Welcome to Light for Parents!
Parents of children who have disabilities or fragile health, who have been adopted or experienced other traumas, or who have other special needs, face unique challenges that are hard for others to fully understand. If you are such a parent, you are not alone. If you know a parent of a child with extraordinary challenges, there are many ways you can show Christian love and encouragement. We're here to help on this journey. We pray that this ministry will be a blessing to you along the way.
Light for Parents
News
New Educational Presentation!
Light for Parents now offers an important educational presentation for churches. “The Connected Church” can help church and school staff and volunteers understand the effects of trauma on children and how to make the church a welcoming environment for children from hard places and their families. Based on the principles of Trust-Based Relational Intervention and incorporating The Brain Architecture Game, this three-hour interactive and powerful presentation will encourage and empower congregations to welcome traumatized children fully into children’s ministries, modeling Jesus’ love to them and their families.
The Light for Parents staff would like to bring this presentation to as many WELS and ELS churches as possible. For more information or to bring this presentation to your church, email staff@lightforparents.com
or call the WELS Special Ministries office. We look forward to hearing from you!
New Publication Available!
Many steps need to be considered when a child with disabilities or other extraordinary needs becomes an adult. Click here to download a helpful document on transitioning a child with extraordinary needs to adulthood.
WELS Newsletter Publication
Is it possible that you have some hidden members in your church? Might you even be one of them? Find out in this article from a recent "His Hands" newsletter!
Website Resource Update
Visit the Support This Ministry
page to learn more about how you can help us spread God's love to parents.
Supporting Parents at a Distance
Parents, do you ever feel like "no one gets it"? Do you feel isolated and wish you could talk with another parent who has raised a child with extraordinary needs? The staff at Light for Parents understands, as we've all been in the same situation. Send us a direct message, or use the contact form on this website. We will help you find a supporting--and supportive--parent who has been in a similar situation. Your supportive parent will contact you to listen and to give you Christian encouragement. You're not alone!
Encourage one another and build each other up. (1 Thessalonians 5:11)
Trauma-Informed Parenting Workshop is now available.
It happens to many parents. You feel as if you have a good handle on parenting and discipline with your children—and then you adopt or foster children, and none of your parenting skills seem to work anymore! Or things are going fairly well in your home until one of your children experiences a traumatic event, and that child seems to change completely overnight! Parenting children who have experienced trauma is different from parenting those who haven’t; the approaches most parents know often won’t work. But there is hope! This workshop will dig into specific ways trauma affects children, and we will cover the basics of one approach that has been shown to bring that hope and peace to their homes.
Please contact the staff at
Light for Parents
if you are interested in having this workshop at your congregation or organization.
Light for Parents is a part of WELS Special Ministries.
To better make connections with families who have children facing extraordinary challenges,
Light for Parents has joined the WELS Special Ministries' "Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Ministry" (IDDM for short). While encouraging families with children facing such disabilities is a part of our ministry, please be assured that we continue to seek ways to be helpful to
all
families with children facing extraordinary challenges, whether those challenges are intellectual, developmental, chronic physical or behavioral health challenges, or other special needs.
A link to the IDDM page is included below.
Latest Newsletters
Click a link below to view/download the most recent newsletter.