Children’s Ministry and Culture

In a very challenging case for school officials, a 9 year old child (and of course the very accomodating parents) is asking to start dressing like a girl. The school decided to let the other 100 Third Grade families know about the “transition” in a meeting.

About one in 5,000 people is transgender, said Walter O. Bockting, a psychologist and coordinator for transgender health services at the University of Minnesota. Bockting said he sees about 10 children a year who are 9 or younger.

“It’s a little early, but occasionally that happens,” he said.

Not all transgender people have sex-reassignment surgery in adulthood, and such surgeries are not typically performed on children, said Sharon Garcia, president of TransYouth Family Allies, a non-profit group that helped the Chatham Park student and school officials devise a way to explain the situation to parents.

So far, 49 families have contacted TransYouth Family Allies asking for help with a transgender child, Garcia said. Most of the children are between 6 and 10.

See the complete article at http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/chester/20080503_School_challenge__Transgender_student_is_age_9.html where the writer seems to avoid the tabloid topics and has done some pretty thoughtful research. For Children’s Ministries there is an opportunity to share how in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, Male nor Female, while at the same time demonstrating a love that transcends our gut response. We had the same polarizing discussions when AIDS/HIV was discovered among children (should we allow them to be in the same class, let’s have a well-child-policy) and now we are all pretty informed so we can be calm!

What do you think?

I was driving from LAX today listening to NPR and was rivited as I listened to Pamela Paul being interviewed by Steve Inskeep (Morning Edition, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89333925 to listen) sharing the immense variety of products for babies and their parents.

In a separate story today, and one that was confirmed in the interview, there is a rise in babies being breastfed vs. formula fed (reported by Bloomsburg and seen here at the Dallas Morning News http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/050108dnnatbreastfeed.2d136b5.html).  About 77 percent of babies born in 2005 and 2006 were breastfed at least some of the time, up from 60 percent in 1993 and 1994, according to a report today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But I digress, back to the Paul interview…

From wipie warmers (heaven forbid a baby get shocked with a cold one) to pottie training targets for boys (they float in the toilet…though I hardly think a boy NEEDS help in this area) the variety of baby products has significantly increased. Baby Einstein puts a child on autopilot in the same way Sesame Street babysat kids in the 70s and 80s! I like how Paul says, “parents have to assess their motivation when it comes to the things they purchase for their children” to which I respond ABSOLUTELY. An ENGAGED parent will always trump toys or technology!

A record numbers of girls are now taking part in organized sports–1 in 3, according to a new report compiled by the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. That’s up from 1 in 27 girls back in 1972, the year that Title IX mandated equal access for both genders in school sports programs.

Catch the whole article at Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1734837,00.html) because there is a downside in that with more organized sports opportunities there is a rise in girls who are NOT exercising and thus becoming less physically fit.

Laura Flynn, who teaches creative writing at the University of Minnesota (full disclosure, I have two boys and some tuition involved in this great school) has a new book out that is full of great observations about children and the fragile world they often inhabit. Author Laura Flynn writes of her at times luminous, at times agonizing experiences growing up with a mother going gradually insane. Her new book is called “Swallow the Ocean.”

Flynn’s mother suffered from schizophrenia at a time when the disease was not as well known, and authorities were reluctant to split children from their mothers.

For a review check out the Minnesota Public Radio broadcast (http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/04/10/midmorning2/?rsssource=1) but also check out the book in your local library!

A program note from one of the smartest shows on television, FRONTLINE, is a show that you can watch online, if you cannot make the broadcast (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/)

“6 million children are taking psychiatric drugs, but most have never been tested on children. Is this good medicine–or an uncontrolled experiment.”

For children’s ministers our encounters with all children bring us a unique opportunity to consol and comfort parents whose children are out of control or seriously unstable. BUT, we all feel that children are not just little adults. But are they medically?  Knowledge of current best practices is informative and helps us all avoid any extreme. To be informed is to be keenly balanced and helpful!

…BUT, it must show an “all-inclusive approach to sex education.” What does “all-inclusive” include? The curricula should include teachings about abstinence, birth control and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. While this sample size includes only one state (Minnesota) the “n” of the research is broad enough to find significance in the broader population.

1605 parents were surveyed by the University of Minnesota Prevention Research Center (http://www.minnpost.com/client_files/pdfs/ParentSurvey08FactSheet.pdf for the pdf report) and it found that only 10 percent of the 1,605 parents of children ages 5 to 17 interviewed for this study felt students should be taught abstinence exclusively. A whopping 89% felt it should be all inclusive. In fact 81% of parents felt that sex education doesn’t lead to more sex by teenagers! I find this to be accurate. I think most thinking children’s ministers would agree that INCLUDING abstinence is a great thing for children.

Making abstinence EXCLUSIVELY the message seems forced and wrong but is hardly taught. The media would THINK this is what is taught or even forced on the masses by hyperventilating fundies. But it is not. I frankly find it as dishonest a characterization as, say, to hear the actress Kate Walsh from Grey’s Anatomy state “Abstinence is one — abstinence is one aspect of sex education, but it is not the complete aspect. And to expect, I think, everybody to remain abstinent is just — it’s like asking them not to grow. It’s like we don’t ask people to not try out for sports.”

Or George Michael’s odd appearance last night on an episode of Eli Stone (http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2008/03/28/eli_stone_recap_george_michael_comes_to_ for a recap) where he defends a girls protest against an abstinence-only school assembly by playing Michael’s “I Want Your Sex” song over the loud speaker. I was reading while it came on and was totally baffled by the role Michael played of the noble artist-as-ethicist…are you KIDDING ME?

What makes the University of Minnesota study so compelling is because it offers rendolent balance and perspective to what the media often hypes with hyperbole in the two extremes of “abstinence-only” pandered by artists and those outside of the actual hard world of REAL Parenting! But could it be that the media hypes the extreme to EXCUSE its own of what is often the chosen path MOST trod by those same spokespeople?

I love how parents see through the haze of media culture to understand that human sexuality is more than permisiveness and disdain for the chaste.

Two studies by social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canadain appiness correlated with the amount of money people spent on others rather than the absolute amount of the bonus or income.

This is reported today in Science (http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/320/2_) which simply confirms what we’ve long read in the Bible!

Yes, not sex, but Alcohol is the topic that has been shown to be relevant to CHILDREN’S MINISTRY!!! I love that the school my two boys attend is at the forefront of research in this area. I have been negatively affected by the affects of alcohol–one son has undergone treatment and is a case study in what joy comes from recovery, he was Valedictorian of his High School).

University of Minnesota researchers have found distinct differences between sixth-graders who have tried alcohol and those who haven’t, suggesting that prevention programs need to start at earlier ages before these differences emerge.

“By sixth grade, it’s too late,” said Keryn Pasch of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. “We’ll miss many of the at-risk kids.”

Check out your own newspaper on the wire or check here (http://www.twincities.com/ci_8374264?nclick_check=1) but an audio version is at our own Minnesota Public Radio here (http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/02/26/alcohol/)

Pasch was the lead author of a study released Tuesday that reviewed responses by sixth-graders in Chicago-area schools in 2002.

Well, maybe not “culture” per se because it brings up the now ubiquity of Jerry Springer-like “whose your daddy” segments, but the essay is instructive and thought provoking nonetheless. Yesterday’s essay in the Wall Street Journal by Christine Rosen from the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington D.C. was a well argued observation on the rise of infidelity by marriageless couples (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120364879653285103.html?mod=todays_us_weekend_journal). Notice what she says about TRUST and “indulging our doubts”! This is why much of our “trends” discussed in this blog touch on technology that might reveal fear, doubt or something else that is not benign. Listen to what she says,

“There are some questions raised by paternity testing that even the most devoted ethicists (and marriage counselors) might have trouble answering. These tests are really tests of trust. And like many modern technologies of suspicion, such as GPS tracking devices and software that secretly tracks the keystrokes on another person’s computer — they make it very easy, perhaps too easy, to indulge our doubts about our significant others.

Perhaps the growing interest in paternity testing reveals a broader cultural anxiety about fidelity in contemporary society, an anxiety exacerbated by the fact that an increasing number of parents bear and rear children outside the institution of marriage. Adam Phillips, a British psychotherapist who has published a book of pithy observations on monogamy, writes: “Not everyone believes in monogamy, but everyone lives as though they do. . . . Believing in monogamy, in other words, is not unlike believing in God.” In the church of monogamy there are many secret heretics. New technologies might help us discover infidelity with more accuracy and convenience, but they are unlikely to solve the more vexing and timeless dilemma of why we stray.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22813400/

“A new study shows that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are almost four times as likely as others to be bullies. And, in an intriguing corollary, the children with ADHD symptoms were almost 10 times as likely as others to have been regular targets of bullies prior to the onset of those symptoms, according to the report in the February issue of the journal Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology.”