ADULTS SAVING KIDS QUESTIONS FOR CHRISTIAN PARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, AND CONCERNED ADULTS

  1. What is your vision for your children or youth you love? What is it they have in their future lives that nourishes and directs them and calls to you?
  2. Do you have a plan which will have this outcome actually take place in their lives?
  3. How does all this fit together with what you believe and lays foundation for them in their beliefs?
  4. Am I consistent in what I express? Am I discussing with them how my faith works in the light of my own contrariness, vulnerabilities, and humanness? Do they know who Jesus is for me?
  5. What am I doing to make sure they are equipped to deal with difficult challenges?
  6. Do they know I love them, even when everything blows up in their face?
  7. Do I pray for them every day, for protection from harm and evil, for faith and love in their lives and do I thank God for them?
  8. How clear am I in what they are faced with and how am I supporting them?
  9. Am I taking the time to listen, to allow them to make choices, to discuss the hard stuff and am I willing to let them feel some of the consequences?
  10. Do they understand what I believe and how I see life rather than assuming I think the same way the media portrays life?
  11. Am I willing to let them become more and more independent and let go of them as they get out into life as adults?
  12. Have they learned through me how to deal with treachery and how to get good support?
  13. As they are growing up, have I helped them identify issues (Allergies, chemical imbalances or use, ADHD, ADD, abuse issues, abandonment issues, mental issues, grief issues, neglect or feeling unloved issues) they might have and made sure they have the assistance they need when they are young enough to let themselves receive that assistance before they refuse it?
  14. Am I in a community of believers where they can grow in being loved, trained and learning to give leadership themselves?

WHY EDUCATE CHRISTIAN PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS ABOUT EXPLOITATION AND PROSTITUTION?

No parent wants to be the blind leading the blind. That would mean both the parent and the child could fall into a pit unwittingly. Yet in working with parents of people in prostitution, the classic scenario is that parents never saw it coming. There is a reason for that.

The myths that hold prostitution in place easily fool parents. The myths go like this: Bad young people make bad career choices. They do this because they love money, love to be glamorous and/or are crazy about sex. Parents look out at these "truths" and decide they have nothing to worry about. Their youth will be fine.

Unfortunately, the reality of what is happening is much different. Young people get into prostitution in two ways. They have unaddressed trauma which, if they go to public places, will expose them to people who pick up on this woundedness and use it against them--as in recruiting them. The other way people get put into the business is by being naive and not being aware of the game being played on them until it is too late. In both cases, parents might have done something very different if they had any idea of the tragedy which would befall them.

Once a youth has become a sex worker even when it came through manipulation or force, they are in a trap where control is a key element and escape is almost impossible. Parent after parent will desperately reach out to seek to retrieve their child only to find their efforts are almost always futile. What they wished they had known earlier is no longer worth talking about. The die has been cast. It does not do much good to tell someone who just got run over by a car to look out for cars.

Parents who understand what is really happening will have a chance to address the issues they need to face. The first is an attitude change. When a child begins to act wild, the first reaction parents might have is to blame the child. A better approach is to find out what happened that has the child acting that way. Often, there has been trauma or manipulation or abuse. It is hard as a parent not to take the child's acting out as a personal affront. However, to judge the child or be angry at the child might just drive the child away further. In this case that could be right into the arms of the pimping person.

Christ was for children and for the hurting, the harmed, and the oppressed. Parents are in a position to do great good or great harm when treacherous people are around their children. They need a chance to think through what attitudes they might take on, what Scriptural understanding will inform and direct them and what actions they might take which will be beneficial for the child's life and future.

This parents' and grandparents course will prepare people for these kinds of situations. God will open up new vistas for constructive parenting when parents are most at a loss.