These parents sound seriously fucked up. I mean, I’m not Christian, and I was raised Lutheran so we didn’t believe in a Rapture, but that’s beside the point. No matter what their beliefs, parents shouldn’t be telling kids scary shit before they’re ready to hear about it. (Of course, the cynic in me postulates that this kid’s parents WANT to use scare tactics on a young child in order to make sure he gets “saved”… sick fucks.)
I wonder if I’m the only one here who, if told at age 7 that I had the Mark of the Beast, would say “Coooool!”
vasyachkin, I do believe you’re talking out of your ass.
Jokes aside (hands up who got the reference!), I find this extremely worrying. I was the kind of overimaginative seven-year-old who would have been severely traumatised by something like this, so I can relate. Poor kid.
I saw The Exorcist as a 9-year-old and it terrified me.
I couldn’t sleep for nights for fear of being possessed by the Devil.
Finally, Mom and Dad set up a talk with a minister at our church (Methodist ICYC). She told me that God is always protecting me and showed me Ephesians 6:10-18 which talks all about the armor of God. That passage still resonates.
I grew up in a small Mennonite town where I was a half-breed (only my mom was Mennonite), with non-religious parents who didn’t raise us with any particular religious beliefs. I recall one winter when we buried a classmate in the snow, and I started to say a short ceremony over the dearly departed. Well, apparently my very religious Mennonite classmates thought that I was the devil reincarnate for presuming like that. I don’t think that episode scarred me for life, but it did bring my attention to the fact that my family wasn’t like the other families in town.
I don’t think this will scar your son for life, stg, but it will play a part in how he looks at the world. I think what you’re doing now is just the right thing; putting the correct spin on what he thinks so that he doesn’t get too many scary ideas stuck in his little head.
Most (not all) children can potentially be mean to one another given the chance. Even an otherwise sweet can pull something cruel. Especially if he senses another is weak, or ignorant. That kid found your sons weak spot and picked at it. Mean, but predictable for that age group.
My family didn’t celebrate Christmas. So other kids harassed us about it, right? NOPE! It was the other way around. My siblings and I took great delight in explaining to other kids in great detail that Santa Clause did not exist and that their parents were lying to them. Me, my brothers, and my sister all, at one point during each of our childhoods, had entire schools of first/second graders crying their eyes out.
It was kaos! We all thought it was hillarious!
It was mean!
And I can think of every person I’ve known since childhood. They’ve all did something extremely mean to someone else when they were kids.
