childish fears...?

[boydster]

There is a type of astral entity which preys on people (especially small children) while they sleep which looks like a big worm or snake. I have kids and the scenario you describe is pretty common, even though you don't happen to remember ever having this yourself.

You may have better success dealing with the situation from the little boys perspective instead of your own. The first impulse of an adult is to turn the light on, lift the covers, look under the bed, etc.--anything to apparently convince the child that he doesn't see the thing that HE KNOWS he is seeing. Instead of trying to convince the child that it isn't there, shift the game into his court. Tell the boy to watch the snake while we pray to Jesus to come and grab the snake and take it away. Keep praying with him out loud and in earnest, and keep an attitude of confidence in your voice. Most of these sniveling little spooks will flee as soon as someone begins to invoke Jesus or Angels and they really mean it. Keep asking the boy what he sees happening to the snake periodically so that when the thing leaves in fear (hopefully permanently...) the boy will have the comfort of seeing it flee so he can feel some control over the situation.

If you get a chance to do this please write back to us here how it went. Your brother is lucky to have such a compassionate big sister. Just think how wonderful it would be if it works out the way I describe and he is able to do this for himself in the future. He won't have to cower and be a victim any more. These entities really can torure and mess up a little kid if the attack is allowed to proceed because ignorant adults can't be bothered to get closely involved.

[seraphis]

Thanks for your reply!
I'm afraid the situation is a bit out of my hands now, since our parents are all around him all the time - when he was afraid last time I sugessted prayer to them because I knew it would be some time before I got him on my own, and you can imagine the result. I think my mother now believes me to be a religous fanatic or whatever. My brother had to go to the hospital because he got fever together with or soon after those fears, over 40 Degrees Celsius, so I suposse I'll just pray for him a bit myself and when he's healthy again and he sees something I'll try to put some power into his hands to deal with it - no matter whether what he sees is real or not, it can only help if he has some sort of weapon against his assaultors or irrational fears, I'll try to convince our parents of that, leaving those assaultors out ;P (telling him things in spite of them wouldn't be of ultimate help because they would ridicule it and destroy the effect). We'll see wether an opportunity arises, maybe his fears will simply go away together with this sickness... *hopes*
*seraphis

[boydster]

I think you've got the idea--

Engaging in prayer does not make one a religious fanatic. And prayer doesn't contradict science or psychology or any other useful, valid healing technique. Rather it complements them. Also, prayer shouldne't be construed to be a desperate, last resort measure either.

To a small child who has a very slim set of tools for dealing with pain or fear, prayer could be thought of as a metaphor for taking charge of the situation or taking a stand. It's a hell of a lot better than doing nothing and suffering or cowering in fear. You might want to point that out to your mother. I have to think that it's a much better long term coping mechanism than denial. Denial is a really bad habit to get into.

[Aries]

Slap some sense into your parents.. and just tell the boy when he sees the "snake" to not be afraid of it, maybe teach him some prayers so that he can do it him self next time.
-Aries

[seraphis]

A statement I often find on spiritual webpages is that children sometimes have the ability to see things that grown-ups have forgotten how to see, mostly because they were told that what they see is not real and so learned not to see it anymore.
I was babysitting my brother (3 1/2 years old, I'm 19) yesterday, and he woke up somewhere around 1am. For 30 minutes he just lay there awake, demanding that I stay with him. He seemed something between drowsy and tense and wouldn't close his eyes, maybe because he wanted out parents to be back so much. So I was just lying there, waiting for his tiredness to take over, when he suddenly started kicking and screaming (and I mean SCREAMING, as loudly as he could!) as if he had gone completely mad from one second to the other. I hugged him and tried to calm him and everything, turning the light on and asking what the matter was, and he told me that there was a snake in the bed.
Now this sounds pretty trivial (a snake?!), but I had never experienced such an extreme reaction with any child I know or knew before, and I just wonder whether a) he indeed went mad, b) he drifted of to a nightmare in the matter of 30seconds which scared the hell out of him c) he saw something that he interpreted as a snake that I could not see. At first I didn't want to dismsiss his having seen something and just said that it could have been no physical snake and that it could in no way harm him etc., and he did calm down, but remained sort of rationally afraid of a snake being somewhere around the house. It took me a long time to get him back to the bed, and he wouldn't set a foot on the floor. I told him about 200 reasons why there could be no snake in the house and why, if there was one, it could not harm him, and he just kept sayingd: "But BELIEVE me, it WILL come!!" whenever I lifted the blanked to prove that there was no snake there.
He remained calm until our parents came at about 2:30 or so, and then, for the next hour or so, he did little else but scream that there IS a snake in the room ("But don't you see it? It's there on the pillow!" – my parents later claimed that he didn't think he saw one and was only afraid, but to me it didn't sound like that), in a very hysterical way that could have been no making up. Our parents didn't treat the matter as lovingly as they might, after doing the same I did before they got quite irritated and simply told him to stop lying and made threats. Then they went to sleep and he just kept sitting on the bed, really scared, and he stayed up for the rest of the night. Today he was still afraid of snakes, but I didn't hear him scream, and he took a nap around midday, and upon waking up he was just as afraid as before.
Now I've heard about children seeing things that really aren't there, but since I never experienced that myself I find it easier to imagine that they indeed see something real that others can't see. I'm not saying that my brother really saw something, during a state of shock it's easy to imagine things and why should an entity attack my brother, but assuming that this happens again, is there anything I could do, both to find out wheter he's seeing some sort of entity and to get rid of it? (Nothing advanced, I'm not aware of having any psychic abilities and the closest I got to astral travel, being too lazy to practice and unfocused, were some waking paralyzises, strong vibrations and lucid dreams). I can count on our parents trying all the conventional stuff and getting very irritated, and I just don't want my brother to have to deal with some sort of entity alone if the conventional methods fail. Hopefully it was just some terrible nightmare that will never happen again.