We’ve often discussed how stressful it is being a single parent. A lot of ideas have been given about how to minister to single parents and their children. One subject that hasn’t come up is the issue of the possibility of a single parent with a terminal illness or a disability. How can you help a single parent in one of these situations?
Most single parents don’t plan ahead for such a situation. Most of the time they are barely surviving and yet the necessity of them having to face their fear of death or a disability might become a real concern. I know when I was a single parent the possibility was always in the back of my mind,
“What will happen to my kids if something happens to me?”
At the time, I was clueless about what to do. I wish there had been a church or some church leaders close by that could have helped me sort through the legal issues in a situation like this. In my particular case I knew the kids would be able to go and live with their dad, but I hadn’t really thought through much more than that. He lived in another town, and that would have meant a lot of changes for my kids.
September is National Suicide Prevention Month. Last week, we received the following e-mail:
With September being ‘Suicide Awareness Month’, I have been putting together a list of resources to share with our after school program. One of my helpers found this guide:
Healthy Mind and Healthy Body: Suicide Prevention Guide
www.whitesandstreatment.com/healthy-mind-healthy-body-suicide-prevention-guide/
Would you mind including it on your page? My helper’s name is Kristin, if you would like to add that. She’s 11, and I thought it was a great find for her!
Welcome back as we continue our “Sunday Morning Strategies” series designed to help you to accommodate children of divorce and children from single parent homes in your Sunday morning children’s ministry. Today, we start to tackle one of the most visible issues you will likely face in your ministry – discipline and the child of divorce.
At its root, discipline has to be about discipleship. It’s right there in the root of the word. We when we talk about any discipline, whether for the child of divorce or otherwise, it is important to keep the goal in mind. The goal must be to disciple the child – to guide them and teach them to make right and God honoring choices. Discipleship, and therefore discipline, has to be about the heart of the child. As such, the ability to discipline boils down to relationship. Continue reading
H4HK FAQs are designed to answer questions kids and teens ask when facing difficult situations and circumstances in their lives.
If your parents are divorced, you’ve probably heard them talking about child support, but what is it really? What is child support? What is it for? How does it work? Who is supposed to get it? The purpose of this article is to clear up any questions you might have about child support.
The dictionary defines child support as:
Money paid for the care of one’s minor child, especially payments to a divorced spouse or a guardian under a decree of divorce.
Recently when I was doing some research about the brain I read that multitasking is a myth – your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. Most of us in the Kidmin world multitask. I have prided myself on multitasking for years and now I’m reading it’s not very productive. As I thought about this idea of multitasking a light bulb went off in my brain. Could this be one of the reasons kids of divorce might not function too well at various times?”
If your brain can only focus on one thing at a time, it might very well be why kids of divorce can’t concentrate at church, at school and other places that require concentration. To a child and their brain thinking about mom and or dad in two separate houses and being worried about their siblings, their pets, which parent is picking me up tonight might and where am I going to sleep might equate to multitasking.
When you look at the definition of multitasking on Wikipedia you’ll read, “Human multitasking is the apparent performance by an individual of handling more than one task at the same time.” Now I realize the researchers are saying by multitasking one is switching from one activity to another. You are probably going to say the kids are only doing one activity such as scripture memory or listening to a story on Sunday morning.
While it might appear children in your group are only doing one physical activity you can be assured that their brains are on overload, which I think is going to affect how well they pay attention to the person reading a Bible story.
As this post is published, Hurricane Harvey is still battering parts of Texas and Louisiana in the United States with rain and flooding. As the storm eventually passes and the flooding recedes, families will be able to get back to their homes. They will, no doubt face devastation, loss and week or months of rebuilding. For many of the kids involved, this may well be the most traumatic thing they have ever experienced. For many it will become a permanent marker in their lives from which they will date things, as in “Remember before the flood…” or “that was after the hurricane.” If the effects of this trauma are not dealt with proactively in these kids, they will left to fester and likely show themselves in far more serious ways.
Fortunately, the fine people at the Mentor Research Institute have developed a resource called “The Great Storm and Flood Recovery: Children’s Story and Activity Book.”
This workbook encourages the child to fill in the blanks to explore their own experiences as well as color the pictures provide. It talks about the storm that caused the flooding, having to evacuate, cleaning up, rebuilding as well as the emotional impacts of the flooding. At all points, it gives the child a chance to reflect on their own experience.
A parent guide is included at the back of the workbook that covers: Continue reading
The Grief Maze is a useful for tool for helping kids, and adults, to understand the grief process with all of its twists and turns. Here is what the text says on the Grief Maze handout:
Grief is a lot like a maze. Sometimes you move forward. Other times, like your grief journey, you will run into obstacles and road blocks. Sometime you have to go backwards to go around a wall, and sometimes you have to retrace your steps. The important thing though, both in a maze and in grief, is that you continue to move forward and eventually you will reach your goal! As you complete this maze, think about your own grief journey and the obstacles you have faced along the way. What inspired you to continue moving forward?
You can give a grieving child a copy of the Grief Maze to work through on their own or work through it with them and use the opportunity to talk about the child’s grief. You can download a pdf copy of the Grief Maze by clicking on the image above or by clicking here.
Welcome back as we continue our “Sunday Morning Strategies” series designed to help you to accommodate children of divorce and children from single parent homes in your Sunday morning children’s ministry. The world of a child of divorced or separated parents is marked by chaos. Chances are that your Sunday morning children’s ministry may also include just a touch of controlled chaos. When those two worlds meet, it is easy to lose track of kids.
So, what processes do you have in place to follow-up on kids who are no longer coming to your church? Do you know which kids have recently experienced a family transition so you can make sure to follow-up on them? Are you small group leaders equipped and empowered to follow-up on the kids in their group who stop coming to church? Statistics show that children from non-intact families are more likely than their counterparts from intact families to stop going to church following the family transition, and you need to have a means of makings sure that these kids do not fall through the cracks.
In our culture, it is no longer unusual for a child to miss a week or more of church each month. But, if I child stops coming altogether, it is critical that you follow-up with the child and with the family. This is especially important as children transfer between age groups and between small group leaders when it is especially easy for them to get “lost in the shuffle.”
Here are some steps you can take at your church to help make sure kids don’t fall through the cracks and you are following up on missing kids: Continue reading
H4HK FAQs are designed to answer questions kids and teens ask when facing difficult situations and circumstances in their lives.
Divorce is hard, and many times when parents get divorced the last thing they want to do is talk to the other spouse. When there are kids involved though, that isn’t an option. Even so, sometimes the anger and the hurt and the emotions are so overwhelming that even parents refuse to talk to one another. Maybe every conversation turns into a fight, or maybe they just can’t stand to be in the room with the other person. Whatever the reason, when parents refuse to talk it is generally the kids who get hurt the most. So, what can you do if your parents refuse to even talk to one another?
One of the most important things you should do is know those thing you shouldn’t have to do if your parents aren’t speaking:
Don’t take sides. Your parents won’t always make the best choices, and when they are angry or fighting, they may be tempted to try to sway you to “take their side” against the other parent. The fact of the matter is, you are free to love both of your parents, and they should respect that decision.