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Are your lessons or classes chaotic because of disruptive behavior? Here are 3 ways to prevent disruptive behavior in your ministry!
Are your lessons or classes chaotic because of disruptive behavior? Want to know how to keep your kids and youth engaged? Read on as teacher, homeschool mom, and behavior analyst Holly Sharpe shares 3 ways to prevent disruptive behavior in your ministry!
If you teach children or youth in a small church, you already know the struggle.
“They talk while I’m talking.”
“They call out and interrupt the lesson.”
“He/She wanders off or finds something to get into.”
“They distract the other children.”
Ministering to children and youth is a calling for a reason, and it can be especially challenging in a small church when you …
- Have limited volunteers
- Have limited resources
- Are combining groups with large age gaps
- Have varied interests and abilities in your ministry group
Often, struggling children’s ministry leaders look to different disciplinary methods to handle disruptive behavior in their classes. While this may occasionally be helpful or necessary, most often, I find that thinking about punishing behavior is an eventual dead end.
When punishment is a focus for managing behavior, it causes disconnect when you really want connection.
Punishment creates unnecessary power struggles.
Punishment isn’t the most effective strategy for your problem.
If you want to effectively manage disruptive behavior in your small church children’s ministry, you need to be proactive and stop the behavior before it starts! Read on to find out 3 things you can do to set your ministry up for success.
3 Ways To Stop Disruptive Behavior Before It Starts
1. Move Around!
Many children’s ministry classes are held on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings.
Let’s think about this — most children have been at school all day on Wednesdays, then hurry off to church, where they are expected to sit and hear a story or sit and hear a lesson again. After sitting all day in their school classroom or working their brains hard to learn and perform, they come to church and are asked to sit patiently for more reading, more listening, and more learning.
On Sunday mornings, they may have gotten up early for church, and they are ready to play — but teachers may be ready for them to sit quietly and patiently for a Sunday school lesson.
Kids need to move around! Start your class with movement — this is easily incorporated into worship time with kid-friendly music or worship tools such as ribbons, flags, or instruments.
Think about changing up how students hear a story or a lesson. Consider flexible seating — something other than what they have had to do all day already. Try carpet squares, pillows, or even laying down on towels! Think about yoga balls or bean bags. These different seating options give kids the opportunity to wiggle or stretch without interrupting their neighbors, as they are defined spaces. Many kids actually focus on what you are teaching better if they are able to get their wiggles out!
2. Keep Them Busy
Are Bible stories being dragged out so that children can’t maintain their attention? Are lessons lengthy, without much interaction with the kids? Or are there gaps of unstructured time?
The average adult’s attention span is about 20 minutes at a time. After that, lapses in attention are common. For children, you can expect between 2-5 minutes of attention span per year of age. So your average kindergartener may only have about 10 minutes of an attention span … and in my experience, more like 5-6 minutes!
Keep your lessons to the point and interactive — give the kids something to do instead of passively listening. When children are engaged, they aren’t distracted — which means less disruptive behavior.
Ask questions during the lesson (give a sticker or small treat for a correct answer to make it special!). Notice and compliment their good behavior during the lesson (Thank you for being a good listener!). Take turns reading or asking questions (pass a ball or small object to determine whose turn it is). Make your lesson a game instead of a lecture.
Think about any unstructured time in your ministry. Unstructured time is the perfect setting for disruptive behavior! Fill that time with a lightly structured activity such as coloring, toys, video, obstacle course, partner games, Play-Doh, etc. When I taught 3-year-olds through kindergarteners, the children came into class and got to pick a color of Play-Doh to build with. This kept them entertained until everyone arrived and we could start worship. It was even more fun when volunteers could build with the children!
3. Add Sensory Activities
The most successful addition to stop disruptive behavior from happening when I was teaching Sunday morning children’s ministry was adding sensory activities!
Sensory items or activities stimulate and soothe the senses. Playing with shaving cream, Play-Doh, Silly Putty, or Kinetic Sand would be soothing for the tactile senses. Painting with Kool-Aid, coloring with scented markers, or playing with scented dough would stimulate the sense of smell. Having a snack with different textures would satisfy the sense of taste (and a chewy or crunchy snack would be even better to get extra wiggles out). Musical instruments, musical toys, or items that make interesting sounds (like dry beans or pasta that can be poured/dumped, and marbles that clack together) can fulfill those who like auditory sensory.
Other ideas for including sensory would be writing with chalk, blowing bubbles, water play, finger painting, differently textured blocks for building, or scooping/dumping materials like dry beans/pasta, aquarium gravel, river rocks, marbles, pom poms, etc.
My kiddos’ favorite sensory item to play with was multicolored floral gems that you can get for $1 a bag at Dollar Tree! I bought a few bags of different colors and put them in a plastic shoebox with a couple of cups and scoops. This was a lifesaver to pull out for the kids when the adult service ran a bit overtime!
Sensory stimulation can also be incorporated into movement. Crawling, rolling, laying, pushing, spinning, running, stomping, and jumping would be welcome additions to your lessons and activities.
Let me challenge you to plan to incorporate one of these 3 ideas into your next ministry opportunity and see what happens! Find me in the Creative Solutions for Small Churches Facebook community!
Happy teaching!
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