 365 authentic stories from Hindu Scriptures

Just think of the work you have to do, identify, read, evaluate and qualify, to be able to create this list

Now imagine you are a part of a raving community of parents that has a 1000 parents like you

Just imagine, what is possible, when even 20 percent of the members, want to work together to create this list with you.

Does it help everyone, probably yes

Is it possible to convince the members to work together, probably yes

Curation is really easy in a community

Can you share the links of 5 amazing creators in comments, may be bloggers, youtubers or podcasters who as per you, are putting nice authentic stories from Hindu Scriptures.

or who are sharing something good around Hindu Scriptures

2. User Generated Content

In the previous example, if we would have asked members to write one story each and even 20 percent people agreed

we could have got 200 stories in a very short time.

But the quality consistency will be an issue.

So we need to understand, what kind of User generated content can we ask for

If we ask for one video clip [less than 30 sec] where their child is chanting one mantra, can we get a lot of content to inspire others to teach mantras to their young one.

Probably Yes

And that is the purpose of a community

3. Creating New Influencers

A strong community can create new influencers.

All those passionate Hindu creators,, who are trying to put genuine content for your consumption can get a new audience.

A community can be a win-win for many

4. Building Local Communities

A community is not just the one that is large in size and being created on the internet.

We can even create small local communities focused on this cause.

Think of a community of mothers in one large building that tell stories every Saturday to all children in the building.

Large communities can support these local circles.

So we are creating this community in this fashion to help parents in introducing their kids to Hinduism

and hope to get your support in this cause

You may

Link this guide to your blog
Share it with your friends
Mention this guide on Social Media

This way you can help us in this cause

Please do share your thoughts in the comments so that we an improve this guide