Zechariah is a New Testament character, he was the husband of Elizabeth and the father of John the Baptist. In Luke 1:5-25 we learn about Zechariah and his amazing encounter with the angel Gabriel. Gabriel told Zechariah that he and his wife would have a son who would...
While Halloween is a fun time of year for many children, it can be a really difficult time for some, including many children with additional/special needs. For them it can be a confusing, anxiety-inducing, or even utterly terrifying time. But it doesn’t have to be like that. If we stop for a moment to think about the things they might find hard and how to put things in place to help them, children with special needs can safely join in the fun, too. So what are some of the things about Halloween that children with additional needs can find hard?
Mark Arnold shares a creative idea that will be fun all season long! Follow these steps to make an autumn fidget box of your own.
Easter is one of the most important times in the Christian calendar.But the big story of Easter can be difficult for some children and young people with special needs to understand. Children learn best when their senses are engaged. Here are some sensory ideas that can be used to tell the Easter story, and give us ways to share other complex biblical themes throughout the year.
Disability ‘allies’ are people who are not necessarily disabled themselves, but who advocate for, journey with, campaign for, or in other ways support disabled people of any age. Here are six real and story-based people from the Bible who could be viewed as disability allies.
Mark Arnold belongs to the Disabled Children’s Partnership, a UK-based organization that recently released the results of a series of surveys of UK families with children and young people with disabilities. The results are stark: the impact of the 18-months of the COVID-19 pandemic has been harrowing.
Providing a range of fidget or fiddle toys can be a really effective part of the resource toolkit for children’s and youth workers, or for families, offering children and young people safe ways to meet the sensory needs that they have. Here are a few suggestions.
Parents of children with special needs are often labeled negatively: ‘troublemakers,’ ‘confrontational,’ ‘needy,’ ‘over-sharing.’ The reason we (as yes, I’m one too) can sometimes pick up some of these negative labels is that we won’t take no for an answer when it comes to our child. Why do we enter into conversations, meetings and appointments with our boxing gloves firmly on? Because the world cannot understand.
Throughout the childhood and adolescence of any child there are many different kinds of milestones, transitions and rites of passage, and many changes that come along. For families of children with special needs, these can provide many opportunities for unhealthy comparison, which can sometimes be so difficult and painful.
We are always stronger, better, more focused and more successful when we’re working together than when we are working apart. That includes when families, our children’s and youth work—indeed our whole church ministry and mission—has a shared passion and vision. Here are four reasons why.
As one of the most important times in the Christian calendar, Easter is a key teaching time for parents, as well as children’s and youth workers. But the big story of Easter can be difficult for some children and young people with additional/special needs or disabilities to understand. Here are some sensory ideas that we can use that will help us to tell the Easter story, but will also give us ways to help children and young people with additional needs access other complex themes we might want to engage them with throughout the year.
Every parent wants their child to have friends: good friends that like them and care for them, friends that they can trust and build healthy relationships with. But what about when our child is disabled, different or diverse?
Happy New Year! Now there is a phrase filled with all sorts of questions, opportunities and possibilities this time around! Will it be happy? How can we tell? Mark Arnold shares some things that inspire his hope for 2021, including some wisdom from Winston Churchill.
What nativity play part is there for a disabled child, and what does the answer to this question tell us about society as a whole and church as a part of it? An excellent question, with insightful answers from Mark Arnold.
Halloween is a fun time of year for many children, but it can be a really difficult time for some, including many children with additional/special needs. For them it can be a confusing, anxiety-inducing, or even utterly terrifying time. But it doesn’t have to be like that. If we stop for a moment to think about the things they might find hard and how to put things in place to help them, children with special needs can safely join in the fun, too.
Acceptance is a word that has several meanings, and which can mean different things to different people. Within the context of a blog about children and young people with special needs, these meanings can be complex and very individual. But the meaning that I love the most is the meaning that Jesus brings to it, the example He gives us about how we should accept each other.
My son James has his hair cut about four or five times a year. As long as we keep to a routine, all is fine. Any change would be enormously difficult for him, and therefore for us. The reason I share James’ haircut story is to illustrate that routine and familiarity are fundamentally core to the coping mechanisms of many children and young people with additional needs. And just like the routines followed by special needs families, churches have opportunities to make similar choices regarding children and young people with disabilities in church-based work as well.
Those of us that are the parents of a child with special needs so often put so much of our time, energy and focus into helping that child or young person to thrive and develop as fully as possible. But for many of us, our child with special needs or disability is not our only child.
A question I get asked loads of times is this; “How can I explain special needs to children?” One suggestion I give to people trying to explain this to children is to gather them all together. Ask them what is different about each of them, compared to the rest of the group. It can also be helpful to think about popular children’s characters and discuss the differences between them. The characters in the A.A. Milne Winnie the Pooh stories offer a great example for younger children.
Parenting a child with additional needs or disabilities can be hectic, a bit overwhelming too, with so much to juggle, so much unpredictability and so many battles to fight, especially in these difficult times. So when precious moments come along, it is important to cherish them, enjoy them, to squeeze every single drop of joy out of them, a bit like we did with a very special moment a while ago.
Over all of those years I’ve had a Swiss Army knife, I’ve used it a lot, or rather I’ve used most of it a lot.There’s a tool on it that I hadn’t used so much; in fact, I wasn’t even sure what it was for. As I thought about this some more, I realized that the Swiss Army pocket knife, and the particular tool I was looking at, makes a great metaphor for many of us who care about children and young people with special needs or disability.
It’s a question many Christian parents of a child with special needs or a disability ask, and it’s a question that can be really hard to answer, especially when the child in question has limited communication. But perhaps there are clues that we can piece together: things that Jesus did, or understanding the ways our child responds to God. In exploring this, it might stretch and grow our own understanding and faith in God, too.
During his life on earth Jesus challenged the accepted culture of his time, often creating a societal and political storm as He did so. When we look at where Jesus came from and what happened to Him, perhaps it provides us with a clearer picture of who He is, challenging us to think about how He lived, and how He might challenge today’s culture in these difficult political times.
In scripture, Jesus doesn’t tell us just to be passive prayers, but to be thankful for what God has done and to seek God’s kingdom and righteousness. We’re called not to be worriers, but to be warriors! Taking action spiritually, emotionally and physically can transform our situation, and be of much more help to our child, too.
I thought a lot about Jack, whether he had gained anything at all from his time at Spring Harvest, whether he had been impacted by any of the spiritual program in his sessions. Had he just been child-minded, busying himself with his Jenga wooden blocks, or had something more than that reached him? A few weeks later, I got the answer to my questions.
For us as parents of a child with additional/special needs, there are certainly many times to weep, times to be sad. But there is so much more to life than the tears and hard times. Let us celebrate the happier times, the times to laugh and dance.
Whatever your experience with the game of poker, there is a lot about the game that is very much like additional needs parenting.
If all we do is share what we have with our friends and family—or, dare I say, our ‘clique’ within our congregation!—are we just sharing with those who might be useful to us in some way? Jesus is teaching us through His parables that we shouldn’t just pick our favorites for the team, choose only our friends for a meal, or reach out in ministry only to those who the world views as having influence or who can help us financially. And that must include children and young people with special/additional needs or disabilities.
For young people with additional needs, sex and relationships can be a subject that youth workers and parents shy away from, but it shouldn’t be so. Every young person deserves the same help and support as they grapple with the myriad of questions, feelings and emotions that this topic evokes.
The Bible is full of stories about children and young people: Mary, Joseph, David, Samuel, Esther, the widow’s son and Elijah, Naaman’s slave girl, Jairus’ daughter, etc. In thinking about some of these stories, I found many parallels in their stories and my son James.
There is always hope in Jesus. There is always peace to be found in Him. I pour out my soul to Him and find healing. Whatever the future brings, we don’t go into it or through it alone. We go together, with confidence in Christ who goes with us.
Just like the journey we’ve been on since James was two and received his first diagnoses, God will use our experiences to strengthen us and to equip us to help others this time too.
What will we take with us into the new year ahead? Will we drag the chains of the struggles and trials of the old year with us into the new? Will we allow the failures, regressions and setbacks of the last year define us and our child? Or will we use these experiences to shape us positively for the year ahead; to bear our scars as symbols of where we have been, what we have endured together, the experience we have acquired together, to take into the future to help us, our child, and others, to navigate through another year.
Let’s see the nativity play as a gauge of where our church has gotten to on the road to accessibility, acceptance, inclusion and belonging… For a few, there is indeed ‘Good news for ALL people!’, for others, they are ‘arriving at Bethlehem’ but still have a lot more to do, for many, they ‘haven’t even left Nazareth’ yet, there is a long journey ahead, and they haven’t even borrowed a donkey.
Instead of parents being wrongly blamed, or even worse parents blaming themselves for the disability or additional needs of their child, let our children inspire us to what God has called us to, let us celebrate how God is working through our children and let us do away with fault, blame, guilt and all of the other negatives that are the work of the enemy.
The ‘brand identity’ and ‘designer labels’ of the additional needs parent do not need apologising for, they speak of our love for our child, our willingness to put them first, our never-ending God given endurance as we strive to do the very best we can for the child that is our first thought as we wake and our final thought as we (eventually!) drop off to sleep.
There are times when we are simply out of fuel, the zero is flashing on our dashboard. We’ve been drained of all of our reserves, and we’re empty. Those are the times when we need to be specific about our prayers; not what we might want at that point, but what do we really need? What is going to help us the most?
As I sat there last Sunday, speaking the oh-so-familiar words of the Lord’s Prayer, I found myself thinking of them in a different way—thinking of them in the context of parenting a child with additional or special needs.
Mark Arnold shares how families of children with disabilities are being bullied at church, and how the church can do better.
Jesus included everyone, no one was left out; in fact he actively accepted and included many who the world rejected, and so should we.