Help! My Kids Are Hurting: A Survival Guide to Working with Students in Pain

This is one of my favorite book on helping hurting kids. It is a very easy read. I am a Life Hurts God Heals director and I give this book to each of my youth workers. They have all enjoyed it and commented on how helpful it was.

I am a beginning youth minister and have completed four years of internships while getting my Bachelor's degree in youth and family ministries. While doing this I have found that I was going to have to copy different chapters from different books to give to my adult leaders working with the students, but then I read this incredible piece by Marv Penner that brings in a lot of different angles to help adults work with students. I have already distributed this book to seven of my adult leaders and they all have loved it. It is an easy read that will take you two hours tops - I don't understand why you wouldn't read this. The only negative I see in this book is the title, I think it's a little misleading because I believe this work applies to most any teenager rather than just the ones who have experienced major difficulties.

Every year I head out to summer camps to counsel students from first to twelfth grade. And every year I find myself facing new situations and difficulties. This year, I wanted to do some research and learn a few things before plunging in again, and when I saw HELP! MY KIDS ARE HURTING, I knew that this would be a perfect fit. While short on anecdotes and illustrations, Marv Penner leads the reader through a ton of practical advice that can immediately be used. Opening out with a look at the state of things in the world of teens today, Marv immediately draws the reader in to hear about what we as youth workers need to be doing to help. Further on, we can identify our own ministry style, learn boundaries for youth work, and find out what things hurting kids need from us. With about 35 years of experience, Penner offers suggestions for talking with students, and then goes through the ten most common issues for teens, including: eating disorders, adolescent suicide, rape and sexual assault, adolescent pregnancy, substance abuse, grief and loss, self-injury, family breakdown, pornography and sexual addiction, and adolescent depression. He goes through each topic offering suggestions and raising awareness on each issue. He also includes some further resources in the form of books, websites, and telephone hotlines. Overall, HELP! MY KIDS ARE HURTING is an excellent "first aid kit" for teen ministry. The book greatly enlighten me on many issues, and gave me a lot of direction in my camp counseling. Definitely pick this one up.