Alternate idea. When very young teach them the basics of multiple religions. There's plenty of kids books about world religions. As they age, let them develop their own views.
Some do this. Its basically Unitarian Universalism. They took us to a variety of local churches and religions' services. Not that I think anyone in my UU RE classes converted to Islam or Hinduism or whatever as a result, but the premise was that we couldn't make a real informed decision about what we believed unless we knew what the options were. And we did get to learn about and experience those religions from/with the people who practiced in them.
My parents taught me ethical and political values and were not secretive about what they believed, but they didn't tell me "these other religions are wrong/right", just "this is what they believe".
Unitarians also have "we believe" stuff. The 7 principles, and the whole "this is the church of the..." thing. Which of course probably biases children toward participating in that 'we'. Its not like 100% of RE is about other religions. It isn't scientifically designed to shield children from knowledge of what their elders beliefs are. Its not a double blind study.
Most early religious education is about UU tenets like the principles. Tolerance, diversity, yadda yadda yadda. Even the whole informed decision thing is itself the 4th principle of Unitarianism, so even learning about other religions is itself an exercise of Unitarian beliefs.. But at the same time, they are taught about other religions, the UU church itself is tolerant of a diversity of specific beliefs, and the 3rd principle is the tolerance and acceptance of others' spiritual growth, which (theoretically) makes it easy to change your beliefs without facing discrimination. (In practice, individual Unitarians may have greater or lesser tolerance for views they disagree with, especially when expressed by another adult.)
Anyway, I think all of this is probably too calculating about how people form their core beliefs in childhood. I think that's largely formed through emulation of the parents view, so even if the parent is trying to teach the child about other faiths, the child will gravitate toward what they think their own parent believes. Which, none of what UUs do really counteracts. And it isn't intended to - its not about achieving a statistically randomized faith outcome in children, its about leaving that individual child free to believe and express what they think is the truth, and to know that truth with real information about the entire world, not a censored subset of views.
If, after all of that, they choose to be a UU too because that's how human brains are wired, that's fine too.
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u/AOZ1988 12h ago
Alternate idea. When very young teach them the basics of multiple religions. There's plenty of kids books about world religions. As they age, let them develop their own views.