I remember when my son was six. He was happy at that age and often talked about wanting to be an adult. He never really fit in with kids his age and I felt that he was missing out on being a kid.
My son is homeschooled and used to go to church with kids his age, but they made him feel different and he felt judged. The kids there talked a lot about sports that he couldn't play because he was born with a mild disability that caused low endurance and mild muscle weakness and joint pain. When he was about seven one of the church kids asked him why he was so weak and teased him about it. When I asked that my son be allowed to go to a Bible study class with his best friend who was three years older, the teacher didn't like it even though I heard one of the girls in the older class tell the teacher that he was really smart and he would be okay there. He wanted to be in a class where there were good discussions, not a class where he had to do coloring pages and crafts or talk about sports or hunting and skinning deer.
I recently watched a video of him at age 6 with the group of kids who were several years older. They had just memorized a long, difficult Bible verse and they were all on stage reciting it. I remember that we had to ask permission for him to memorize the more difficult Bible verse. He just seemed so happy. A few years later the differences got to him. We gave in to the pressure to put him in class with kids his age and he just didn't fit.
At six he was so talkative and ready to learn and discuss but as he got older he realized that wasn't what people here wanted him to be. Quiet, unquestioning obedience is what was expected. He became quiet around the people at the church and at the ultra religious homeschool group he belonged to. It was the only one in our small town.
He had to wear a painful scoliosis brace for several years and it made sleeping and getting up in time to go to church very difficult. Sitting up for long periods was also difficult so he didn't go to church very often. We felt judged for that. We heard gossip about other people when we went. Our Sunday school teacher talked about rebuking a teenager who was by himself and wearing a hat inside the church. He was visiting for the first time, probably didn't know any better, and never came back. My husband spoke out against that and they don't like it when people disagree with them. Also, the preacher talked about how sinful anxiety was at a time when my mother who had severe brain damage and anxiety as a result of complications of surgery was pulling out her hair. She had been a devout Christian. When she died the church removed us from their mailing list. We tried another church where the preacher preached that if we have pain it is our fault because we "needed to forgive someone" or something like that. My son felt his migraines and scoliosis had nothing to do with anything that he had done. We didn't go back.
We still have facebook friends that go to the churches in our town. They regularly have discussions on facebook about how sinful gay people are. My son, who is not gay but has been called gay because he did musical theater, sees it as a difference that people are born with, just like he was born with a disability. It is no wonder that it was so hard to recruit teenage boys for the musical theater group. Some people here really think boys must be gay if they are doing musical theater. At 14 my son knows that we don't agree with everything the preachers and the church people in our town are saying and he thinks it is hypocritical for us to go there. He doesn't want to be around people who would shun and ridicule people who have a difference of some kind. He doesn't think that is what Christians should be doing.
I feel sad that there is not a youth group in our area where my son could discuss the Bible and ask difficult questions. I enjoyed the church youth group I belonged to as a teen. The isolation is hard, but so is being around people who think so differently and believe that only their opinions are valid.
It won't be that many more years now until my son is an adult. He will be learning to drive a car in a little over a year and thinking about getting a part time job. When I was sixteen I thought I was an adult and I acted like one. I didn't go out and have fun. I wanted it to be different for my son.
At six, he enjoyed the children's musical theater group because it allowed him to play an adult. He also enjoyed role playing games that were for teens when he was six or seven.
