Kids and Small Groups

This is just a question for anyone who regularly attends a church small group. If you have kids, or if you’ve ever been in a small group with people who have kids, what are some ways that the kids have been attended to during the small group? We just started a small group with kids in it. Last night we just let them hang out with us while we did small group, which worked a lot better than I thought it was going to, but I think it was hard for the moms. So I’m looking for ideas. Let me know if you have some.

5 thoughts on “Kids and Small Groups”

  2. I have done it many different ways. I think it depends primarily on the disposition of the parents and secondarily on the disposition of the kids. When we just had Grace, we would do small group with her along no problem.

    Then, when we had Asa it became more difficult, mostly because I was being an ass at the time. I thought that the flow of the group we were leading was too important for me to be interrupted, so if our kids were making noise, I would shoot Annetta dirty looks until she took care of it. (I was a charming fellow back then.)

    Now that we have 3, it depends. If everyone shows up, our current small group has about 10 kids under 10. It is really nice to have a babysitter. We pay her $20 for two hours. That rotates among 4 families. So I end up paying $20 per month to always have a babysitter at small group. That’s totally worth it to me.

    At this point in my life I can engage in worship and hear prophetic words for people while a baby or kid is screaming full tilt. I also need to recognize that a lot of people can’t. And sometimes the parent of the child feels awful because they think their child is bothering me or others. At that point it doesn’t matter if the child is or isn’t bothering anyone. The parent is not engaging and that needs to be addressed.

    Ok, this is way too long now. I’m done.

  3. Our group has more kids than adults and this has been our #1 concern (problem?) for at least a year – how to incorporate the kids and let them feel important and included without becoming a distraction in the “adult” times. Right now, we have a permanent babysitter (one of the leader’s young sisters) and one of the adults (on a rotating basis). We typically do it one of 2 ways.

    1) The kids stay up for at least part of worship (depending on the kids’ hyper-activity level and whether they even know the songs), then the adult whose turn it is and the babysitter take them downstairs where they have snacks and their own Bible story with accompanying craft. Then they pray. After that, they have free-play time and the adult on rotation can choose to return to group if the babysitter feels she can handle watching them from there.

    2) (The more recent preference) The babysitter, adult, and kids all go downstairs as group starts. They do their Bible story, craft, and prayer. Then they have a snack. After that, the adult can typically come up and join in with the discussion while the babysitter supervises free play.

    These depend, of course, on how many kids are there and whether there are any super-grouchy kids in the mix. Since the babysitter is the leader’s sister, she doesn’t technically get paid. We try to make a point of giving her $1 per kid per week, but I doubt there’s ever a week that she actually gets that. Occasionally, we try to surprise her with movie passes, gift certificates, that sort of thing. It probably isn’t nearly often enough, but we try.

    This is what we’ve found that works the best, but I still don’t think it’s perfect. I think every situation will be a little different based on how many kids, their ages, and their personalities along with the adults’ opinions and personalities. We typically have a small group every 6 months or so where all we do is discuss whether the childcare option is working and talk about ways to tweak it. Oh, worth mentioning is that on the months that have 5 weeks, we devote the 5th week to the kids – in October, we painted pumpkins and had a bonfire, for instance. That way they don’t feel like a burden during group. (I don’t think they actually do, but it’s something the leaders strongly worry about, so we actively try to counter that) Hope something here helps!

  5. If there are more than a couple kids, a babysitter is an absolute must, if you ask me. You gotta talk with the parents settle out all the details, but, to me, it’s not even worth coming to small group if you have to worry about your own or other kids distractions.

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