For Parents and Ministry Leaders and Volunteers
If you are working with children in ministry, you may want to take a look at this blog post.
If you are working in disability ministry, you may want to take a look at this writing.
If you are a parent, you may want to take a look at this blog post.
If you babysit, you may want to take a look at this writing.
First, we will start off with some stories. Check out the stories of Jacob, Joshua, Preston, & Amy.
Jacob
Jacob is brilliant and also very rigid in his thinking. If it is not logical to him, it is not to be done. If a teacher or leader or another child is doing something that does not make sense in his black or white only perspective, he really has a hard time. The behavior he sometimes displays is impatience, rudeness, meltdowns. He cannot work his way out of an “It should be done like this” way of thinking.
Concern: Rigid thinking
Solution 1: Be willing to go the extra mile to teach and explain often with patience that different ways of thinking and doing things are okay. In a gentle but firm way explain that so and so is doing things differently but it is not wrong. It is not bad. It is just different.
Solution 2: Take that teaching to the next level with digital recordings, social stories, or visual charts.
Make a recording or social story with a script for the parents to discuss with the child away from church time.
Digital Recordings or Social Story
The script could go something like this: “Sometimes when I go to AWANA the teacher wants me to do a project (play a game, stand in a line, play with toys, work on my verse, etc.). I will listen to (Mr. or Mrs. (teacher). It is okay if it is different than the way I would do it. It is okay if the kids do their projects differently than I do. I am learning to be kind and to accept a different way. It is okay. It is good.”
Note: This is usually not a one and done project. Be willing to keep kindly sharing the script until the information takes hold in new behavior.
Visual Charts
Set up a visual chart with detailed information on how you want this child to respond. Bring the child back to the chart multiple times.
**Always remember you are teaching life skills, social skills.
**Always affirm the child but teach him or her to allow for others’ ways and ideas.
Joshua
Joshua is a child very sensitive to his world. Lights are often too bright. Sounds are often too loud. Even the slightest hints of perfumes or gasoline or cleaning chemicals or children’s markers are too smelly. Wall art – floor displays, simple touches are too much. This is a child whose world is overwhelming. He has sensory overload 24/7.
This makes it hard to focus. Hard to concentrate. You know when a loud noise like a car alarm is beeping loudly for a while, or when you are in a dark room and someone turns on a bright light, or when someone left the garbage open in the hot air too long — those things can make you crazy, can’t they? Well, some children experience every-day, normal sights, sounds, smells, and touches just like that.
Even just ONE of these things would be enough to put you in a bad mood or make you nervous and maybe even make you lash out.
Any one of these sensory overloads can cause a child to have difficult behavior. You may see meltdowns, or major irritations, hitting, biting, hands over the ears, complaints about smells, and it could all be due to sensory overload.
So, what can you do? Try these ideas:
Solution 1: dim the lights if possible.
Solution 2: keep the visual stimuli to a minimum if possible
Solution 3: keep noise reduction headphones available and offer them to a child
Solution 4: keep physical touch to a minimum
Solution 5: ask others to not wear perfume or cologne/aftershave
Solution 6: do not burn scented candles or use scented air fresheners
Preston
Preston has ants in his pants or so it seems. He is extremely hyper – very active. He flits from one focus to another. He has a hard time keeping to task. He is a smart and sweet kid with unbounded energy. This child may have ADHD, another diagnosis, or no diagnosis. He is moving all the time.
Solution 1: an exercise ball for sitting
Solution 2: a squeeze ball or another fidget to fiddle with in his pockets
Solution 3: keep him involved in the busy things
Solution 4: do not require him to sit still for any length of time
Solution 5: give him important responsibilities to keep him focused on the activity
Amy
Our Amy has a pretty significant hearing loss. She is amazingly talented at reading lips and does her very best to interpret body language, but there are times when she misses what’s going on around her and she is greatly disappointed by this. So, we have learned how to communicate with people to help the experience to be a positive one. We have also taught Amy to advocate for herself by sharing these things:
Concern: Hearing loss
Solution 1: Position so she can read lips
Solution 2: Make sure she “caught” the instructions you gave
Solution 3: Ask the hard of hearing or deaf person or their parents and friends for ideas
Solution 4: Keep checking with the person to let her know she is important to you.
Regarding any child or adult who is struggling to participate, keep up, or fully engage, we always ask, “How can we make it work? “
Let’s be willing to find a solution.
Other symptoms that are common when parenting or working with children are
- Overwhelm
- Trauma triggers
- Non-compliance
- Hyperactivity
Let’s look into gaining a little more insight about these and some possible solutions.
Overwhelm: We have found in our own experiences that when children are overwhelmed, they have a number of reactions to that.
They may become:
- Defiant
- Silly
- Anxious
They may have:
- Difficulty focusing
- A Meltdown
- A Shutdown (looking for a place to hide, closed off to any instructions, head down)
What may be causing the overwhelm? What can you do?
It may be something as simple as the lights being too bright or the sounds being too loud. And we can make accommodations for those.
Some tools:
Noise reduction headphones
Dim the lights or bring in lamps and turn off fluorescents
Trauma triggers: It may be that this child has experienced some kind of trauma and there is a trigger. Once you know the trigger, you can be proactive in avoiding that trigger or at least guiding the child through.
Examples:
One child I know completely fell apart when he heard the word “no.”
Another trigger could be that a child is a perfectionist. If they cannot do something perfect, they fall apart.
Another trigger could be a denial of a snack. Somewhere in their past, they may have been chronically hungry and undernourished. A testimony from Julie: When I was Pre-K coordinator at our church, I knew that a lot of the families who were bringing children to us were doing foster care. I made it a policy that if any child asked for a snack, I would make sure it was provided.
You can also use some of the tools under hyperactive children for trauma triggers.
Non-compliance: Sometimes non-compliance is a direct result of a sinful nature and it is pure disobedience. We all have this tendency from time to time. However, oftentimes what looks like disobedience or defiance can really be hidden disability or trauma.
Either way, there are some strategies that you can employ that may take care of both underlying causes. And in both cases, it takes a great deal of grace.
So, we encourage you to not be judgmental, instead make it a point to get to know the child and have a toolbox of ideas that you can utilize.
- Distract them with a kind word, an invitation to take a walk, etc.
- Give the child a special job (however simple – make a big deal out of how important it is)
- Find another way for them to memorize their verses so that they do not feel like a failure
- Make a puzzle out of the verse and give them credit if they put the puzzle together
- Let them act out the verse and give them credit
Hyperactive: Children who have an abundance of energy often also get distracted easily. A good way to understand these children is to think of an astronaut. When an astronaut is in space, he or she has zero gravity. These children often need help bringing them back to earth.
Helpful support:
- Pressure vest,
- weighted lap pad,
- weighted stuffed animal, AND
- Fidgets for the pockets
You may also want to create a SENSORY STATION that all of the children can explore at some time during your time together because all children profit from sensory opportunities and the ones who have sensory issues may be calmed.
- Water beads – pre-covid people would have been comfortable with one bin for all, but in these sensitive times, you may need to make individual baggies of water beads or have them in separate containers for each child.
- Rice or birdseed with buried treasures i.e. small plastic trucks, animals, sea creatures, etc.
- Pressure vest, weighted lap pad, weighted stuffed animal
- Fidgets for the pockets
There are so many other ideas available to help calm the chaos.
We hope that you will try out some of these tried and true solutions to give the children who struggle a chance to engage, participate, and belong to your community.
Let’s create environments where all children can be successful!
If you would like to have a conversation to brainstorm how you might implement some of these ideas, we are here for you. Email us at Champions4Parents@gmail.com or text us at 410-746-9010 and let us know your desire to connect. We can meet by email, telephone, Zoom or in person if you are local to Central Virginia.
Much love,
Tom & Julie Meekins
CONNECT WITH US:
We invite you to connect with Tom, Julie, and Amy through:
Email: champions4parents@gmail.com
Phone: 410-746-9010 (Voice or Text)
Facebook: facebook.com/Champions4Parents
Don’t forget our website: Champions4Parents.com
And check out Amy’s websites at
AmyChristineMeekins.com
Amystories.wixsite.com/heartrecharge
If you would like to support us financially as we provide love and support to Parents and Caregivers as well as Ministry Folks who serve families impacted by disability, we invite you to our donor page on our website: Champions4Parents.com/giving
