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"You believe in God? Then prove it." A sentence on the playground. Said by a ten-year-old, at recess, in front of four other kids. My son is nine. He knows Noah's Ark. He knows David and Goliath. He's been in every Christmas pageant since he could walk. He made his First Communion last year. He didn't say a single word. My name is Brendan, and I'm his dad. He only told me all of this much later. All I noticed that day was one thing: he was too quiet. At dinner, when I asked how school was, I got a "good." Nothing else. At 9:40 that night, lights already out, door open a crack, it finally came: "Dad? How do we actually know God is real? Like… for real?" I started to answer. I knew what you're supposed to say. "Because the Bible tells us." "And how do we know the Bible is true?" "Because it's God's Word." "But Dad. How do we know THAT?" I stood there in his dark bedroom and heard myself say: "Because… the Bible says so." My son nodded and rolled over to face the wall. He's nine. But he'd figured it out: Dad was going in circles. I've gone to Mass every Sunday for over 30 years. I've heard countless homilies. I pray before meals, and I've traced a little cross on his forehead every night since the day he was born. And in the one moment my kid needed a real answer, I had: nothing. That night I sat at the kitchen table and googled: "proof that God exists." You know what I found? First, page after page of articles by people who had "deconstructed" their faith. Forums full of former altar boys. All with the same story: grew up in the Church, First Communion, Confirmation, memorized every answer, never got a single reason. And then I found the number I still can't shake: 73% of kids who regularly go to church lose their faith before they turn 23. Not because someone talks them out of it. But because they can't answer one single question on the playground. And because at some point they stop asking it at home. My son had just asked his question. To me. And I had failed. In the days after, I watched him. Sundays at Children's Liturgy: he knows all the songs. He knows all the stories. He colors in the ark like everyone else. And for the first time I didn't see everything he CAN do. I saw what he's missing. Because the 73% could do all of that too. Two weeks later I was standing in the bookstore across from the cathedral, in the kids' section. I didn't even really know what I was looking for. Another children's Bible? He has three. One aisle over I heard a boy, maybe 14, talking with his dad. The dad asked: "And what if someone says the Bible has been changed 100 times?" The boy didn't hesitate for a second: "We have over 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. More than any other ancient text. If you can't trust the Bible, you can't trust Julius Caesar either." I walked over. I said excuse me and asked the dad where his son got stuff like that. He held up a workbook: Systematic Theology for Kids. The 52-week workbook. "Week 19," the boy said. "The manuscripts thing is week 19." I was skeptical, I'll admit it. Our shelf at home is full of Christian kids' stuff. And I'd had those thick adult apologetics books in my hands that very day — no nine-year-old reads that stuff for fun. But I opened Lesson 1 right there in the store. "How do we know God exists?" Not: "because the Bible says so." The cosmological argument. Explained in words a nine-year-old understands — with logic that holds up for an adult too. Every week the book takes on one real skeptic question. Exactly the questions from the playground: How do you know God exists? Isn't the Bible full of mistakes? Why does God allow suffering? And then comes evidence — not pious clichés. And then the part that changed everything for us: at the end of every week, your child practices saying the answer out loud. Not more stories. Not more coloring pages. Reasons. And practice saying them before it counts. We do it every Sunday after Mass now. 10, 15 minutes. Usually longer — but not because I drag it out. Because HE doesn't want to stop. In week 1 he leaned forward: "Wait. Everything that has a beginning needs a cause? Even the universe?" We talked for an hour that morning. He asked questions I didn't ask at 30. In week 5 he came to me frustrated: the problem of suffering. He wrestled with it for two days. He didn't just accept it — he thought. That's exactly what had been missing. In week 7 — the evidence for the Resurrection — he cross-examined me at dinner. The empty tomb. The women as the first witnesses. My nine-year-old. With arguments. And three weeks ago he came home from soccer and mentioned it just like that, between two bites: Same boy. Same question. "So do you still believe in your God?" This time it didn't go quiet. "Yes," my son said. "Want to know why?" And then a nine-year-old explained the cosmological argument on a playground. The other boy didn't laugh. He listened. At lunch the two of them sat together. More than 25,000 families are now using the workbook. The sentence that keeps coming up in the feedback is the same one I see every Sunday at our kitchen table: "My kid wants to keep going on his own." The new school year starts in a few weeks. And now I know what I didn't know last year: the question is coming. On the playground, in the class group chat, in a college classroom for sure. You can't stop it. You can only decide whether your child will be standing there like my son in March — or like my son today. 52 weeks. One school year. Ten minutes on Sunday. Systematic Theology for Kids: The 52-Week Workbook. My grandpa always used to say: whoever stands on the rock won't be moved by any storm. My son is standing firm. — Brendan, 41, dad of Declan (9). The dad who had no answer at 9:40 in a dark bedroom — and now gets new ones every Sunday.