Ephesians 4:2 (NLT)
2 Be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love.
Working with Children takes a LOT of patience, however sometimes so does working with volunteers!
I have a pretty good team of Kidmin Volunteers. Though it wasn't always that way. It took about 3 years to weed and pick through the volunteers I knew I can trust. I had some volunteers that would be there every Sunday and Wednesday night. I would have volunteers who didn't necessarily work in the kids ministry every week, but I knew I could count on them during special events.
Then I had the volunteers who said they were in it to win it, but then Sunday service would come around and I would be the only adult in the room. Or I would ask them to come in and help with check-in and I am getting set up for the service and I would walk out in the hallway to see a massive line of children waiting to get checked in! (First off, I've learned to have everything prepared BEFORE Sundays and Wednesdays, but that's a different post.)
Then I had the volunteers who were not quite sure what to expect with. They might have just made a commitment to live for God, and were now looking for their spot in the church. So they know they loved kids and wanted to be involved in the Children's Ministry. Well I must have been spoiled because I would hold these individuals to a really high standard. A standard that I had for my veteran volunteers, but more than just hold them to the standard I would expect them to know it without me telling them. Boy, was I a kidmin n00b!
We don't always know what situation or volunteers are in. The verse I listed above says that we need to give allowance for faults. Now I think we should still have our standards, but like everything else, practice makes perfect. Let's remember our first time as a ministry leader! I'm sure there were a couple of things we didn't get the hang of. If at the first mistake we were fired, we would have a bitter taste in our mouths.
I think when we select our volunteers we need to keep a few things in mind in how we pick, and how we train. I finally learned my lesson about 2 years ago. I asked a youth girl who had been awesome on Sundays to take over a service while I was gone. I knew she had the ability to follow the curriculum and to teach, while the adults in the room handled the discipline side of things.
Well i get a phone call the next day from our pastor that she showed up 15 minutes late to service, and one of my adult volunteers showed up 45 minutes late!! The one adult in the room were really anxious because they didn't know what was happing that day in the schedule, so they just let the kids play and tried her best to handle 20 kids on her own. I was irate.
My first thought was to never EVER let her take over for me again, and to tell this other volunteer that showed up 45 minutes late that she might as well not come in that Sunday. Their faults made ME look bad! Then I got to thinking, "You weren't fired, your kids didn't get hurt. Don't focus on what COULD have happened, but learn from this and teach your volunteers for the future."
So I made a phone call to my youth volunteer to come in and meet with me. I discussed what her actions did for that Sunday and for the kids in the room. Then I told her that I expected a lot more from her since I put her in charge. Then I told her that I want to start seeing her about half an hour early on Sundays that she volunteers.
What I did here was let her know that she did let me down. I didn't let her actions slide, however I made an allowance for her faults and used them to teach her for the future. Now I didn't put her back in charge for a while, but three months later I gave her a second chance and she nailed it. She was there the night before setting up, and then she was there half an hour early to spend time with kids when they were checking in.
I had a meeting with the other volunteer, and it pretty much went the same. I won't bore you with the details, but she has been a lot better about it.
Paul continues to write later in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 29,
"Don't use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them."
It's important that as a minister, you realize that your ministry is not just for the kids, but for everyone around you. Your volunteers look up to you for direction, guidance, and accountability. When I was in college, I was volunteering at a small church about 45 minutes away. I was in a classroom with the teacher giving the lesson, and he was fumbling through a book, so while the kids were making up their own, "fun" i started telling them stories. About halfway through, the teacher looked at me, pointed to the door and yelled out, "You're being a distraction, you need to leave right now!" right in front of the kids! Here's what happened.
1) I was humiliated. I was doing him a favor by keeping the kids attention and focus while he was looking through his book.
2) I was scarred by that and didn't help him out any more.
3) The kids were freaked out a bit by it, and now when they were around me they just felt awkward
Luckily for him, I went to college for Children's Ministry so I was already solid in what I wanted to do, however imagine if it was someone who was new to the faith and was looking for their spot to help out? I can guarantee that it would have taken a LOT of repair work to fix up his confidence.
One more verse. Ephesians 4:27
"for anger gives a mighty foothold to the Devil"
In this case, anger made the leader bitter, anger made the volunteer shaken and allowed for Satan or his forces to come in and start planting seeds of doubt and lies.
So simply put, be careful how you handle volunteers that may or may not be the most faithful. Be gentle in how you handle them, but be stern and hold them accountable at the same note. Remember, an allowance is not an onflowing stream of letting them do what they want, but it's opportunities for them to learn and grow. If they are learning, then great. If not, well then it might not be the ministry position for them.
Anyway. Hope all is well!
-Eric Riskus
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Top Ten Myths about ADHD
Here's a great link that was posted on facebook.
Check it out.
The only one that I will disagree with is that ADHD is underdiagnosed. I think it's just commonly misdiagnosed. Kids are diagnosed with ADHD who don't have it, but a lot of kids are being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and etc. I just think it comes down to a case where it's not the most easily understoond condition. I can agree that it's a hinderance in modern learning, but I still stand by my word that it's not a disorder. It's something we have to work through!
Enjoy the article!
Top Ten Myths about ADHD
Check it out.
The only one that I will disagree with is that ADHD is underdiagnosed. I think it's just commonly misdiagnosed. Kids are diagnosed with ADHD who don't have it, but a lot of kids are being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and etc. I just think it comes down to a case where it's not the most easily understoond condition. I can agree that it's a hinderance in modern learning, but I still stand by my word that it's not a disorder. It's something we have to work through!
Enjoy the article!
Top Ten Myths about ADHD
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Cool lighting effects for $20-$50 a piece!!
Hey, just a couple of ideas I'm willing to share with you and your ministries.
Lighting. It's something that's either taken for granted or it's under-used. You would not believe how much lighting can change the entire atmosphere of a room. Let's talk about special lights. You know, the cool lamp in the room, the awesome centerpiece, but you don't need to break your budget to get some cool lighting fixtures!
1) Rope Lights.
These will become the most versatile set of lighting in your ministry. Rope lights are useful for EVERYTHING. But don't just slap them on a wall and call it cool. Okay, it grabs attention, but unless you do it right, it just looks sloppy.
Here is a cool trick I learned with Rope Lights!
FOAM NOODLES: These are the coolest thing since sliced bread. You can swim with them. Cut them in half and give them to a cabin full of ADHD boys and just let them beat the tar out of each other without injury then watch them be ready for a nap around 10am. Cut them into rings and play games. They are awesome.
A while back I was purchasing a bunch of foam noodles to put around my room. I would slice them straight down the middle and put them up like pipework in the room. A woman who helps out with our senior Pastor's company, "Laugh Your Way America" had stepped in and checked out what I was doing. She saw some rope lights I was going to throw out and then suggested, "What if you ran them through the noodles?"
Woah. Mind=blown. I didn't even think about it. So I had to figure out the best way to string them through because some ends caught on the noodle, but I figured it out. Plugged in the rope lights and the noodles glowed so bright!! So I strung more ropelights and more noodles and viola! Cool lighting.
Here's a picture of how they turned out.
My next project that I'm working on will utilize old Christmas Lights. I'm making a centerpiece for our game room.
Here's what I'm using:
Cube Wire Shelving
Chain Links
4 1' metal chains
Christmas Lights
You know those wire shelves that you piece together with plastic connectors? Place anything too heavy and the whole thing comes a tumblin down? Here's a better use that what they were made for!
I have a bunch of these squares lying around. I'm going to make a grid of 6x6 of these. Don't use the plastic connectors though. I will use 3 chain links to link them together. Then I'm going to do a 2nd layer that's about 2 chain links on top of that and grid it out to 5x5. Then same distance in links and 4x4 and so on until I have the last row of 1x1. Then you take your christmas lights and string them throughout the whole thing in a tangled mess. LED lights would be the best since they don't generate a lot of heat. When I'm done I'll have a sweet pyramid of these hanging from the ceiling. Now, I have a metal beam that runs across the center of my ceiling which I will be attaching these to. This whole thing could weight as much as 50lbs and you don't want that tearing anything down and landing on kids. That is also why I'm using chain links instead of the plastic connectors. I'll post pictures when I'm done.
Anyway. Just use your imagination. You can do some really cool things for cheap if you just take the time to use what is around you!
That is all for today! Enjoy!
-Eric Riskus
Lighting. It's something that's either taken for granted or it's under-used. You would not believe how much lighting can change the entire atmosphere of a room. Let's talk about special lights. You know, the cool lamp in the room, the awesome centerpiece, but you don't need to break your budget to get some cool lighting fixtures!
1) Rope Lights.
These will become the most versatile set of lighting in your ministry. Rope lights are useful for EVERYTHING. But don't just slap them on a wall and call it cool. Okay, it grabs attention, but unless you do it right, it just looks sloppy.
Here is a cool trick I learned with Rope Lights!
FOAM NOODLES: These are the coolest thing since sliced bread. You can swim with them. Cut them in half and give them to a cabin full of ADHD boys and just let them beat the tar out of each other without injury then watch them be ready for a nap around 10am. Cut them into rings and play games. They are awesome.
A while back I was purchasing a bunch of foam noodles to put around my room. I would slice them straight down the middle and put them up like pipework in the room. A woman who helps out with our senior Pastor's company, "Laugh Your Way America" had stepped in and checked out what I was doing. She saw some rope lights I was going to throw out and then suggested, "What if you ran them through the noodles?"
Woah. Mind=blown. I didn't even think about it. So I had to figure out the best way to string them through because some ends caught on the noodle, but I figured it out. Plugged in the rope lights and the noodles glowed so bright!! So I strung more ropelights and more noodles and viola! Cool lighting.
Here's a picture of how they turned out.
My next project that I'm working on will utilize old Christmas Lights. I'm making a centerpiece for our game room.
Here's what I'm using:
Cube Wire Shelving
Chain Links
4 1' metal chains
Christmas Lights
You know those wire shelves that you piece together with plastic connectors? Place anything too heavy and the whole thing comes a tumblin down? Here's a better use that what they were made for!
I have a bunch of these squares lying around. I'm going to make a grid of 6x6 of these. Don't use the plastic connectors though. I will use 3 chain links to link them together. Then I'm going to do a 2nd layer that's about 2 chain links on top of that and grid it out to 5x5. Then same distance in links and 4x4 and so on until I have the last row of 1x1. Then you take your christmas lights and string them throughout the whole thing in a tangled mess. LED lights would be the best since they don't generate a lot of heat. When I'm done I'll have a sweet pyramid of these hanging from the ceiling. Now, I have a metal beam that runs across the center of my ceiling which I will be attaching these to. This whole thing could weight as much as 50lbs and you don't want that tearing anything down and landing on kids. That is also why I'm using chain links instead of the plastic connectors. I'll post pictures when I'm done.
Anyway. Just use your imagination. You can do some really cool things for cheap if you just take the time to use what is around you!
That is all for today! Enjoy!
-Eric Riskus
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Tips and Secrets to Ministering to Children with ADHD
I would first like to disclaim that I don't have any kind of degree in children's psychology, however I do have my own life experiences and what I have documented and seen work with kids with ADHD.
To give a little back story, i was diagnosed with ADHD back in the 3rd grade. The doctors put me on Ritalin and there was definite improvement in my focus, but at the same time it kind of repressed who I was. But if I ever went off of my medication for the weekend when there was no school it would throw off the effects, so I ended up having to take Ritalin every day of the school year. No exceptions.
My mom would make sure that I took 20mg in the morning before school and then I would have to take another 10mg around 1:00 to make sure I can focus the rest of the day. However the issue was that I had to remember to take it! More often than not I wouldn't take it and my parents would get sent letters that I still had a full bottle of meds left.
One morning I had to hurry out of the house and didn't have time to eat breakfast, so my parents gave me some money to buy breakfast at school. I went to the cafeteria and they told me that there wasn't any breakfast left, so they let me have some Zingers, a chocolate frosted cake snack, instead.
Now all of this considered, when I would go to school, I would not be able to focus, I was full of energy, and when I got home I would crash and then not feel like doing my homework or getting anything done. The school would send letters home saying that, "Your child does not complete his homework on time." or "Your child is disrupting class in outbursts." or my favorite, "You need to take the time to work with your child on his focus and attention."
Does this sound like it's entirely the child or the parents' fault?
Back in 1993 ADHD was still a little unknown, so the first thing people tried to do was fight it, like it was some kind of curable disease. ADD and ADHD is not a disease.
And can I say this? It is NOT a learning disorder!
I'm going to start calling people who are blind AVD (Active Vision Disorder) and people in wheelchairs UWD (Upright Walking Disorder.) Okay, maybe not. I think people would get a little offended, but think about this.
The brain of those with ADHD is wired differently than those who don't have it.
Notice the brain on the left. It's of a child who does not have ADHD. The one on the right is of a child with ADHD.
The difference here is that those with ADHD are not stimulated enough. You'll see the decreased brain activity. The problem today is that we constantly try to FIGHT ADHD. Which you simply can't do. I guarantee that the ADHD will win. If you try to heavily medicate, you may win, but the child is now collateral damage. You suck out all the personality and what makes that child unique.
ADHD is not something that can be fought. I did not want to be stuck on meds for it my entire life. So when I was 13 I stopped taking my meds and my parents and I started to learn how to work with it. This is the premise of this blog post today.
We often try to fight ADHD with a few following practices.
1) Just try to focus!
Let's take little Eric in Chidren's Church. He's found a rubber band and starts playing with it in his hands, but the Pastor yells at him to put it away and listen to the message. There's nothing happening on stage for the next five minutes except the pastor is talking and wrapping up his message. Then at the end Eric has no clue what has just been said and goes home not learning a thing. Sure he paid attention for the first 2 minutes, but then the Pastor said something about a video game to tie into what he was wrapping up with, and Eric began thinking about the video games he was going to play at home, and what he was going to eat, and that he likes mac and cheese, but not as much as cheeseburgers, and maybe mom and dad will take him to McDonalds, never mind McDonalds, he wants Burger King, and then he remembers, oh! I have a report to do in school about the king of France, and the other day I learned something in french, and french fries sound good, and I want to go to McDonalds...why is everyone getting up and leaving?
Most people don't realize, but children with ADHD are excellent mental multi-taskers. That's why when we are working on something that's mindless like washing dishes, or putzing with playthings we are all aware of what's happening around us. There is one exception which is hyper-focusing. This is when we are working on something with our hands that we are truly interested in and then we tune everything else out, close off our minds and focus exclusively on what is in front of us right now. This happens when it's a project that we CHOOSE to do.
Physically, when we start a new task or idea, we get this great notion to start a brand new project, but we can easily get distracted and the common thing you find in anyone with ADHD is that there are a lot of unfinished projects because we start something new and leave the old one. (I'll talk about how to work around this effectively in a later post. Don't worry!)
Here's a tip. If a child in your ministry is doodling on a piece of paper while you are delivering simply a message, let him doodle. I can bet you $100 that he will have retained what you were talking about. Maybe not at that exact moment, but later at home he'll remember everything. We're funny like that. Our brains scatter information. So while it may not appear that we are listening, we really are.
2)Sit still!
ADHD has that one extra letter in there, the "H" which stands for "Hyperactivity." Rather than think of this as a disorder, let's think of it as attention deficit in high definition!
We are movers. We like to stay somewhat active. Think of it like this. ADHD kids are like bottles of baking soda and vinegar. If you put a cap on it, it's going to burp, and gas will release, and come out in little spurts. If you try to tighten the cap, the bottle is going to explode. If you take time to take the cap off, the pressure releases naturally.
If a child with ADHD is squirming in their seat, it's beneficial to give them something to do with their hands.
Here's an example.
A while back while I was volunteering under Pastor Keith Schommer, in Green Bay I was walking up and down the aisles, and there was a kid in the back who was making noise and being disruptive. The adults would simply walk by and press their finger to their lips and go, "shhh" as if it was somehow going to miraculously turn this kid into an attention machine. I went and got a piece of yarn and tied it into a circle knot. Nothing too big, but something he can slip over his hand. I then sat down next to him and gave him this piece of yarn while P.K. was delivering his message. This kid did not make a peep. Instead he was fiddling with the yarn and his attention was on that. Meanwhile during the service I would now and then point to the stage and he would look up, and pay attention. I turned the yarn into the distraction, but then I turned the stage into the distraction for the yarn.
This is an example of taking the cap off the bottle. The adults telling him to shhh was forcing the cap on the bottle, and his little outbursts was the cap loosely on the bottle.
The main point I'm trying to get across here is that you need to start learning how to work with kids who have ADHD instead of trying to surpress it. It's a battle you will never win. Your children will get frustrated, and not learn a thing.
Now one common thing I hear from a lot of teachers is, "If I let him play with that yarn, I need to let the other kids play with yarn too!" or "His piece of yarn is distracting the kids next to him."
I could easily turn that around! What if there's a kid with a leg brace in my children's ministry? Should I have him take it off simply because it's distracting other kids? Should I take it away because I'll have to give the other kids a leg brace too?
ADHD is a condition that requires tools and techniques to work around it. It's not a lifestyle choice, but it is a lifestyle none the less. We don't choose to have it. I can't stop my ADHD just so others can feel more comfortable. The minute I started learning to work with what I have, the sooner God was able to use me in the way he called me to be. God doesn't make mistakes so stop trying to fix them!
That being said, here's some ideas for you to share with your volunteers.
1) You should never have to handle these issues on stage. Your volunteers need to be trained to handle children with ADHD. Teach them what I wrote above and how to do it in the least distracting way as possible. A string of yarn is WAAY better than a slamming book!
2) There are things that are inexcuseable.
ADHD is not an excuse. I refuse to let my kids cause trouble simply because they have ADHD. If a kid keeps making outbursts you have to determine if the root is simply ADHD or if it is outright disrespect. If your child is doodling on his bulletin, then that's one thing. If he's writing on the walls it's something else!
3) This post is not about favoritism to ADHD kids.
You would think so, but it's not. Don't pick the ADHD kid to do something all the time because it will help ease the tension. It's not fair to the other kids. I did have to learn how to start controlling myself in public. And that's how I developed and learned about the mental multi tasking. Let them have something like a squeeze ball, but they shouldn't be favored and the other kids forced to work around him. We're all in this together and they have to learn that it's not all about them. These steps above are simply the tools to help your ADHD child learn and succeed in an environment around them.
I hope this makes some sense and gives you some great ideas on how to work with children who have ADHD. The most important rule is that you shouldn't fight ADHD, rather learn to work with it.
To give a little back story, i was diagnosed with ADHD back in the 3rd grade. The doctors put me on Ritalin and there was definite improvement in my focus, but at the same time it kind of repressed who I was. But if I ever went off of my medication for the weekend when there was no school it would throw off the effects, so I ended up having to take Ritalin every day of the school year. No exceptions.
My mom would make sure that I took 20mg in the morning before school and then I would have to take another 10mg around 1:00 to make sure I can focus the rest of the day. However the issue was that I had to remember to take it! More often than not I wouldn't take it and my parents would get sent letters that I still had a full bottle of meds left.
One morning I had to hurry out of the house and didn't have time to eat breakfast, so my parents gave me some money to buy breakfast at school. I went to the cafeteria and they told me that there wasn't any breakfast left, so they let me have some Zingers, a chocolate frosted cake snack, instead.
Now all of this considered, when I would go to school, I would not be able to focus, I was full of energy, and when I got home I would crash and then not feel like doing my homework or getting anything done. The school would send letters home saying that, "Your child does not complete his homework on time." or "Your child is disrupting class in outbursts." or my favorite, "You need to take the time to work with your child on his focus and attention."
Does this sound like it's entirely the child or the parents' fault?
Back in 1993 ADHD was still a little unknown, so the first thing people tried to do was fight it, like it was some kind of curable disease. ADD and ADHD is not a disease.
And can I say this? It is NOT a learning disorder!
I'm going to start calling people who are blind AVD (Active Vision Disorder) and people in wheelchairs UWD (Upright Walking Disorder.) Okay, maybe not. I think people would get a little offended, but think about this.
The brain of those with ADHD is wired differently than those who don't have it.
Notice the brain on the left. It's of a child who does not have ADHD. The one on the right is of a child with ADHD.
The difference here is that those with ADHD are not stimulated enough. You'll see the decreased brain activity. The problem today is that we constantly try to FIGHT ADHD. Which you simply can't do. I guarantee that the ADHD will win. If you try to heavily medicate, you may win, but the child is now collateral damage. You suck out all the personality and what makes that child unique.
ADHD is not something that can be fought. I did not want to be stuck on meds for it my entire life. So when I was 13 I stopped taking my meds and my parents and I started to learn how to work with it. This is the premise of this blog post today.
We often try to fight ADHD with a few following practices.
1) Just try to focus!
Let's take little Eric in Chidren's Church. He's found a rubber band and starts playing with it in his hands, but the Pastor yells at him to put it away and listen to the message. There's nothing happening on stage for the next five minutes except the pastor is talking and wrapping up his message. Then at the end Eric has no clue what has just been said and goes home not learning a thing. Sure he paid attention for the first 2 minutes, but then the Pastor said something about a video game to tie into what he was wrapping up with, and Eric began thinking about the video games he was going to play at home, and what he was going to eat, and that he likes mac and cheese, but not as much as cheeseburgers, and maybe mom and dad will take him to McDonalds, never mind McDonalds, he wants Burger King, and then he remembers, oh! I have a report to do in school about the king of France, and the other day I learned something in french, and french fries sound good, and I want to go to McDonalds...why is everyone getting up and leaving?
Most people don't realize, but children with ADHD are excellent mental multi-taskers. That's why when we are working on something that's mindless like washing dishes, or putzing with playthings we are all aware of what's happening around us. There is one exception which is hyper-focusing. This is when we are working on something with our hands that we are truly interested in and then we tune everything else out, close off our minds and focus exclusively on what is in front of us right now. This happens when it's a project that we CHOOSE to do.
Physically, when we start a new task or idea, we get this great notion to start a brand new project, but we can easily get distracted and the common thing you find in anyone with ADHD is that there are a lot of unfinished projects because we start something new and leave the old one. (I'll talk about how to work around this effectively in a later post. Don't worry!)
Here's a tip. If a child in your ministry is doodling on a piece of paper while you are delivering simply a message, let him doodle. I can bet you $100 that he will have retained what you were talking about. Maybe not at that exact moment, but later at home he'll remember everything. We're funny like that. Our brains scatter information. So while it may not appear that we are listening, we really are.
2)Sit still!
ADHD has that one extra letter in there, the "H" which stands for "Hyperactivity." Rather than think of this as a disorder, let's think of it as attention deficit in high definition!
We are movers. We like to stay somewhat active. Think of it like this. ADHD kids are like bottles of baking soda and vinegar. If you put a cap on it, it's going to burp, and gas will release, and come out in little spurts. If you try to tighten the cap, the bottle is going to explode. If you take time to take the cap off, the pressure releases naturally.
If a child with ADHD is squirming in their seat, it's beneficial to give them something to do with their hands.
Here's an example.
A while back while I was volunteering under Pastor Keith Schommer, in Green Bay I was walking up and down the aisles, and there was a kid in the back who was making noise and being disruptive. The adults would simply walk by and press their finger to their lips and go, "shhh" as if it was somehow going to miraculously turn this kid into an attention machine. I went and got a piece of yarn and tied it into a circle knot. Nothing too big, but something he can slip over his hand. I then sat down next to him and gave him this piece of yarn while P.K. was delivering his message. This kid did not make a peep. Instead he was fiddling with the yarn and his attention was on that. Meanwhile during the service I would now and then point to the stage and he would look up, and pay attention. I turned the yarn into the distraction, but then I turned the stage into the distraction for the yarn.
This is an example of taking the cap off the bottle. The adults telling him to shhh was forcing the cap on the bottle, and his little outbursts was the cap loosely on the bottle.
The main point I'm trying to get across here is that you need to start learning how to work with kids who have ADHD instead of trying to surpress it. It's a battle you will never win. Your children will get frustrated, and not learn a thing.
Now one common thing I hear from a lot of teachers is, "If I let him play with that yarn, I need to let the other kids play with yarn too!" or "His piece of yarn is distracting the kids next to him."
I could easily turn that around! What if there's a kid with a leg brace in my children's ministry? Should I have him take it off simply because it's distracting other kids? Should I take it away because I'll have to give the other kids a leg brace too?
ADHD is a condition that requires tools and techniques to work around it. It's not a lifestyle choice, but it is a lifestyle none the less. We don't choose to have it. I can't stop my ADHD just so others can feel more comfortable. The minute I started learning to work with what I have, the sooner God was able to use me in the way he called me to be. God doesn't make mistakes so stop trying to fix them!
That being said, here's some ideas for you to share with your volunteers.
1) You should never have to handle these issues on stage. Your volunteers need to be trained to handle children with ADHD. Teach them what I wrote above and how to do it in the least distracting way as possible. A string of yarn is WAAY better than a slamming book!
2) There are things that are inexcuseable.
ADHD is not an excuse. I refuse to let my kids cause trouble simply because they have ADHD. If a kid keeps making outbursts you have to determine if the root is simply ADHD or if it is outright disrespect. If your child is doodling on his bulletin, then that's one thing. If he's writing on the walls it's something else!
3) This post is not about favoritism to ADHD kids.
You would think so, but it's not. Don't pick the ADHD kid to do something all the time because it will help ease the tension. It's not fair to the other kids. I did have to learn how to start controlling myself in public. And that's how I developed and learned about the mental multi tasking. Let them have something like a squeeze ball, but they shouldn't be favored and the other kids forced to work around him. We're all in this together and they have to learn that it's not all about them. These steps above are simply the tools to help your ADHD child learn and succeed in an environment around them.
I hope this makes some sense and gives you some great ideas on how to work with children who have ADHD. The most important rule is that you shouldn't fight ADHD, rather learn to work with it.
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