Children’s Ministry and Culture

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!

“Personal Technology” columnist, Walter S. Mossberg, in today’s Wall Street Journal, reviews the new web filter for squemish parents (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120597536349250547.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace).

This week marks the launch of a parental-control service with a somewhat different approach. It’s called KidZui, and it aims to offer kids a safe subset of the Internet where they can roam freely without triggering parental worry. KidZui, for children ages 3 to 12, hopes to emphasize the positive, rather than the negative.

The service, from a San Diego company of the same name, claims to encompass 500,000 safe sites, photos and videos, ranging from pop culture to science, comics and games to history. You can watch the latest “American Idol” contestant, learn about dinosaurs, delve into history or visit popular kids’ sites, such as Webkinz and Club Penguin.

He comments, ” did find some holes in this system. For instance, I was able to get to The Wall Street Journal’s Web site and do an internal search on “Spitzer,” which turned up a story on the former New York governor’s sex scandal.

Parents can get detailed reports about the KidZui activities of each of their children and can tweak the content they can see by adding specific types of material, such as “athletic violence,” and approving or blocking specific Web sites.

For parents who want to allow limited Web use by their young children without constantly micromanaging their online activities, KidZui may be worth a try, but don’t expect it to be perfect.”

I’ve never been “that kind of parent” who has filters feeling that to “HIDE is not to GUIDE.” Instead we have the computer in a public area, my office, and routinely monitor use (homework searches, updating facebook, etc.).

I have to say, after reading today Group’s Emergency Response Handbook for Children’s Ministry what an amazing job our own Larry Shallenberger did! You can see in Google Books some of the content (http://books.google.com/books?id=B0C19xEq078C&pg=PA160&dq=group%27s+emergency+response+handbook&sig=6Am23PU6MLVx0X43pn_455GJIc4#PPA7,M1)

His contribution to this must-have resource is in the chapter on “Abuse: Supporting Children Who Are Suffering” (Chapter 1), “Depression: Supporting Children In The Darkness” (Chapter 5) and “Tragic Personal Loss: Supporting Children and Families Struck by Tragedy” (Chapter 12). Larry has given some extremely helpful “Ministry Tips” that will give many on the front lines of ministry compassionate and effective tools!

Good Job Larry!

An elementary school about 5 miles from my home in Minnesota has installed state-of-the-art security in the elementary school that is all the buzz. What I like and note to be somewhat different is classroom windows that do not open (thus no one can get in, but underground HVAC requires it–a unique “green” feature), doors locked except for one, 23 cameras that record 24 hours a day and one entrance and line-of-sight innovations that keep kids in eye contact most of the time. Read about the school here (http://www.startribune.com/west/story/1572425.html)

Abigail Gewirtz, an assistant professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota says, “One of the most important, if not the most important task, of childhood, early childhood to middle childhood, is learning to control to regulate your own behavior.”

(The post is here http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=268519) but I have to admit, this is my favorite time of the year and I have ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over myself : )

So Gewirtz says Halloween is a great time to teach kids self control.

She says negotiate how many pieces of candy they can have each day. “Bring your kids on board. Listen to what they’re saying. Build a mutually respectful environment where they learn that you’ll help them if they can’t control themselves.”

Today at the Summit, about 50 large church children’s pastors (Keith, how did I get in?(Grace is upper-mid) spent several  hours brainstorming what the security measures at that they had in place at their churches. Without effort, these churches tallied 71 different measures that they had in place to ensure the safety of children, ranging from background checks t0 having hired off-duty police officers in the hallways.

My next step is the creation of a hospilality team that will create another level of staffing in the hallway. Their presence will help us intervene if a child slips out of a classroom. And they will also be able to approach an adult loitering in the hallway (”Can I help you.”)

 A few impressions from the day:

•  These measures are necessary, but it makes decentralized, off-campus ministry more difficult.
• It’s not enough to be a safe ministry, but we must also project the image of being safe. (And we can’t present that image if it isn’t true).
• There’s a parent educatation piece to this. A church can have a “wellness policy” and children will still occasionally get ill. 
• Children’s pastors are simply the most amazing people.  

The good folk at www.childrensministry.com post this link http://www.abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=3621974&page=1.

Mattel is not the only toy supplier that has had an issue with toys made with lead. Oriental Trading, a popular supplier for children’s ministries everywhere was named in this ABC news story.  

It’s been a month since I wrote about Jeffrey Zaslow’s “Moving On” column in the Wall Street Journal and today (9/6/2007) he follows up his observations with some ways two groups have coped with this that I found to be very informative for the Children’s Minister (www.wsj.com for a fee).

 Big Brothers Big Sisters of America does criminal background checks on each of its 250,000 volunteers and has social workers assess them. Since 1990 the group says that it has had fewer than 10 abuse allegations per year. WOW! But of course 98% of the alleged abusers were male. Now stop there…that statistic could cause us to AVOID using men but listen to this quote: “If we wanted to make sure we never had a problem, one approach would be to just become Big Sisters–to say we won’t serve boys,” says Mack Koonce, the group’s chief operating officer. But of course, that would deny hundreds of thousands of boys contact with male mentors.

The Boy Scouts of America now has elaborate rules to prevent both abuse and false accusations. There are 1.2 million Scout leaders, and the organization kicks out about 175 of them a year over abuse allegations or for violating policies. The policies are intricate. For instance, four adult leaders are needed for each outing. If a sick child must go home, two adults drive him and two stay with the others, so no adult is ever alone with a scout.

Great cautions, and very wise balance!

I took a late flight tonight to Dallas and was transfixed by an article in page D1 of the August 23, 2007 issue of the Wall Street Journal by the “Moving On” columnist Jeff Zaslow (here for a fee http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118782905698506010.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal) that was as amazing in it’s exposure of the outcome of a frankly common practice of excluding men in the lives of children.

Look at this:

Now what if that same ad (by the Virginia Department of Health) were placed around your church? Is it overboard? Does it create a deeply one-sided sense of safety at the expense of balance? We don’t allow men to change babies diapers in our nurseries and Zaslow states that airlines do not sit unaccompanied minors next to men.

In Michigan, the North Macomb Soccer Club has a policy that at least one female parent must always sit on the sidelines, to guard against any untoward behavior by male coaches. In Churchville, Pa., soccer coach Barry Pflueger says young girls often want a hug after scoring a goal, but he refrains. Even when girls are injured, “you must comfort them without touching them, a very difficult thing to do,” he says. “It saddens me that this is what we’ve come to.”

TV shows, including the Dateline NBC series “To Catch a Predator,” hype stories about male abusers. Now social-service agencies are also using controversial tactics to spread the word about abuse. This summer, Virginia’s Department of Health mounted an ad campaign for its sex-abuse hotline. Billboards featured photos of a man holding a child’s hand. The caption: “It doesn’t feel right when I see them together.”

More than 200 men emailed complaints about the campaign to the health department. “The implication is that if you see a man holding a girl’s hand, he’s probably a predator,” says Marc Rudov, who runs the fathers’ rights site TheNoNonsenseMan.com. “In other words, if you see a father out with his daughter, call the police.”

“The number of men who will hurt a child is tiny compared to the population,” says Benjamin Radford, who researches statistics on predators and is managing editor of the science magazine Skeptical Inquirer. “Virtually all of the time, if a child is lost or in trouble, he will be safe going to the nearest male stranger.”

What do you think? We read this past week that Blacks are more than 60% of all murder victims in the US so this same logic would try to eliminate guns for this population sub group.

Child-welfare groups say these are necessary precautions, given that most predators are male. But fathers’ rights activists and educators now argue that an inflated predator panic is damaging men’s relationships with kids. Some men are opting not to get involved with children at all, which partly explains why many youth groups can’t find male leaders, and why just 9% of elementary-school teachers are male, down from 18% in 1981.

What do you think?

Mattel (El Segundo, CA company www.mattel.com) announced yesterday that they are recalling an unusually high amount of toys due to high levels of lead paint from one of their suppliers in China. Among the products being recalled are Giggle Grabber Soccer Elmo, Chef Dora, Rev & Go Cookie Monster and dozens of others involving popular Sesame Street and Nickelodeon characters. Elmo, in particular, has been one of Fisher-Price’s most popular franchises.