Special Needs Ministries
We have dealt with special needs children for almost 13 years. Of course, we did not know about it the first five years. Following the diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrom and ADHD with our oldest son, I started to work on a guide for churches in working with special needs individuals. Why? Because the two churches that I had served at during those first five years did not handle things well. I communicated with parents of other special needs children and learned that very few churches are very welcoming to families of those with special needs.
We were very happy when the children's minister from our current church contacted us prior to moving here to ask how they could help educate the children's workers about the special needs of our two boys. She found many articles and books about working with special needs children and held a special meeting with the various workers to describe a plan for dealing with the individual needs they would encounter.
Not everything has continued along that same path. We have several other special needs children who have some more severe needs. Most of the ministries work well with these children, but some would rather not deal with them at all. While our oldest son is now doing well in the youth ministry at our church, another special needs child has entered the youth and they are not equipped for dealing with his issues. He used to have a personal aide who helped him throughout all of the Children's ministries. Another child with Asperger's Syndrome has promoted from preschool to children's choir and the leaders do not know what to do with him. He is very disruptive and will not cooperate with them.
Unfortunately, the attitude of the church is often to remove the distraction (which takes away from the ministry opportunities for the child) or to require that a parent remain with them (which takes away from the ministry opportunities to the parents).
As I have been struggling with how to encourage our choir leaders to find a successful method for involving their disruptive child, I got to get a little experience of my own during the Homeschool Children's Choir today. We had a little boy who came today for the first time and acted out his nervousness by making rasberries and other distracting noises throughout the class. His mother was attempting to get him involved in the activities as well as removing him several times when he was too disruptive. She felt bad, but was very thankful that we simply continued with what we were doing without drawing attention to his actions.
The questions that the parents of neurologically typical children often ask are:
How do we balance ministry to all with the distractions of special needs? Extra workers, better training about dealing with individual special needs and patient, loving teachers. It was nice to hear that Sarah Palin plans to be an advocate in the White House for all special needs families, but the church should have been the first and it needs to be the loudest advocate for these families and their children. "Jesus loves the little chidren."
We were very happy when the children's minister from our current church contacted us prior to moving here to ask how they could help educate the children's workers about the special needs of our two boys. She found many articles and books about working with special needs children and held a special meeting with the various workers to describe a plan for dealing with the individual needs they would encounter.
Not everything has continued along that same path. We have several other special needs children who have some more severe needs. Most of the ministries work well with these children, but some would rather not deal with them at all. While our oldest son is now doing well in the youth ministry at our church, another special needs child has entered the youth and they are not equipped for dealing with his issues. He used to have a personal aide who helped him throughout all of the Children's ministries. Another child with Asperger's Syndrome has promoted from preschool to children's choir and the leaders do not know what to do with him. He is very disruptive and will not cooperate with them.
Unfortunately, the attitude of the church is often to remove the distraction (which takes away from the ministry opportunities for the child) or to require that a parent remain with them (which takes away from the ministry opportunities to the parents).
As I have been struggling with how to encourage our choir leaders to find a successful method for involving their disruptive child, I got to get a little experience of my own during the Homeschool Children's Choir today. We had a little boy who came today for the first time and acted out his nervousness by making rasberries and other distracting noises throughout the class. His mother was attempting to get him involved in the activities as well as removing him several times when he was too disruptive. She felt bad, but was very thankful that we simply continued with what we were doing without drawing attention to his actions.
The questions that the parents of neurologically typical children often ask are:
- Why must my child be subjected to these kinds of distractions?
- Why can't the parents make their child behave?
- Why can't special needs children have their own classes?
How do we balance ministry to all with the distractions of special needs? Extra workers, better training about dealing with individual special needs and patient, loving teachers. It was nice to hear that Sarah Palin plans to be an advocate in the White House for all special needs families, but the church should have been the first and it needs to be the loudest advocate for these families and their children. "Jesus loves the little chidren."
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