Kids for Thought

For the five previous years before coming to Australia I lived in a small country named Dominican Republic, with a population just over 10 million, in which more than 35% of the population is under 15 years of age. The public education system is one of the worst I've ever seen in my life, kids in year 4 or 5 struggle to read simple textbooks or to explain simple mathematics concepts. Kids that go any ahead end up frustrated because they can't understand a thing the teacher is talking about, cannot read the books that they are required and so they simply give up. For them there is nowhere else to go but the streets, they figure out (or are forced by their parents) that is the only way they can do any good to the world since they failed at school. They throw their future into the garbage for a few coins every day, most of them probably won't get any more than 30 pesos every day; if they are quite lucky and meet some generous people they might get to 50 pesos (less than 1.50 U$, that would barely buy them a light lunch and a juice for the whole day).

If they fail to bring any money home, either because they had to expend it to eat something so they wouldn't faint from hunger under the hot sun or because they weren't lucky enough to get some people that were generous to them they are likely to be beaten up by the parents, so after a few times they just figure out there is no good on going back to their houses and end up living in the streets, get involved with using and dealing drugs, they end up hopeless... nowhere to turn... no one to rescue them... What can they do? Is not all their fault, is not like they chose to be bad and disobedient kids, they are scared and have nowhere to turn and in their vulnerability the only comfort they can find is that of acceptance by those who are also rejected.

That is the destiny and future of many kids not only in the Dominican Republic, but around the world, millions and millions of kids go through similar or worse scenarios every day. My question is simple: What are we personally doing about it?

Giusepe S Moreno

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