The grounds for the best start (some not-for-children insight)

High school shootings, under-aged rapists, juvenile drug addicts, teenagers as convicted murders - and many more - are the saddest stories of whom we hear everyday. Childhood is pure and is immune from politics that adults are victimized by. Perhaps, adults as parents were abused in their own childhood -a key factor that most probably unconsciously drive them through incessant miseries for life, thereby being unable to take their own children on the correct path. 
When it comes to adults, even religion is politics, whereas children see almost everybody as no different from their parents and siblings they hang around. Childhood is pure to the extent that children are of the best grounds of spirituality, in other worlds, they are Dharma-minded and have the clearest Buddha-potential. 
Whatever the religion parents belong to, or practice, or not religious/spiritual at all, they children must be enriched with spiritual thoughts. Most parents mistake indoctrination, dogmatizing and conversion as the way of making their children spiritual. Most juveniles and young adults that I work with would spell the anti-organized religion mantra, and are they wrong? Absolutely not. Religion in general has a problem with presenting itself to the modern-day children. 
Any child with any religio-ethnic background has the best inner-potential of awakening. Just forget about the so called Absolute Awakening, which is just a theory to whomsoever unable to have a sense of awakening into real-life situations. Focus on common negative human emotions like anger, jealousy, etc. and show your children how to see how different they are from the common positive ones like friendship, being happy in others' achievements as if they themselves have achieved, etc.
It's funny to say that I practice Dharma with children of different backgrounds relatively much more easily than adults.
The child in the picture is very spiritual thanks his parents' guidance at home. Don't just limit your own and and children's spirituality to the place of worship. Every moment is a moment of Dharma. Let no moment escape you and your children, at least let a few moments catch you. Of course, as you catch the moment, the moment can't escape, the moment is more fundamental to you, as you are what you think and feel given any moment.
Baby Siddhartha and Baby Jesus could be the better heroes to children than the Buddha and Jesus we adult see. In my experience I've gain from my Dharma kids, they better see Buddha and Jesus through the latter parties' childhood, and how is that possible? Unlike us adults, the children have no 'spiritual gap' between themselves and Buddha and Jesus. 
This is some not-for-children stuff. You got it, I guess.

By Upananda Thero Dedunupitiye

(Picture: Child in Homage to Buddha, Ehipassiko Buddhist Centre, Calgary, Canada)

[Picture by Upananda Thero Dedunupitiye]