So, have you tried exorcizing the autism-demons?
That’s what Jesus would’ve done.
(bolding mine)
This is all the more puzzling that the existence of other gods is not disputed in the Bible at all - in the OT, when the protagonists go and fuck up some other tribe, they don’t claim “ha ha, your god doesn’t exist !”, on the contrary they go “your punkass god ain’t got shit on *our *god !”.
For that matter, third party gods are even implicitly acknowledged in the very first Commandment.
Tell him the demons report directly to you.
To me, the sign of the cross seems a better protection to teach him to use than a bible or crucifix because he can’t lose it or leave it behind, and no one can take it from him. As long as he has the use of his hands, he can make his magic protective symbol in the air and banish demons back to hell.
You could tell him that demons are drawn to devotion because they want to kill those that truly believe in Jesus. So his best defense is to not believe in Jesus, so that the demons have no reason to hurt him.
Also let him know that under no circumstances will Jesus save one of his faithful from demonic attack. Mysterious ways and shit.
Then he might become afraid to fall asleep because he won’t be able to ward off demons. I’d say giving him a passive “defense” works better.
Right, because scaring your child is okay as long as you score points in a religious war with your ex.
That’s much less scary than believing in according-to-Hoyle demons existing and being after you.
Winning the religious war is a nice side effect. 
And scare some autistic kid in the process. Nice.
His mother is *already *scaring him. You can either contradict her, which she’ll fight, or you can deflect her and distort the nonsense she’s telling him.
Also, it was a joke. Derp!
Or that a determined nine year old girl can stake her little brother out as a lure and then get up in a demon’s face with a cast-iron frying pan and a good swing.
“Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― G.K. Chesterton
Explain to your son that his nightmares are his subconscious trying to deal with unrecognized and unresolved anger issues.
This is precisely what this thread made me think of.
Although, in attempting to track down the precise wording and source of the quote, I learned that the above is apparently a paraphrase by Neil Gaiman, and what Chesterton actually wrote was
“Fairy tales do not give a child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”
(cite)
As the father of a 17 year old autistic kid, I must ask my fellow Dopers to not - I say again NOT - bring up Bruno Bettelheim in an autism thread again. Ever. Under any circumstances. This Board is about fighting ignorance. Bettelheim was not. I hope I have said enough here. Moving on.
Shakes, Autistic kids often have difficulty with metaphorical concepts, and with what is metaphorical and what isn’t. How does he deal with his Mom’s religion in general as a concept? As a practice? Where do his beliefs lie? You might be able to use that when you talk with him about this. I don’t know your son - this approach might not work with him. Spates of nightmares are bad, even without any other issues. I predict this will get better, but you can have a tough time until then.
You’ll also need to talk with your ex about this, at a time of your choosing when you are likely to remain calm. You’ll have to remind your ex that about how hard it is for the son that you both share to separate out, um, different flavors of “real”. As in “really real” versus “really included in Mr. Moses and Mr. Joshua’s Book of Unusual Stories”. If the concept of demons is scaring him, she might find this a good time to emphasize other aspects of her faith. Like charity, good works, taking care of her own family. You know - the stuff Jesus might do, instead of scaring the fuck out of her own kid.
On a related note, for your viewing pleasure: “Seriously, I thought that was metaphorical”
More seriously, your son might try lucid dreaming: I found it reasonably effective in fighting nightmares when I was, um, 5 or 6. Of course I didn’t know the term back then.
If something scary happens, ask yourself whether you are dreaming. If you are dreaming, then, well, it’s in your head. So you can fight back. For example you can fly away. It’s a dream. Now the dream will sometimes “Push back”. Don’t worry about it though, just keep flying. Or try something else. It’s a dream: you can do that.
The key challenge is remembering to check whether you are dreaming or not.
So has he had any nightmares from this?
As a Born-Again Recovering Fundie But Still a Personal Drinking Friend of Jesus, I think your wife made the dick move first. What the hell was she thinking?
Do pop back in here and give us an update. Maybe by now she’s thought about what she did, and maybe you two have discussed ways to do some damage control.
Praying for your kid … … really!
ps: There are some delightfully evil people here: sharpened crucifixes and “exorcizing the autism-demons” indeed! You DO know they were kidding, right?
Could you also give him a cross to wear around his neck? Perhaps that might make him feel better.
Many thanks for that.
I am not especially religious. I am a casual Episcopalian which is about as bland as it gets. We treat Christianity as a social club of values. I have seen the dark side of Christianity though in willfully ignorant people and I do not approve. The New Testament is remarkably bland and gives little to no credibly to many of the things some Christian sects hold as core mythology. I don’t think most of them ever read the Bible including the ones that proclaim themselves biblical fundamentalists. The level of ignorance is astounding given that they just have one source book to work with for their entire lives.
Can you imagine someone reading the whole Harry Potter series and then giving sermons and whole plotlines based on it for characters that never existed in the original work? It is the same thing.
Almost everything that is used as mythology or imagery in certain Christian denominations is from roughly a thousand years or more after Christianity was founded give or take a few hundred years.
Satan doesn’t exist in the Bible at all in the way that is commonly portrayed.
Angels do not either nor does hell.
Likewise demons do not.
If you read the source work, it is remarkable how many gratuitousness addons were made over time and many people accept them now as much as the original texts simply because several hundred years old is the same as 2000+ in most people’s minds because they have no concept of long time periods.
If your son can read internet articles, let him see the following cracked.com article. They don’t give anything new. The basic point is a bunch of people hijacked the Christian logo, piled on a whole heaping pile of shit, and tried to make it the one true way even though it is completely false even under their own standards of biblical fundamentalism.