My Conspire 2009 Thoughts – Breakout Session B with Jackie Glass

(image taken from Conspire Conference website)

For the second breakout session at Conspire, I attended one entitled “Helping Early Adolescents Navigate Through Life” led by Jackie Glass. I couldn’t find a website for Jackie so here is her bio from the Conspire Conference website:

Jackie Glass is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Therapist at a private practice in Wheaton, Illinois, in which she continually interfaces with children and adolescents wrestling with spiritual growth. She also works in the Children’s Segment at the Willow Creek Association helping to make a difference in the lives of children. Previous, Jackie was the Assistant Director of Community Care at Willow Creek Community Church serving those in need of resources and spiritual guidance. Jackie has been married for three years and is expecting a baby girl.

You can check out my live blogging of this breakout here. I won’t be going into all of the notes in detail, so you might what to check out that link if you want more of what was said.

I had two reasons for attending this breakout. The first is that we are halfway through our second year of our Grade 5 and 6 program at Redwood called FLIPT. We were finding that the grade 5 kids were too old to be with the other elementary kids and the grade 6 kids were too young for the junior high group. Both grade groups were getting lost in the shuffle so we formed a group just for them. It’s worked really well for us, and the kids love having their own group! In this session, I was hoping to gain more insight to bring back to our FLIPT leadership team.

My second reason is that my oldest son is getting ready to enter this stage of life in the next year or so. I wanted to get a better understanding of his next life stage and how best to navigate through it with him.

I greatly appreciated Jackie’s professional training in counseling as well as her practical ministry experiences. The marriage of the two brought a unique view into relating with kids in this age group. Jackie highlighted three things that pre-adolescents need:

1. People to relate with
2. People to mediate for them
3. People to advocate for them

One of the things that stood out for me was that kids in this stage of life (while they may deny it) need adults who are “safe” to talk to and who are looking out for them and encouraging them to develop their talents and abilities. Jackie encouraged those of us working with this age group to keep being there for these kids in spite of not seeing or knowing if you are making a difference. It is rare to see the affect we have on this age group, so it is important to treasure the moments that we do see those glimpses of life change we get to be a part of.

Another thing that stood out to me was the need for us to help pre-adolescents learn to navigate through their feelings. Pre-adolescents are still learning to grasp abstract concepts so it is hard for them to link their emotions with their actions. Those of us who work with this age group need to help them connect the dots of identifying their feelings and how those feelings affect what they do.

This was a good breakout, not just for children’s ministry workers who interact with pre-adolescents but for parents as well.

• What do you do in your ministries for the pre-adolescent age group?
• How do you create a safe and encouraging environment where pre-adolescents can come, be themselves, and interact with adults who care about them?
• What do you do to connect with parents of pre-adolescents? What do you do to equip them to handle this stage of life with their children?