Ammonite,
You said "One does not have to offer a fairy tale to provide hope". The very reason the majority of the population would not let you loose on their 10 old grieving child. You have violated the right of the parent to instruct his child. You have confused the child causing him further anxiety.

In you following sentence you have misrepresented the Creational facts and the nature of God. "I would like to know how a ten year can accept that a 'loving' god took his mother from him".

I will explain later, why.

Formersnag

You wrote "Our own society in the land of OZ was way more cohesive, happy, harmomious in the 1950's than it is now. Moral & ethical vacuums or DE generation is hardly a good thing."

You obviously didn't live in my house in the 50's. The 50's was hell; both my parents spent a lot of time in mental hospitals because they couldn't cope with the rigid requirements of the society of the time and a chaplain wouldn't have helped. It was 'humanism' that gave them comfort and a way of coping with the hypocricy of an overtly religious and intolerant society.

Philo,

I don't see why you're confronting atheists with your age-old problem of theodicy. The problem of why an omnipotent and all-loving God allows evil to prosper in the world is something theologians have failed, after hundreds of years of trying, to rationalise.
Four of my children lost their mother to cancer, the oldest being seven at the time, so not quite your ten year old bench-mark. They've never been fed the twaddle you're recommending but they are all extremely well-adjusted and intelligent young people today. My girls wear a piece of their first mum's jewelry on her birthday and we discuss her often as they all become increasingly interested in what she was like.
A well-meaning Christian teacher recently asked the youngest (now 10) where she thought her mother was if she wasn't in heaven, appalled at the implications of atheism--that she's mouldering in the grave!
My kids don't carry such knowledge around as a burden. Indeed we discuss life and death without inhibition or invention, and even such possibilities as life after death. Unlike Christians I profess only my ignorance and my reasoning to my kids, soberly acknowledging probabilities and improbabilities. As soon as notions of Santa Clause et al started to strain credulity, we also discussed those tradition and their probabilities too. Children don't need to be wrapped in fairy tales, and they can draw far more comfort by giving their intellects scope than by pulling down the shutters.
"You have violated the right of the parent to instruct his child. You have confused the child causing him further anxiety"
The parent has no right to "instruct" his child, in my view, only to help her to think for herself.
As for confusion; did you hear the news this morning? It seems a chaplain in a south east Queensland State School has facilitated a Creation scientist's coming to school and telling the kids how dinosaurs and humans co-habited the Earth! In order, putatively, to reconcile biblical accounts with the fossil record, of course.
What about the confusion this gives rise to when the child learns real science?

Well said Squeers.

No confusion for my niece and nephew, aged 11 and 13 respectively. They watched as their grandmother (my mother) succumbed to a slow illness earlier this year. They visited her regularly and were informed by both their parents and my mother herself what was happening. There were lots of hugs and even laughs. In her last months, mum actually painted some watercolours. She displayed grace and dignity - something that I see reflected in my cousins now.

When we sat on the pew at her funeral we all linked hands, my sister, brother-in-law, yours truly and my young cousins - it was one of the most moving and significant events of my life. At the end were tears and acceptance. Neither my young cousins are traumatised nor disturbed, nor do they cling to fairytales such as you would have them do.

As for attempting to quote the bible at a non-Christian, you may as well quote the Q'uran, I am not a Muslim either. That is not debate it is nonsense such as school chaplains would preach to my cousins if not for the actions of their parents to ensure that they have a understanding of the universe around them of which religion is but a part of the human world.

Philo,
That Ammonite said on this forum that "One does not have to offer a fairy tale to provide hope" does Not mean he would confuse the child or would cause him further anxiety (not the context - would not vs your "has")

Parents do not have the right to instruct a child in a single view of something that has several reasonable societal views. The mix of information is greater than one version of several views of it.

Mollydukes: "The 50's was hell"

Had the internet and instant communications been around during the 50's or at any other time since the invention of Protestant Christian dogma it would show that it's hypocrisy would have been greater than it is today.

As evidenced by this discussion, hypocrisy gets exposed swiftly now.

In previous generations it was easier to be a wolf in sheeps clothing.

The christians wail and gnash their teeth about crime and other evils being out of control because of a decline in religious practice when it is this very decline of religious practice that frees people from dogma, intolerance and hypocrisy to report such things.

The current generation is no better nor worse than my generation or my fathers and grandfathers generations. The difference is, it is exposed for the world to see now.

This is why we are seeing an endless flow of christian leadership from all the various christian cults going back decades finally being exposed as child abusers, molestors and rapists.

As we live in a secular democracy, we have the democratic right to freedom from religion.

The sheep has been shorn and it's wolf has nowhere to hide.