Donna:
You seek other ways how to teach Dhamma to young people. You say:
–“I guess working it in everyday terms/words/examples actually does help.” I rarely go beyond this.
My own daughters, two, have 4 sons between the two of them, the eldest being 5 years. So you will know, surely, their hands (the girls’) are always full. There is hardly ever time to go into such matters. BUT when the situation presents itself I indicate by example, sometimes saying something that requires going a bit into it in order to ‘get it’, at other times by physical behaviour – for instance, if asked ‘Would you like some more of this soup (or whatever it is)? , I would reply: ‘ have the others had’?
On a couple of occasions we touched upon rebirth, the vastness or of the Universe, other civilizations ‘out there’,astronomy ( I had built a 10″ reflector in the 80’s) – and the elder one had walked through the tube(!) after I had assembled it -I remember that… things like that. But bringing Dhamma concepts in, such as we find here – I feel I would be ‘pushing’ more than they have time to consider seriously.
So this is not much of an advice. I just wanted to share my experience of (the little of) it with you.
I admire your love and commitment
Metta
y not