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Linda Ranson Jacobs is one of the forefront leaders in the areas of children and divorce and single-parent family needs. More about Linda |
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Equipping local churches for ministry to the children of divorce. |
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The data is in, and the news for kids is not good. There has been another jump in the percentage of children living in single parent homes. In the United States, 35% of all children now live in single parent homes. Stunningly, that number is even higher in some states– over 40% in seven states reaching a high of 48% in Mississippi. Utah has Read more…
Our guest blogger today is Jenny Funderburke. Jenny is a Children’s Minister in Bradenton, FL. She is raising three little girls. She understands single mamas as you will read in her post below. She nails it about the single mamas and the lack of attention in churches. Thanks Jenny for sharing your blog with our readers. As I’ve walked through my “new normal”, Read more…
Recently Brian Dollar, a Children’s Pastor and blogger, wrote on the subject of posting on Social Media and tweeting. The “T.H.I.N.K. Before You Post/Tweet” had some excellent ideas in it. Brian is also a friend of mine and he has given me permission to use excerpts from his post but really everyone should go to Brian’s site and read the entire post. Here Read more…
In the previous post I shared the boundaries and conditions of my 15 year-old great nephew living in my home. In this post I’d like to share with you the outcome of him becoming part of my family. If you are church leaders or you work with children who might be living with grandparents or other relatives, please share this post with them. Read more…
It was my great nephew and he was in a lot of trouble. I think he thought I’d be a push over. I mean in his eyes I was his great aunt, gray and old! Boy did life ever change for that boy! I may have been his great aunt, gray and old but the lights hadn’t gone out yet. Plus I had Read more…
It can be confusing for anyone ministering to the child of divorce and or divorcing parents. Following are questions children’s ministers in particular have asked me. Is there a formula that is used when deciding custody and visitation? Do all states have the same rules when it comes to child custody? What is legal co-parenting? What is shared parenting? What does sole custody Read more…
Recently I published a blog about grieving a death vs grieving a divorce. While that post concentrated on helping the child of divorce grieve, I heard from many people wanting tips for helping a child grieve the death of a loved one as well. The organization, Church Initiative, which supports this blog, has several incredible curriculums to equip churches minister to people in crisis. Read more…
Many children that have experienced some type of trauma will have challenging behaviors. This is particularly true for the child of divorce. These children that come across as being mean or hurtful many times need help regulating their behavior. How do you help a child like this? I have a strategy to help. As a bonus, this technique is a great tool to use to deepen Read more…
Mentoring children to manage and handle their emotions is something many of us haven’t thought much about before. Most of us assume kids pick up how to display their emotions from their parents. Few people have ever seriously thought about being a mentor to their child and his or her feelings. How can a single dad or mom be an emotional mentor when Read more…
I’m fairly sure that most people will shout, “NO! Kids should never be kicked out of church.” And yet, that seems to be happening more and more. I don’t mean that leaders are intentionally kicking kids out of church permanently, but many are asking the child to leave a class for a week or two. To the child, it is it feels like being Read more…
Moving is hard any way you label it. Recently we moved into a new home. Now I’m an adult and I understand in my mind the logistics of moving. I know things must be packed up and carted to the other home I know about packing and unpacking so things don’t get broke I know to be organized so things don’t get out of Read more…
We all know that divorce hurts individual families but are you aware that it can eventually hurt the church family too? When families become dysfunctional and divorce is on the horizon, strange things happen within the church family. Split loyalties First of all there are split loyalties. It’s as if no one is sure of which part of the couple they want to Read more…
The term “broken home” is used to describe a home where only one parent is raising the children. You might fairly question if there is a big difference between broken homes and single-parent homes. I mean after all, don’t both kinds of homes have only one parent? There is a big difference in a fractured, broken home and a single parent family: A single parent Read more…
The answer is that of course, children of divorce are lonelier. I want to explain why, as the answer goes beyond the obvious– that only one parent is in the home. Childhood is supposed to be a happy time Little children are not supposed to be stressed, worried or lonely but we have thousands of children that don’t fit into that mold today. Many Read more…
In Part I and Part II about elementary age kids cutting and self-harming we explored: The increase in self-harm Why they cut and self-harm How to recognize the signs of children who might become engaged in self-harming. In this post, let’s take a look at what to actually look for in a child that is self-harming and how you can help. Keep in mind Read more…
In my previous post, I alerted you to the increase of self-harm and cutting among elementary age children. This post explores why children self-harm and recognizing the signs of self-injury. Cutting and other forms of self-harm helps kids deal with frightening feelings they don’t understand and have no way of expressing in words. In other words developmentally they don’t have the language to express Read more…
This might seem like a strange question to many of us especially for people who work with and minister to children. Is it really possible that young children want to self-insure or hurt their own bodies? Most of us have heard about teenagers that cut and self-harm but how many of you have dealt with an elementary age child who is cutting? I Read more…
There are a lot of negative statistics about children in divorced homes. While these stats may be true, they may lead you to conclude that the children who come from these homes are set up for failure. It doesn’t have to be that way, and in many cases, it is not. When I first became a single mom my kids were 12 and 8 years of Read more…
This is a question that comes up quite often when I’m visiting with a children’s minister or a church leader. Many times the grandparent doesn’t actually ask for help but the church leader can sense the grandparent is struggling. First: Begin praying for the grandparent as soon as you realize there is a problem Second: Without being intrusive visit with the grandparent to Read more…
Most little kids like me. It’s always been that way. I’ve taught school, preschool, church classes, after school clubs, etc. and for the most part little kids like me. But do you know why they like me? It’s because I tell them to like me and because they know they matter. For years I ran a therapeutic preschool and school age afterschool program. Read more…
Recently Dale Hudson posted on his Relevant Ministry blog, “Three Meals a Day.. for Kids at School?” It was a post about how the government has piloted a program for feeding lower income children three meals a day at school. I don’t want to debate this issue as you can do that on Dale’s post. However, his post got me to thinking about Read more…
In our world today many children experience what is known as an emotional concussion. Emotional concussions can be just as lethal, and sometimes even more so, than a physical concussion. Emotional concussions occur when young children Live in homes controlled by alcohol, drugs, explosive tempers Live in homes full of stress Live with dysfunctional adults Have exposure to people who are physically, emotionally, Read more…
Recently I was ministering to a lady that was new to our area. She was from another state and had just moved here. She said she had to get out of an abusive marriage so she came to live with a relative. She wanted a safe place for her and her child. She also said she needed some peace and quiet while she Read more…
You know he is the kid that comes into the room with a look that says, “Heh, heh, this is the day I’m making everyone pay for my unhappiness!” He doesn’t wait for you but skirts over to the side of the room. However, he keeps his eyes on you. What do you do at this point? You let him go. I would Read more…
“I am fed up with some of these kids. They have no respect for me or for anything!” I have often heard people that work with misbehaving kids talk about the lack of respect some of these kids have. They say it like they are ready to throw in the towel and walk away. My suggestion is to take the word “respect” out Read more…
I imagine when you read the title you thought I misspelled “whether.” You probably thought I was going to talk about the weather. The weather can be depressing. Having to keep kids inside all day can be a challenge. Grey skies and gloomy days during long winter months can get you down. But that’s not what I want to discuss today. Today I Read more…
It certainly can be discouraging when you have a child that is consistently challenging every rule, boundary and authority. I believe I can help you. Yeas ago I would have said, and probably said it with righteous indignity, “Pray about it.” And I would have left it at that. While I’m not trying to diminish the power of prayer I have learned over Read more…
He was in the military and during one of his deployments to Afghanistan he got a phone call from his eight-year-old son. It seems as though his wife had apparently had too much to drink or had taken some drugs and was passed out. This little boy didn’t know what to do. Here this dad is thousands of miles away. He can’t just Read more…
It’s true that a lot of posts we do on this site are about single moms. The simple reason is that a majority of single parents are single moms. Because of this, most of my personal experience is with single moms. However, there are some great single dads in our society as well. More and more single dads are stepping up and either helping raise Read more…
She showed up one Wednesday night a couple of years ago. There she sat all alone. We connected after the service and she started coming to our Single & Parenting group. My new friend had a lot of questions and needed people to listen to her and hear her story. Here is what she revealed to us in those first few weeks. She Read more…
I met Sarah three years ago when she came to our church’s DivorceCare class. Sarah had just had her second child a few weeks before. Her first child was only a toddler and now here she was with a newborn. Sarah didn’t want the divorce but while she was at the hospital having her second child her husband was out making another child. Read more…
“It seems like we just get a single parent settled in their new lifestyle and then all of a sudden “boom” and everything falls apart. Their kids get out of control Their finances erupt into a crisis mode The ex shows up on the scene and makes all kinds of empty promises and they fall for it only to show up on our Read more…
This is a great question that I am happy to answer. I have been amazed at the number of reads on our Kids and Divorce blog. Top ten reads for 2014 Starting with the count down from number 10. Ten: Divorce hurts kids – literally divorce hurts Nine: Co-parenting that hurts kids and what you can do to help Eight: KidMin Alert: Evangelical Read more…
Sometimes it is good to be able to pass a word of encouragement to a struggling single parent. Following are some articles that can be found on the DivorceCare Surviving the Holidays website. Feel free to print these, send them via Facebook, Twitter or email to the single parents in your church or to any single parent you know. These articles are all Read more…
Recently I posted an article about how divorce affects children in high-income families. In many areas they fare worse than children in low-income families. However, children in low-income families have their issues too. Divorce tends to be cyclical in many families. Low-income families have been experiencing divorce longer than high-income families. Many of these adult children of divorce from low-income families are no Read more…
“He has been the only dad these kids have known. He has taken care of them physically, financially, has taken them to school each day and to church every Sunday. He loves them as his own. These boys love him and they are going to be devastated when the divorce happens. The sons don’t know about the divorce. What can I say to Read more…
I have had many children’s ministers and church leaders tell me they don’t have children of divorce in their churches. Sometimes they cite the fact that their church is in middle-class America or in a higher-income area. I assume the rationale for their statement is that couples in higher-income families don’t divorce as much as people in what one would consider lower-income families. Read more…
A couple of years ago we began to hear about a relatively new occurrence—the gray divorce. The gray divorce is when mature and/or senior adults divorce. There are said to be several reasons for this phenomenon. You can read about them here. With the older adults divorcing, several things are going to affect churches and in particular children’s ministries. A children’s minister emailed Read more…
“In our church we are having more and more grandparents coming to us wanting to visit about their adult child’s divorce. They seem to be mainly concerned about how to help their grandchildren. I’m pretty much clueless about what to say or how to help these senior adults.” There are a lot of issues a grandparent faces with the divorce of an adult child. Read more…
Recently I was visiting with a man whose wife had told him two weeks before that she wanted a divorce. This man was devastated. He and his soon-to-be ex wife had in mind what they wanted to tell the children. I’m glad he asked about what to say because he was getting ready to make a huge mistake. His meeting with the children Read more…
“I understand the ‘every other weekend’ visitation schedule. I understand a child visiting the other parent on holidays and during the summer. But we have kids in our church whose attendance is so sporadic. We never know when they are going to show up.” “We have custodial parents who say they have custody but they come to us with horrific tales of woe. Read more…
© Anthony Quintano used under Creative Commons license Rarely do I use this blog for personal issues but today I want to share with all of you from my heart. You see all of these Ice Bucket Challenges have affected me deeply. Let me tell you why something as simple and funny as someone dumping a bucket of ice over his or her Read more…
In a previous post we discuss the importance of rituals for the child of divorce. I shared that rituals help children connect to loved ones. It is important that church leaders, volunteers and ministers understand the role rituals play in the lives of children of divorce. When children lose rituals or connections with important people in their lives, they may become attached to Read more…
“I’ve heard you speak at children’s ministry conferences about rituals and the child of divorce. What I want to know is why are rituals so important for the child of divorce?” Almost all children are ritual-makers. They automatically create rituals when they say hello or goodbye and for many other situations. Rituals help children connect with the people in their lives whether it Read more…
I spent this afternoon at my church helping other church members move furniture and shop vacuuming water out our flooded church. Our area got hit really hard the past couple of days with rain. The rain came up over the berm behind the church and rushed throughout the building. All the children’s rooms on one side of the sanctuary flooded and two of Read more…
We just celebrated the first anniversary of our Kids and Divorce Blog. It gave me a great excuse to step back and look at what got the most attention in a year’s worth of posts. I want to share that information with you. “Effects of divorce on the 6, 7 and 8 year old children” was read more than any other post. It Read more…
Today is our one-year anniversary. Wa-Hoo! Our blog is 1-year-old today. I’m amazed, blessed and just a little overwhelmed by the response to this blog. Kids & Divorce set out to educate children’s ministers and in the process all of you have also used it to minister to single parents, church leadership, train DivorceCare leaders, Single & Parenting leaders and DC4K leaders. During this Read more…
Today’s guest blogger on the Kids & Divorce blog is Dale Hudson of Relevant Children’s Ministry, This information is important and it will profoundly affect your children’s ministry because it alerts all of us that work with children that no family is immune to divorce even Christians in the church. Thank you Dale for sharing this vitally important information with us. A recent report from Read more…
CPC is one of the premier children’s pastor’s conferences. It is hosted on the East Coast and also on the West Coast. Last week I was in Ontario, California for the West Coast conference. Even though I presented a workshop and did some coaching sessions I still learned a lot. The main thing that caught my attention: most children’s pastors still don’t focus Read more…
1. You get to meet some of the most fun people in ministry. 2. You get renewed and rejuvenated. 3. Your soul gets stretched – think “deeper and wider”. 4. You learn what products are available to help you do a better job of ministering to the little people in the world. (Like DC4K, DivorceCare for Kids) 5. Your love for children and Read more…
CPC is the Children’s Pastor’s Conference. This week the conference is in Orlando at the Disney Conference Center. Now you might think that being at Disney in the warm sunny climate would be excitement enough but that is nothing compared to joy of being with children’s pastors for four days. Children’s pastors are the most fun people on the planet. One never knows Read more…
Nationally they are 1/3 of the next generation. They are going to grow up and impact our country and communities. They impact your ministry. Kids in single parent families matter because they are the next generation of Politicians Doctors Lawyers Teachers Policemen Military personnel Ministers Parents Do you want 1/3 of our next generation of professionals, workers and parents to be strangers to Read more…
In April of 2013 we started the Kids & Divorce blog. The purpose of the blog is to educate children’s ministers, volunteers, church leaders and others about the effects of divorce on children. Thank you to all of you who have helped us succeede and have passed the information to others. You have made us successful. Here are the most-read posts for 2013: Read more…
Many times those of us that work in ministry hurt for the hurting. We want to help but just aren’t sure how to help. What can you say to make the situation better for a divorcing family? Sometimes it is best not to say anything but just give them a big hug. Sometimes they need someone to listen to them. Sometimes they just Read more…
The following is a copy of the handout for the Group KidMin Conference on “What It Takes to Engage These Families”. The PowerPoint slides for this workshop can be found at the bottom of this post. Objectives for this session Ministering to the child of divorce takes a lot of energy and passion fuels the energy needed. Divorce can be messy for church Read more…
It’s alarming. Fully one-third of all children in the US now live in single-parent families. From the Annie E. Casey Foundation we learn: “In 2012, 35 percent of children (24.7 million) lived in single-parent families.” The report goes on to state that “the percentage of children living in these households has increased by 13 percent (4 million children) since 2000. Kids living in Read more…
Kidmin and children’s ministers want a lot of hands on, visual and role-play kind of presentations. Two of my favorite demonstrations in to use in teaching about the child of divorce and used at the Group KidMin conference were Family sculpturing The balloon stress demo Family Sculpturing In the family sculpturing we have participants role-play different parts. We have a Child Mother Father Read more…
I find it is important to be at these events because children’s ministers and church volunteers can impact a child of divorce in tremendous ways. Children of divorce should find hope, comfort and help in the church family. But the reality is many don’t. I have just returned from an 8 day trip where I spoke at LifeWay KidMin conference in Nashville, TN Read more…
Before the article, “Where Did He Go?” was published in the latest “K”Magazine, a children’s minister contacted Tina Houser, the editor of “K” Magazine. This children’s pastor needed some information on helping a three-year old little boy. Following is some of our conversation. I think you will appreciate this children’s pastor’s story. Children’s Pastor’s request I am a children’s pastor and I am Read more…
This past weekend I was privileged to attend the CMLeader’s Conference in Columbus, OH. This conference was sponsored by INCM, International Children’s Minister Network. The theme was develop, lead and disciple. What a treat it was to get to meet face-to-face all my children’s minster friends. Many of us know each other from FaceBook and Twitter but we have never actually met. We Read more…
The teacher looked on, as 4-year-old Elsa clung to her mom and screamed, “Don’t weave me. Mommy. Please don’t weave me.” the teacher was confused because little Elsa had always loved coming to her Sunday school class. Mom seemed at a loss as to how to comfort Elsa and get her into the class. The teach gradually moved into the scene, and with Read more…
Today’s post by is by guest blogger Jim Daly of Focus on the Family. Thank you Jim for contributing to our Kids & Divorce blog. This article was originally posted on the Daly Focus blog at, www.community.focusonthefamily.com Copyright © 2013, Focus on the Family. Used by permission. When I was an eight-year-old boy, I looked to Hank, the father figure in my life, for Read more…
Today’s post comes from guest writer, Linda Alderfer. Linda is the DC4K Director and Senior Consultant. Following is a story that comes from her own experience of running a DivorceCare for Kids group at her church. During an evening neighborhood walk, we passed the house of one of our DC4K students. It’s been a turbulent year for this 6 year old. Dad Read more…
Father’s Day is set aside to celebrate the father’s in our world. Some children of divorce may not have a close relationship with their father. Perhaps the Lord has provided another person to play that father role. If the Lord has provided a grandfather, uncle, older siblings, neighbors or even a male mentor from the church, encourage the child to celebrate that person. Read more…
I have a wonderful opportunity to present a full 8 hours at the Group KidMin Conference coming up in October. That is e-i-g-h-t hours! I am excited to have this opportunity to talk about kids of divorce and their single parents to children’s pastors and church leaders. The deeper learning track I’m presenting is “Ministry to Kids of Divorce and Single Parent Families. Read more…
I grew up in Bartlesville, OK. I have heard about tornadoes my entire life. I owned two child care programs in OK for over twenty-five years. As a kid I remember going into the hallways at school and putting my hands over my head while crouched down on my knees. In childcare we practiced relentlessly with the children. The fire department recommended which Read more…
This fall several children’s ministers conferences are coming up. I’m excited about these interactions. It’s a great time to network, find out what’s going on in the KidMin world. Plus it is a celebration that says to KidMin people they matter! Wednesday I spent most of the morning getting ready for the LifeWay Children’s Ministers Conference. For any of you who know Read more…
