This Sunday was my first turn back on the rota since the session that will long live in the memory as ‘The one that was so bad I texted my wife half way through about how bad it was’. You can relive the horror here. I was also aware that there had been trouble in one of the sessions in between, so I was braced for a fun time!
So how did it go? It was hard work for the first half of the session and then there was a sudden outbreak of calm and we got somewhere, but it was quite a battle at times. Here are some thoughts on that process…
I had a long think about getting my attitude right before we began. It was crucial I wasn’t carrying the frustration of last time into the session (if I did I would probably overreact at the first sign of trouble). I had to think clearly and positively.
I planned a session that was deliberately different to the usual, I just felt we needed that. So as the theme was Noah’s Ark we built an ark out of tables and then held the rest of the session in our ark.
We had a big issue early on. The rooms we use hadn’t been put back together properly by the previous rental and the temporary wall between our two rooms had not been properly put away. The sections of wall, which should slide away, had jammed and were left half out. When I walked in the room a child was spinning one of the sections which, had another child been nearby, would have been dangerous, so I had to do the thing we never like to do, I had to shout. I try never to shout, but this child was putting others at risk so I needed him to stop straight away. He did and then I had to have the heavy chat with all the children to explain that they mustn’t touch these bit of wall and if anyone did they would have to leave the room and go and sit back with their parents.
After this we settled down a bit, but we did have some issues with our usual lad who is having a struggling phase with his behaviour. However, we were able to manage it by affirming the good bits, ignoring the less good bits and moving him to sit next to me.
Then we built the ark and had more problems. Everyone was fully engaged but when we all got on the ark, the usual child was refusing to get on and causing a big distraction for the younger kids. So I decided that I was going to have to call this out and not just try and ignore it. I asked him to get on the ark and counted to three. He moved on two – I was relieved.
Unfortunately he continued to be disruptive and I needed to speak to him three or four times, each time having to break off from the story. On the last occasion I asked him to leave the session and go back and sit with his parent (which children in our group know is the ultimate censor but we’ve never had to go near before). He refused. I said I was sorry but he’d had multiple warnings and chosen to ignore them and so either he would have to go or I would have to get his parent. And then it dawned on him that I was for real, this was happening. He changed: ‘But I like it here, I want to stay here.’ I decided to recognise the new tone and offer a final chance. He joined in brilliantly for the rest of the session.
I should stress that I tried to keep a positive tone throughout this, I kept telling him that we knew he could do this, and how we wanted him to be able to join in. We kept emphasising that we had a really great session planned but we wouldn’t be able to have it if we couldn’t do it safely and whenever he behaved well we praised him.
At the end I took him to one side for a chat and explained again that we knew he could do it, talked about how well he had behaved in the second half of the session and told him how much we enjoyed having him in our group.
So, it was alright, and actually for most of the kids it was a really great session where we got to experience a story together and play in it a bit. The question I now have is around the behaviour issue, it got sorted for the session but I clearly had to go in hard to achieve that; I would definitely not want to do that every week. We will find that out over the next few weeks: we may find that we have faced our issues down and can move on, or that things are be about to get worse and we might actually have to ask someone leave the session before we can move on.
Sam Donoghue is Head of Children’s and Youth Ministry Support for the Diocese of London, and helps to lead children’s work in his own church.