Children’s Ministry and Culture

I just read the marvelous article by Jennifer Buell (Meet My Son: A Mom’s Insight on how your ministry can welcome children with special needs, p. 60ff in the Jan/Feb issue of Children’s Ministry Magazine) and was really excited about the topic and how it demonstrated truth. We definitely need to be a church as large as ONE and as small as ONE! I was ashamed at my own lack of sensitivity and compelled to change when I read Jennifer’s hint, “include my child”, listen to what she says:

One of my deepest frustrations is people who either let my son roam aimlessly around the room, not even trying to include him, or try to physically restrain him until he works into a fit of hysterics.

Read this article (and email me for the PDF if you want to feature it in your newsletter or on your website at kjohnson@group.com) FANTASTIC job and one that gives us all a firm grasp on how to reach “the least of these.”

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.”

I read a very informative article in Sunday’s New York Times that I’ve been thinking about for a few days. Don’t you love those stories, or arguments, or novel insights that can’t seem to shake from your mind? Well, I noticed today that it was THE MOST EMAILED article for the estimable NYTimes! What was it?

  Your Child’s Disorder May be Yours Too! 

I suppose that it is pretty normal to observe tendencies in your children that you had growing up. I know I do. But the remarkable tendency today is that with so many new diagnoses providing so much hope for children, they are also giving their PARENTS some degree of solace that maybe that was why they were cranky, or disorganized, or allergic to human interaction. Here’s one illustration,

 John Halpern, 76, a retired physicist living in Massachusetts, began to review his own life not long after hearing a radio interview with an expert on Asperger’s syndrome. He immediately recognized himself as a textbook case, he said, and decided to call his daughter, whom he hadn’t spoken to in 10 years. He wanted to apologize, he said, “for my inadequacy as both a father and a husband to her mother.”  

But as soon as he started explaining, he said, his daughter cut him off. “That’s Asperger’s,” she told him. “She knew,” he said. “She had been looking into it herself, wondering if in fact I had it.”  Mr. Halpern said that over several calls they shared feelings and agreed “to work on our new relationship and see how far we can take it.”

The two now talk regularly, at least once a week, he said. 

 The guilt this illustrates is shared between adults. But what happens if it is shared much earlier in the life of a child or siblings? Good stuff to ponder when you work with special needs children and the parents who say, “is it my fault,” which of course it is not. But Also good stuff to ponder when you confront a parent who realizes that their children are just like they were! 

Percentage of Students who spend 60% or more of their day outside of their regular (mainstreamed) classroom shows a significant decline since 1989. But there is one group who doesn’t like this trend and they are bucking Special Education Advocacy Groups. Who are these difficult people? Parents! See the full story at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119610348432004184.html?mod=todays_us_page_one but I want to highlight two rather important graphs from the Dept. of Education mentioned in the front page article of the Wall Street Journal.

This graphic shows the significant increase in children aged 6 to 21 receiving education services for the disabled since 1989. But the US Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs notes the following trend to mainstream by type (I had to scrunch it to fit, so you might not be able to read, but the top line is “Developmental Delay” then “Specific Learning Disabilities” then “Traumatic Brain Injury” then “Emotional Disturbances” then “Autism” then “Deaf/Blindness” then “Mental Retardation” then “Multiple Disabilities”):

This is perhaps the most significant area where Children’s Ministers can create either separate or Mainstream environments for children with special needs. The TYPE of need seems to indicate the capacity to be helpful!

I got the following from my colleague Ruth Pape (formerly the Children’s & Youth Pastor at Woodmen Valley Chapel in Colorado Springs) and it was really very helpful for those of us who LIVE and breathe on our cell phone! 

THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW YOUR CELL PHONE COULD DO.

There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies.
Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival.
Check out the things that you can do with it:

FIRST: Emergency
The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112.
If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked.

SECOND: Have you locked your keys in the car?
Does your car have remote keyless entry?
This may come in handy someday.
Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone.

Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end.

Your car will unlock.
Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you.
Distance is no object.
You could be hundreds of miles away and if you can reach someone who has the other “remote” for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).

Editor’s Note: It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a cell phone!”
THIRD: Hidden Battery Power
Imagine your cell battery is very low. To activate - press the keys *3370#.
Your cell will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery.
This reserve will get charged when you charge your cell next time.

FOURTH: How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone?
To check your Mobile phone’s serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: * # 0 6 #  A 15 digit code will appear on the screen.

This number is unique to your handset.
Write it down and keep it somewhere safe.
If your phone is stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code.
They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless.

You probably won’t get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can’t use/sell it either.
If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.

And finally…

FIFTH: Directory assistance
Cell phone companies are charging us $1.00 to $1.75 or more for 411 information calls when they don’t have to.
Most of us do not carry a telephone directory in our vehicle, which makes this situation even more of a problem.
When you need to use the 411 information option, simply dial: (800) FREE 411, or (800) 373-3411 without incurring any charge at all.

Program this into your cell phone now.

The American Enterprise Insititue for Public Policy Research recently held a symposium on the topic of Women and Science and one of the leading experts on Autism (Simon Baron-Cohen) from Cambridge University gave a very interesting keynote address (see the transcript here http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.1536/transcript.asp).

Now I have written before on the dubious science related to Autism (that it is caused by thermiosol in vaccines…it is not) and even had to endure a Larry King Live segment last week while a breathless Pediatrician seemed to favor “the parents” over clear science (Jenny McCarthy’s pushing a book http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/09/24/jenny.autism/). Now I am not so insensitive not to believe this is clearly an emotional topic on a cruel disease, but hype and emotions are unhelpful when dealing with children and their future.

Enter Dr. Baron-Cohen, who is Director of the Autism Research Center at Cambridge. He states, “If you take classic autism it’s about 4 males to 1 female, Asperger syndrome, the high-functioning subgroup that we hear a lot about these days, 9 males to 1 female.  So, something about being male affects the likelihood of receiving a diagnosis on the autistic spectrum.”

This is what is hugely helpful, Baron-Cohen continutes, “the autistic personality is an extreme variant of male intelligence.” Read that again! That’s right, Autism is maleness writ large! Highly fixated on objects and organization, less on emotions and socialization. Read his 40 minute talk (it’ll take you 10 minutes, which is why I hate to listen to speeches, they simply BORE the living daylight out of me).

As a children’s minister, this is a growing opportunity for us to make a remarkable difference in these special children! And help their parents navigate the choices between the Oprah-esque sensational “findings” of distraught parents who love their child but are incapable of accepting a condition that merely illustrates “fearfully and wonderfully made” in the extreme.

Dr. Baron-Cohen concludes, “rather than thinking of them as categorically unrelated to the rest of us in the population, we may start to think about autism as simply an extreme variation of individual differences that exist in the population.” But he also states that hormones are not proven to be causal (there is a genetic correlation) nor can this be openly studied yet because there would need to be a huge study population in utero, which is prohibitive as no test exists to detect autism prior to birth.

The Supreme Court Justices affirmed a ruling that requires New York City schools to reimburse a wealthy businessman for private special education for his son.

The justices split 4-4 on the case, which means a lower court ruling siding with former Viacom executive Tom Freston remains in place. Justice Anthony Kennedy didn’t participate in the case and the court’s two-sentence statement gave no explanation for Justice Kennedy’s absence.

Lower courts had sided with Mr. Freston against city schools, saying the city must pay for education for the learning-disabled student, even when his parents enrolled him in private school after deciding public schools were unable to meet the child’s needs.

The New York City’s board of education had asked the justices to take the case after a lower court said tuition reimbursement is available to the parents under the Individuals With Disabilities Act.

Lawyers for the boy’s parents said the special education program proposed by the public school system was inadequate to meet the child’s needs, prompting his parents to send him to a private school. The parents say that under federal law, they may challenge inappropriate proposals and obtain reimbursement for the costs of placement in private school.

Larry has co-authored the excellent book, Special Needs, Special Ministry: for Children’s Ministry and his chapter (11) “Case Study: The Wrap-Around Model–A New Opportunity for Children’s Ministries”  and I read today at http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/article/2007/10/05/fasd-bringing-it-home.html about how one professor at the Univ. of Minnesota has assisted one family get help for their kids (adopted from Russia) with the available local family services. Here is more information for the children’s minister to be helpful and a great shepherd!

The 1975 landmark special-education law, now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, forced school systems to provide “free appropriate” public education for children with special needs. You took your children to Public Schools and if they had special needs, THEY decided what measures to take to provide appropriate education. First you had to try their solution, then you looked for one on your own.

The case being brought up today (Board of Education of City of New York v. Tom F., Docket No. 06-637) takes issue with the choice school districts have to provide as “appropriate” education. What school districts have historically done is to mainstream them. In 1990 33% of kids were mainstreamed compared to 54% today.

There are more than 6 million special education students in the United States and 88,000 of those are in private schools or in a private residential facility at public expense. This “appropriate” litmus test is what schools are fighting in the current case before the Supreme Court (see http://www.nsba.org/site/doc_cosa.asp?VID=50&CID=442&DID=40307 for what schools perceive to be their choice, not the parents). For any parent who fights for their children, for children’s ministers who wrestle with the choice to mainstream or provide personal attention or both, this is an important issue.

See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119119804628944307.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace for more detail.

I am reprinting the following letter to the editor in this morning’s Wall Street Journal because it must be read by every Children’s Minister who has a heart for children with special needs. Recently I’ve been highlighting a trend to bash men who work with or are around children. Read this and rethink your own position:

Ten of the most anxious minutes I’ve spent recently occurred outside the men’s room in New York’s Grand Central Station. As I waited for my 16-year-old “special needs” son to emerge, I found myself profiling the men waiting in the extra-long line to enter the restroom: Which one could I safely ask to see if my son was OK? The tall guy with the impressive dreds? The older man in the impeccable suit, carrying a smart briefcase? The pair in coveralls, conversing in a language I couldn’t place? Standing there, undoubtedly telegraphing my anxiety to everyone near me, I came to the realization that at least half the men in line were probably dads and that all of them probably just needed to use the restroom for its intended purpose. I reflected on the many times I’d waited for my son outside men’s rooms, ever since he grew too old to smuggle into the ladies’ room. Once, at a restaurant, I had to enter an otherwise unoccupied men’s room to help my son. Of course, several men came in; all of them merely laughed at finding a woman and calmly went to stalls as I whisked my son away from the hand-drier and out the door. I hoped the father of a special-needs daughter would garner as much good-humored sympathy if the situation were reversed.

So, to all the good guys out there who, instead of taking unseemly advantage of my boy, politely look the other way when he exposes too much in front of the urinal, or help him with an unfamiliar faucet or the maddening motion-sensitive towel dispenser, or even wait a bit after you’ve finished to make sure no other guy threatens him: Thanks. You make the world OK for us.

Jean Scott
Branford, Conn.

Thank you Jean : )