I, too, had concerns about this and planned to avoid reading any god/goddess stories. But here’s what happened.
My oldest, a 5 yo boy, found a book at the library on mythological creatures and asked to check it out. I hesitated, but decided I could edit while reading as needed. (He doesn’t read on his own yet.) I had already read many traditional fairy tales and he knew fairies were pretend creatures, not real creatures made by God. And that magic in fairytales is just pretend, and that only God has the power to do real miracles and such. (We are intentional about pointing out that the Bible is not a fairytale. We don’t use the phrase ”Bible story” but use the word ”account” and often pull out the globe to show Biblical places and talk about the time in relation to other historical events they are familiar with.) As I read about the creatures it was fine since I didn’t go much into the stories and avoided the god/goddess issue. Well, of course he was completely captivated by that book and wanted to get more like it. He remembered the shelf where he found them at the library and paused saying, ”The librarians should move these books about of the nonfiction section.” It was great confirmation to hear he understood they aren’t true! So, with his interest in mythology and understanding they are not true, we decided to go ahead with the stories. We explained that people who didn’t know about the true, real God just used their imaginations to make up their own ideas about pretend gods.
Now, one of my husband’s colleagues is a classics professor, and whenever we have their family over for dinner, my son begs for him to tell Greek stories. He just loves it and outside he builds mazes and he and his brother (3yo) pretend they have to fight the Minotaur. 🙂
Also, when considering how to handle the myths, I found an article online called ”The Importance of Myths and Fairytale for Christian Children” by Susanna Spencer. Some good points, I think. But if waiting for a few more years makes sense for your family, I think that’s just fine. You know your kids best and I don’t think you should feel like you must read anything, except the Bible, of course. 🙂