The author’s years of experience as a children’s pastor, children’s behavior therapist (BCBA), teacher, mom, and grandma shine through as she shares strategies, tools, and tips that work in the real world. She provides much needed instructions on how to manage classroom behavior, what to do to have a peaceful, fun children’s ministry and what to do to prevent issues before they arise. This is a how to book showing you how to have an environment in your children’s ministry that lends itself to connecting with kids and reaching their hearts.WRANGLING TO SHEPHERDING
Mrs. Susan faces a familiar scene: some children listen intently, others chat amongst themselves, another is wandering around the room, and a few in the back are loudly arguing with each other. Amidst the chaos, she wonders if her message is truly reaching any of them. If you were Susan what would you do?
Within the pages of this book, the reader will find practical strategies for typical issues that children’s ministers face each week. From the minor disruptions to the major behavior challenges, this book has real life solutions that the author has successfully used again and again. Each lesson includes practical solutions, tips of the trade, real-life stories, games that teach, and application activities and questions to help you apply what you learn to the ministry you serve in.
This guide is unique because it contains strategies from three worlds that are usually kept separate: The science of behavior (Applied Behavior Analysis), education, and biblical teaching to create a whole training that will meet the needs of ministries who have the desire to bring all children to Jesus whether they come from a trauma background, from a troubled home life, have special needs, or have been raised in church. This book has proven strategies to manage behavior and change the environment of a roomful of kids so that children’s ministers can spend less time bringing order to the class and more time bringing the children to Jesus.
Book Summary
from a trauma background, from a troubled home life, have special needs, or have been raised in church. This book has proven strategies to manage behavior and change the environment of a roomful of kids so that children’s ministers can spend less time bringing order to the class and more time bringing the children to Jesus.
The authors years of experience as a children’s pastor, children’s behavior therapist (BCBA), teacher, mom, and grandma shine through as she shares strategies, tools, and tips that work in the real world. She provides much needed instructions on how to manage classroom behavior, what to do to have a peaceful, fun children’s ministry and what to do to prevent issues before they arise. This is a how to book showing you how to have an environment in your children’s ministry that lends itself to connecting with kids and reaching their hearts.
Strategy 1: Create and Share the Vision. Use the application exercise to define the needs in your unique ministry then craft a vision.
Strategy 2: Win their Hearts. This lesson explores the behavioral science principle of pairing. In this lesson the readers will learn how to pair with the children in their ministry to begin changing the environment and to build meaningful connections with their kids .
Strategy 3: Learn the ABCs. What causes a person to behave the way they do? What causes behaviors to increase or decrease? Can we change a child’s behavior? YES! But how? Lesson three answers those questions by teaching the reader to become a behavior detective. The reader will learn how to find the ABCs of a behavior and how to solve what function is causing the behavior.
Strategy 4: Reinforce,Reinforce, Reinforce. Lesson four explains how to increase desired behaviors through the power of reinforcement. It answers the questions, “ Is punishment ever appropriate in children’s ministry?”and,“If it is, how do we use it effectively while still connecting with the children in a positive way?”.
Strategy 5: Use Pivot Praise. This lesson describes the powerful effects of pivot praise which is an easy effective way to positively change the atmosphere of any ministry. It defines pivot praise and instructs how to use it effectively.
Strategy 6 : Prompt and Planned Ignore. What do we do about those pesky behaviors that drive us crazy: interrupting, whining, and other attention-seeking behaviors? This question is answered as the reader learns how to use prompting to teach new behaviors and new skills and how to use the Planned Ignoring intervention to reduce the occurrence of those pesky behaviors. The reader will learn what Planned Ignoring is, what it isn’t and how and when to use it.
Strategy 7: Make obeying easy. This lesson will teach the reader how to prepare the environment to make following directions easier. It will explore questions and some tips about using a curriculum. It will explain the behavior science technique of Behavior Momentum, how to use it and how it can be of great use when a child refuses to do a task.
Strategy 8: Make it Safe. In this lesson the reader will learn what to do in a crisis when children become unsafe to themselves or others. They will develop a safety plan and learn how to use response blocking. Other safety concerns are also discussed.
Strategy 9: Redirect This lesson explains what redirection is and how to use it effectively. The second part of lesson 9 is focused on helping the readers determine what strategies to use and where to start applying these principle in their ministries.