Connie- I’m grateful to know that my response offered you an empathic understanding of your struggles. 🙏🏼 ❤️ Sheri

Hi Kathy- I appreciate your taking the time to inquire about this subject. The situation you describe creates a double bind in which the child is torn about what is safe to believe in the context of the family. They are being rejected in the deepest way. What gives the child meaning is ridiculed by the ones they are unconditionally dependent on for their survival. As a result, the parents are perceived as destabilizing and contemptuous and God is perceived as reliable and caring. The child is choosing to attach to a healthy source of nurturance. Clearly this is a child with a strong spiritual orientation. Essentially the child is left to self-parent through their connection to God (the symbolic father and mother). While this offers short term comfort and encourages maturity, in the long term there will be relational mistrust and difficulties with intimacy. It is our biological inheritance to bond with humans. The God attachment cannot nullify that. Consequently, due to the parents mockery, the growing child may harbor shame around their spiritual beliefs and experience an existential crisis. They may even reject it altogether and embrace atheism. Moreover, they will struggle with trusting that the deepest parts of themself can be safely shared with others.