Kids for Thought

Kids apparent short attention span seem to be one of the big challenges and themes of Kids ministry all around the world.

They can't focus on one thing for more than a few minutes - we say, and even use misleading statistics and personal experiences to support our statements. This is a very common mindset, and broadly used excuse (that's what I call it anyways) when it comes down to teaching children and getting them involved in our services.

However I would like to, just as it happenned to me, challenge that mindset. To start off I'll share a short story:

Last Saturday after a long last day of our Colour Conference I walked into one of our kids room and found one of our 3 yr old watching with extreme interest "Curious George" on the TV. I sat by his side and talked to him, I even poked him and made funny faces, but there was no way he would take his eyes off the TV screen. He was completely focused and captivated by the TV show he was watching.

We all have stories like that about our kids or kids in our world. They sit still through 2 hours long movies, play videogames for hours and completely know what's going on, even when it doesn't seems so.

Maybe the problem then is not our children short attention span! There isn't such a thing... I'm tired of hearing excuses about not being able to keep kids interested because of their attention span. Disney, Fox, Warner do it! Why do we say is our kids fault?

I'm not saying it isn't challenging to keep our kids focused- I am myself probably only at the begginers stage of being able to keep children interested- but maybe blaming our kids is not the best thing to do or the right thing to do.

There's something we can definitely learn from Disney. I'm not sure what, but I guess is our responsibility as God's servants to give our best, and find out how we can do that.

So I'll leave with 3 questions: How effective am I being when I communicate to my kids? What can I improve on this week? What can I learn from Disney?

Giusepe S. Moreno

Well, since this is my first post in this blog I guess I'll start by sharing a little bit about me.

My name is Giusepe Moreno and I do a bunch of stuff in life, but one of my main (BIG) passions is Kids ministry, I have the great privilege of currently being a student at Hillsong College and of working alongside the best Kids pastors in the world: Dave & Beci Wakerley and the whole Hillsong Kids team.

As you've probably figured it out already this is going to be a blog dedicated to sharing some of my thoughts, ideas, randomness about Kids Ministry and alikes.

Giusepe S. Moreno