ARTICLE - You can be a Mentor
You Can Be a Mentor
What is a mentor? A mentor is someone who listens to another and uses their own life experience to challenge and encourage them to grow into their potential.
Listening is a wonderful gift that we can give to our children. Too often our children are treated as an inconvenient interruption to our already crowded lives. Children can be overlooked by parents who are, sometimes understandably, caught up in their own struggles. We can make the time to stop and connect with children.
Many adults attempt to engage with children in their community but find they simply don’t know what to say. Let’s be honest, conversing with a child can be hard work! The challenge is to go beyond their name, age, year at school and an exclamation over how much they have grown since we saw them last.
Try asking questions like…
- Tell me about your friends at school.
- What is the best thing that has happened this week?
- Tell me about something that has made you sad lately.
- What happened this week that you are proud of?
- Can you think of something you did this week that you would do differently if you had another chance?
- If you could do anything in the world tomorrow, what would it be?
- What do you love about Jesus?
- What have you been praying about lately?
- Tell me about something you find difficult to understand about God.
- If we could do anything at all in church, what would you like us to do?
As you ask questions, listen to their answers. Remember what they have shared, pray for them and build on the conversation each time you see them.
It takes time to build an honest, open, trusting relationship. It might take even longer of the child concerned feels that he or she has been hurt or betrayed or neglected by an adult. Our children are worth persevering with.
You might not feel that this strategy will change the world, but it certainly has the ability to change the world of the children that you invest in. They will also learn from your example and one day they are likely to pass the gift of mentoring on to someone else.
Together, if we listen to our children, we will build an environment where they feel valued and accepted for who they are and what they have to contribute now, as well as in the future.
Let’s encourage our children to dream big and then help them to achieve big things.
Captain Joanne Smith is a mother of three girls. She has studied Education and Theology and has taught High School Mathematics. She is now serving as a Salvation Army Officer in the Children’s Ministry Department. Joanne believes that we are called to minister alongside children, acknowledging that they have an integral role to play in the body of Christ.
