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

Welcome back as we continue our “Sunday Morning Strategies” series designed to help you to accommodate children from disrupted homes in your Sunday morning children’s ministry. This week we are looking at a simple thing that you can do that doesn’t require any additional volunteers or committee approval or an overhaul of the way you “do church.” This week we are looking at the difference between empathy and pity and why it is so important that you be able to empathize with the children from disrupted home in your ministry.

The first thing we need to understand is the difference between empathy and pity. Dictionary.com defines pity as:

“Sympathetic or kindly sorrow evoked by the suffering, distress, or misfortune of another.”

Pity expresses itself as “Oh, I’m so sorry for what you are going through,” or “Isn’t it terrible what it happening with little Suzy’s family.” Although it is often offered from a very heartfelt position, pity is the last thing a child of divorce or child from any other disrupted family situation needs or wants. They don’t want you to feel sorry for them. Instead of helping, pity strips the child of dignity and turns them into to someone to feel sorry for.

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One spring day I was walking in my neighborhood. As I rounded the curve I noticed a little girl that looked to be about 5 years of age, playing outside while her mom was working in the yard. When I came back around the next time the little girl was dragging out a large tub. As I passed by her house she began to pull out the garden hose.

The third time around the block, the hose was in the bucket, water was spilling out over the sides and the little girl was nowhere to be seen. In just a moment she came running out of the house and had on what appeared to be last year’s swimsuit. Evidently she had grown quite a lot over the winter.

She gleefully jumped in the tub of water. She tried to sit down in the tub. She stood, got out of the tub and walked around looking at it. With a look of determination she took a running jump and headed for the water again. No matter how hard she tried, she no longer fit in that small tub.

The little girl with her too little swim suit and the tub she could no longer fit into reminded me of a lot of single parents that have experienced a change in their lives. Some continue to try to go back and fit into their old life. Perhaps you have some single parents like that in your church. They have experienced a divorce and they just can’t quite accept how their life has turned out. They continue to try to fit into a life that no longer fits. Continue reading

Welcome back to Sunday Morning Strategies, a series looking at ideas you can implement in your children’s ministry and church to be more accommodating to children from disrupted homes.  In the last installment, we looked at some of the reasons it can be difficult to form relationships with kids from disrupted families.  This week, we are looking at seven things you need to do in order to overcome the barriers and develop lasting relationships with children of divorce and children from separated homes.

1. Know Your Role

In trying to develop a relationship with children of divorce, it is important that you are clear about exactly what your role is. You cannot, nor should you try to, replace a parent who has left and/or abandoned the child. You can be a friend, an advocate, a teacher, a role model, a confidant and so much more, but you will never replace that missing parents. It is important to accept that and establish those boundaries from the get go.

When dealing with hurting kids, it is natural to want to make the pain go away. Unfortunately, that is neither your role nor the best thing for the child of divorce. Dealing with pain is key to grieving process, and one of the worse things you can do is try to “happy up” the child of divorce. Continue reading

H4HK FAQs are designed to answer questions kids and teens ask when facing difficult situations and circumstances in their lives.

When your parents were married to each other, they may have talked about who you remind them of.  Maybe you look like your father or sing like your mother.  Maybe you’re more animated like your father or more analytical like your mother.  Perhaps you’ve picked up some of the habits of your father or mother that remind your parents of what the other was like when they were younger.

After your parents divorce though, these qualities may take on a whole new meaning – one that is less positive and care free.  Maybe your mannerisms remind your mother of your father or vice versa.  If she hasn’t gotten past her anger towards him, your mannerism may begin to rub her the wrong way.  Maybe you’ve heard something like:

“You’re irresponsible and inconsiderate of other people – just like your Father!”

It’s not fair of your mother to put you in that position, but then she isn’t acting like herself these days anyhow.  What can you do when one parent is irritated by your actions or your appearance or your mannerisms just because they remind them of your other parent?

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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. For the last several installments, we have looked at different strategies for dealing with parents from divorced homes. In the coming weeks, we are going to look at developing relationships with children of divorce.  This week, we will examine some of the difficulties inherent in forming such relationships, and in the coming weeks we will look at some strategies you can employ to develop these relationships.

The Importance of Relationships

Relationships are key to any type of ministry. Ultimately, our goal is that the kids in our ministry will form a relationship with Jesus Christ. Toward that end, we endeavor to form relationships with these kids and to afford them opportunities to form relationships with one another. The relationships we develop with the children in our ministries allow us to speak into their lives and to model Christian living for them.

The Difficulty of Forming Relationships With Children of Divorce

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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. Two weeks ago we started a series on issues related to dealing with parents and we identified three different types of divorced parents you are likely to deal with:

• The Warring Parents
• The Absent Parents
• The Other Parent

This week we conclude our series by looking at the Other Parent.

3. The Other Parent

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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. Last week we started a series on issues related to dealing with parents and we identified three different types of divorced parents you are likely to deal with:

• The Warring Parents
• The Absent Parents
• The Other Parent

This week we continue our series by looking at the Absent Parents.

2. The Absent Parent

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H4HK FAQs are designed to answer questions kids and teens ask when facing difficult situations and circumstances in their lives.

When it comes to step and blended families, this question gets asked a lot.  It is difficult living in the same house as someone you don’t really like. In order to answer this question though, we need to think about WHY you don’t like your stepparent.

In my experience, people who don’t like their stepparent fall into one of four categories:

#1: You don’t like your stepparent because they are a genuinely mean or unkind person. This is the category most kids who don’t like their stepparent would likely say they fall into, but in actuality it is the rarest of category and generally not the reason for the friction in the relationship. However, If this is genuinely the case (that your stepparent is mean or unkind), there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it. Unfortunately, you can’t change people overnight. Instead, be respectful and aim for peaceful coexistence (meaning that you may not like him/her but you will at least choose to seek after peace rather than arguing or fighting). Remember that, as your stepmother or stepfather, this person is important to your biological parent even if he/she is not all that important to you. Remember to be respectful in your dealings with your stepparent even when it is hard.  Choose to be respectful because it is the right thing for you to do even if the other person doesn’t necessarily deserve it. Try your best to be loving and kind to them. You never know – you’re actions may impact how they choose to live their life and that act of love or kindness may come back to you and lead to a more healthy relationship.

With that out of the way, we can talk about the other, more likely, reasons that kids don’t get along with their stepparents. Even if you think you into the first group, you need to try to step back and evaluate the situation unemotionally to figure out if it is actually something else driving your dislike for your stepparent. This can be hard, and it might help to ask some people you trust (friends, aunts and uncles, grandparents, etc.) to be honest with you about why they think the conflict exists.

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H4HK FAQs are designed to answer questions kids and teens ask when facing difficult situations and circumstances in their lives.

When your parents separate or divorce, it is a very hard time. However, sometimes it is even harder when your parents remarry.  The world of stepmothers, stepfathers, stepsiblings and half-siblings can be a tough road to navigate and raises a whole host of issues that you will be forced to deal with.  Many times, children and teens find that they don’t care for their parent(s) new partner, and the step-family dynamic becomes difficult if not impossible to deal with.

However, there are cases where kids and teens find they really get along with their parent’s new partner.  Generally, this should make the transition easier, but not always! Sometimes the other parent resents the new relationship you have formed with your other parent’s new wife/husband and holds it against you. Sometimes they will even tell you that you are betraying them by befriending their ex’s (your other parent’s) new spouse. This puts you in a terrible position, and unfortunately it happens more often than you might think.

So, what should you do if you like your parent’s new spouse and your mom/dad is making your life miserable because of it? Here are some ideas:

1. First, understand and accept that you have the right to love both of your parents and the right to get along with your parents’ new spouses if you choose to do that. Your parents should not put you in a position where you feel like you have to choose between one parent and the other or between one of your parents and another parent’s new spouse. It is possible to have relationships with all of them, and ultimately it is up to you parents to understand and accept this. That said, there are some steps you can take to help your parents see the situation more clearly and hopefully adjust to it better so that you are not caught in the middle.
2. Try to understand what your parent is going through. They should not be acting that way, and you don’t have to accept their behavior, but do your best to try to think about the situation from their perspective. If you can understand the pain and the hurt and the fear that they are feeling, you may be able to approach the situation in a more effective way. For example, if their dislike of your new relationship with the other step-parent is driven by fear that they may lose you, you can reassure them that just because you get along with your new step-mom (for example), that she will always be your mother and you don’t love her any less.
3. Have an honest an open conversation with the parent who is having trouble with your relationship with the new stepparent. Try to keep the conversation as unemotional as possible. If you can’t have the conversation without arguing and fighting, consider sending your parent an e-mail or a letter instead.  Explain to them that just because you have a new relationship with your stepparent does not mean that you are replacing them. Explain how they make you feel when they question your loyalty or put down your stepparent. Explain that your relationship with the stepparent is different than your relationship with them and the fact that you have a formed a good relationship with them has made your life better/easier after the divorce.
4. Keep the details to yourself. You should never feel like you have to keep secrets from either of your parents, but it is possible to hold back on sharing all of the details with a parent is struggling to accept your new relationship with your stepparent. If you had a great vacation with your dad and step-mom, by all means, tell your mom about your vacation, but don’t feel like you have to share about how you and your step-mom stayed up until 3:00 AM one morning just laughing and sharing stories.
5. Never ever compare your parent to your stepparent.  Comments like, “You’re not as nice as my new mom (step-mom)” cut like a knife and are just as cruel to your mom as her accusing you of being disloyal.
6. Give it time.  Just like it may have taken you time to finally forge a good relationship with your new stepparent, it may take your mom or dad time to get used to the idea of you having a new “parent figure” in your life.

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