Several years ago, I had a child in our DC4K (Divorce Care for Kids) group who accepted Christ as her personal Savior.  She wanted to follow in baptism. The child’s dad was not in the picture, but the mom was all for her daughter being baptized. This child had experienced a chaotic home life along with some unspeakable abuse from the dad. She was no longer allowed to visit her dad.

In DC4K we had talked about how God will never leave you or forsake you. We had discussed how much God loves each one of us. We discussed turning all our fears over to the Lord. We talked about how to trust Christ and how to accept him as our Personal Savior, forever a friend and the boss of our lives.

I tell you all of this because I truly believe this child understood what asking Christ to be her Savior meant. Because of some personal things that had happened to this child, she truly needed to see a Heavenly Father figure and she wanted a relationship with her personal Savior.

The church would not allow the child to follow in baptism because the elders didn’t think the child was sincere. They were also concerned the mom didn’t come to church very much. The mom’s life was pretty “out of control,” and she was not leading a Christian lifestyle.

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There is very little more heartbreaking than reading a story about child sexual abuse. When that abuse happens in the church (and is does far more often than you might think), those stories are even more heartbreaking. God has a heart for kids, and to read stories of sexual abuse that happens in a place where kids should be safe is even more heartbreaking. Being in church can give you a false sense of security. As a parent, as someone who has volunteered in children’s ministry and someone who works with children who are particularly vulnerable because of family transition, the issue of keeping our kids safe is paramount in mind, and it should be in the church as well.

In his article, 11 Vital Steps to Minimize Risk of Child Sex Abuse in Your Church Thom Rainer explores 11 different things your church SHOULD BE DOING to help to minimize the risk of abuse in your church.

Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

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Attached is a pdf file with the notes from my breakout session at the 2015 CMConnect Conference titled Kids in Crisis: Ministering to Kids from Modern Families. Almost 100 showed up t learn about kids in modern families and how their churches and they individually can minister to Modern Day Orphans. If you were there and need a copy of the notes or weren’t there and are interested in learning more, the files linked below will help you.

Part of the breakout was a ten question quiz. Take the quiz first, then click on the answers pdf for the answers to the questions and see how you did!

CLICK HERE for the Handout.

CLICK HERE for the Answers. Continue reading

Every child of divorce is different and unique, and how you work with and for that child must be tailored to their personality, circumstances and environment. That said, there are some common things that all children of divorce need. If you work with kids, you need to be prepared to offer these to them. Likewise, as the church, we must work to ensure that our ministries and our congregants are equipped to offer these six basic needs to children from disrupted families.

1. LOVE

The first thing every child of divorce needs, indeed every child for that matter, is adults in their life who love them and model the love of Christ for them. While a divorce will not cause parents to love their children any less, it will cause children to question whether their parents still love them. On top of all that, the emotions and stress that comes along with a divorce takes time away that parents might otherwise spend with their kids and may leave parents emotionally drained and incapable of adequately expressing their love for their children. As a result, children from disrupted families are often left with a love tank on empty and desperately seeking attention and affection. Find appropriate ways to show the child of divorce that you are there for them and that you love them. Demonstrate the sacrificial love of Christ to them and for them. Read 1 Corinthians 13 and challenge yourself to show them love as defined in that chapter. You may be the one person in the life of a child from a disrupted family that keeps that child from seeking love and attention in destructive places.

2. HOPE

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To watch a child learn and accept the love of a heavenly Father is an encouragement to anyone working with children. But, to watch a child who has experienced an earthly father walking out of his life accept Christ as his personal Savior and accept that there is a heavenly Father that will never leave him or forsake him is very special.

I had that happen with an eight-year-old young man. In his younger years, he had what appeared to be a perfect life for a child. His parents showed him love that seemed unconditional and they disciplined him appropriately. They brought him to church every Sunday and by all accounts were very active in his life. He was a happy joyful little boy.

Then, one day his, father decided to walk away from the marriage to this boy’s mother. From an adult perspective, he was walking away from a broken marriage and his wife, but when he walked away from the marriage, this little boy thought his daddy walked away from him too.

The divorce changed that little boy. From happy and joyous, he changed to distraught and closed off. However, over the course of nine months I watched this child, who attended the divorce recovery program for children at our church (DC4K.org), grow and mature by leaps and bounds. This child grew from a the distraught and closed off little boy he had become after the divorce into a young man who openly displayed physical affection, had joy in his very being, and shared his heart and his deepest thoughts. During the course of the program he asked some very thought-provoking questions about faith, God, Christ and why his dad had walked out. At one point, I asked him if he would like to talk about Jesus walking beside him and never leaving him.

My little friend indicated he did want to talk about asking Jesus to be His personal Savior. I presented the plan of salvation, and this child accepted Christ at that time. He wanted to tell his mother but he didn’t want to tell anyone else right then. His mom and I talked about his experience. She had a strong walk with the Lord, and I had no doubt that she would be there to help her child. I let the children’s minister where he attended church know what had happened, but I cautioned him that the child wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. I asked the minister to keep a watchful eye on this child. This minister was familiar with the child’s situation and I had no doubt that when the child was ready the minister would reach out. I knew this minister WOULD keep a watchful eye on this little boy and his family. Continue reading

Linda Ranson Jacobs is a good friend. She has been a mentor and you’ll find many of her articles and insights here on Hope 4 Hurting Kids. One of the positions she holds very strongly that gets an awful lot of feedback is that rewards based behavior system do not work. She has written a couple of articles about it on her blog at DC4K:

A Class Without Stickers! Are You Kidding Me? (Part 1)

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A Class Without Stickers! Are You Kidding Me? (Part 2) Continue reading

In ministering to children from disrupted homes, we stress the need to empathize with what the kids are going through – not sympathize! This great video is one of the most succinct explanations of the difference between empathy and sympathy that I have found.

The video makes some great points, and I encourage you to watch the whole thing (it’s only 2:53 long after all).

One of the interesting things in the video was a study of professions where empathy is relevant and identifying four components of empathy:

1. Perspective taking (taking someone else’s
2. Staying out of judgment
3. Recognizing emotion in other people
4. Communicating that

There are some great takeaway quotes from the video too: Continue reading

A report released by Princeton University shows that approximately 40 percent of children in the U.S. lack strong emotional bonds in their lives. A child’s primary attachments will form with their parents and begin very early in life. However, there are different levels of attachment that kids can form. In the absence of appropriate emotional bonds with their parents, many of these children can still bond with an alternate caregiver such as a grandparent, childcare staff or caring baby sitters. These “secondary bonds” allow these kids to move forward with only minimal attachment issues.

Why is this important for our future? If children don’t form emotional bonds and connect with their primary care givers as infants, they will more than likely face behavior issues such as aggressiveness and defiance as children and hyperactivity as teens and adults. Because of their behavior issues, many will face limited educational benefits as they may be suspended from school; sent to alternative schools or end up dropping out of school all together. Some may grow up without a developed conscience intent on doing harm to anyone who gets in their way. If children are severely unattached they will not be able to trust others. Because they learn not to trust others, they turn inward and only trust themselves. These are the children who will lie, steal, hurt animals and hurt other people. These are just some of the problems faced by kids who don’t develop proper attachments early in life.

Attachments issues can arise in many different environments and are the result of the child not getting adequate time an opportunity to attach with their caregiver. Take for example infants who live in a high stress single parent home. The single parent, whether it is mom or dad, might be in a state of shock and barely surviving. They take the child to childcare, work a full day, pick the child up and stumble home. Hoping the childcare gave adequate care for the day; they may just feed the child and put them to bed as they struggle to keep up with life.

Reasons for Attachment Issues

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Anxiety is a very real problem for many kids and teens, and there is no “quick fix.” However, there are techniques you can use to help a child struggling with anxiety and some of them are quite simple.

This paper airplane technique requires only one piece of paper (almost any type will do), some sort of writing utensil and time to talk to the child dealing with anxiety.

Here’s how it works.

1. Sit down with the anxious child and talk about the things that are causing them anxiety. You can guide the conversation, but make sure to allow the child to lead the conversation and discuss their own anxieties.
2. As you discuss each item which causes anxiety, have the child write it (or draw it) on the piece of paper.
3. Take the opportunity to talk about different breathing techniques and other things the child can do to help when they feel themselves getting anxious.
4. When you are done listing things on the paper, make a paper airplane. If you’re not a paper airplane aficionado, you can find instructions here.
5. Have the child throw the paper airplane across the room or, ideally, into a trash can.

Although a very simple exercise, the Anxiety Paper Airplane has numerous benefits. They include: Continue reading

Over the last ten to twenty years, there has been significant research on the effect of divorce on kids. In more recent years, the volume of studies on children from other family types (cohabiting families, grandparent led families, complex families) and family transitions has increased. There is still much study which needs to be done, however the consensus seems to be that our kids are growing up in increasing complex families, and experiencing (on average) multiple transitions in the families in which they reside, and reflecting worse outcomes than kids raised in traditional two-parent married biological parent families. I wrote this article as the result of one recent study which examined the life course of a group of children.

Do you know the kids in your ministry? Do you know what types of families they are living in? Do you know what types of family transitions they have lived through? Consider the following example:

Suzie was born ten years ago to a single mother. At the time she was born, her mom Angie (who was 22 at the time) was living with a man named Bernie who was not her biological father. Bernie loved Angie though, and so did his parents. Bernie was there as she learned to walk and talk and was potty trained. However, when Bernie was two years old, Angie and Bernie split up. One day he was there, and the next day he wasn’t. Suzie never saw him again – or his parents (the only grandparents she had ever known as Angie’s parents had disowned her).

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