Help My Kids Are Hurting A Survival Guide to Working With Students in Pain

Help! My Kids Are Hurting: A Survival Guide to Working with Students in Pain Copyright ©2005 by Marv Penner Youth Specialties products, 300 South Pierce Street, El Cajon, CA 92020 are published by Zondervan, 5300 Patterson Avenue Southeast, Grand Rapids, MI 49530. ISBN-10: 0-310-26708-0 ISBN-13: 0-310-26708-9 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version (North American Edition), copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other-(except for brief quotations in printed reviews) without the prior permission of the publisher. Web site addresses listed in this book were current at the time of publication. Please contact Youth Specialties via e-mail (YS@YouthSpecialties.com) to report URLs that are no longer operational and replacement URLs if available. Creative team: Dave Urbanski, Kristi Robison, Laura Gross, and Heather Haggerty Cover design by : Holly Sharp Interior design by: Mark Novelli, IMAGO MEDIA Printed in the United States 05 06 07 08 09 10 - 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 chapter one 1. Kids today are hurting more deeply than they-or we- are willing to admit. Lots of hurting teenagers have learned to cautiously hide what's really going on inside. They've fi gured out that opening up to someone-especially an adult-could set them up for more hurt than they're willing to risk. When a kid tries to share his story with someone and is ignored or judged or exposed or given quick advice, for a while he may not make himself that vulnerable again. When we look at most teenagers, their lives seem so put together. The brand-name wardrobe, cool accessories, and apparently carefree attitudes fool us into thinking everything is fi ne. But too often, beneath that carefully crafted exterior beats the frightened heart of a little girl or boy who has no one to trust. It's easier for kids to deny what they're feeling and pretend everything is just fi ne, rather than risk possible rejection by opening up. Let's think about something even more important: Many of us who work with teenagers fi nd ourselves denying the reality of what's going on with the kids in our care. We pretend everything is okay even when we know the truth. Why the denial? Probably because most of us don't feel equipped to deal with their issues. And besides, getting tangled up in a kid's mess would take more time and energy than we have to give. So we simply carry on the game. As long as nobody's talking about heavy stuff, we don't have to deal with heavy stuff. We try to keep our relationships with our students lighthearted and superfi cial for fear that if we open the door to deeper issues, we'll have to deal with them. FIVE THINGS YOU CAN COUNT ON Many of us haven't even sorted out our own stuff yet, so at all costs we avoid getting involved in someone else's pain. Maybe this explains why some sociologists have described today's teenagers as "the abandoned generation." They don't tell; we don't ask-that way nobody has to worry about what's really going on. 2. The deepest hurt most kids feel is relational. Neither the chaos of adolescent transitions nor the bizarre circumstances in which kids often fi nd themselves are what wounds kids the most. No, the deepest wounds happen when the people they count on fail to honor that extended trust. When a person who is supposed to provide safety and support walks away and leaves kids on their own, they feel most deeply hurt. We are talking about abandonment-relatiPenner, Marv is the author of 'Help My Kids Are Hurting A Survival Guide to Working With Students in Pain' with ISBN 9780310267089 and ISBN 0310267080.