Working With A Teen In Crisis: Be Prepared for Crisis

Preparation of a crisis that could (and will) happen involves three things: leaving time in your schedule to give it your full attention, knowing the resources available to you to best handle the situation, and creating an environment that is safe to be open and talk with adults and others about their problems. These allow us to effectively and fully engage with the student, preventing deeper wounds being created from our own shortcomings.

Being Available For Students
We have actually dedicated a whole article on this idea. I intentionally schedule all of my meetings with at least an hour block in between them. So many times after having meetings with students about student leadership or youth group, one of them usually needs to have something that they need to talk about. This buffer room gives me the ability to be able to take 45 minutes to listen to their hearts and minds while they are willing to open up. This shows the students you honor them and want to hear them.

Know The Resources Available To You
There are some great books out there like The Youth Worker’s Guide to Helping Teenagers in Crisis or Emergency Response Handbook for Youth Ministry. While these are great for responses to crisis, we should not go beyond what we are capable of. Professional counselors, police, and doctors are in your area to handle severe problems of cutting, abuse by a parent, or mental disabilities. The question is if you know who they are, if they are a trusted resource that has the same faith beliefs, and have their contact information on hand for these emergencies. Who would you call for those three situations I had stated: cutting, abuse by a parent, or mental disabilities?

Create An Environment
We need to be proactive and allow the students to want to talk about hurts and wounds to us. Honestly might not tell any other adults for fear of being judged, ignored, or rejected because of what they are facing. If we are to wait to create an environment of safety in the youth group and in the relationship between the leadership of the youth group and the students, we will be too late and they will either see it as fake or too late. We will talk more about HOW to create this environment in our youth group on Thursday.

The Result
Crisis are not something that you can plan. Leaving time in our schedule, knowing our resources, and providing an environment allow us to be fully present with the student when something big or little happens. This full engagement gives them the attention they need, that they may not be able to get from parents or friends that could be going through the same crisis. Tomorrow we will talk about the idea of giving teens time and space with their crisis, instead of coming to fix everything.