Do kids in your ministry seem more anxious? Does it feel like children are more stressed-out? You’re not alone! Check out this expert insight on how family, society, and crisis create stress for kids—and how to help them!

When we consider kid culture today, we typically tick off evidence of their 21st-century lives—techie gadgets, media saturation, over-scheduled calendars, and unique family structures. Less often do we think of the internal pressures that are part of kids’ daily lives and how that pressure impacts kids’ faith formation.

We asked experts to weigh in on different types of pressure inherent in kids’ lives. Here’s what they had to say about social pressure and crisis pressure.

Social Stress: Navigating the Positives and the Negatives

Most parents can remember the moment their sweet child—who always followed grown-ups’ instructions and paid little attention to what friends were doing—began to act differently. Kids begin using new words (sometimes shocking ones) that they hear at day care, school, or on the playground. Or they suddenly start asking for different clothes, toys, haircuts, or foods because a friend has them.

Peer pressure and social influence are often blamed for the many ills of childhood such as materialism, foul language, and bullying. It can be tempting to think the only way to deal with these negative characteristics is to isolate kids from the community around them. Yet figuring out how to get along with others, resist negative influences, and be a positive influence is part of growing up.

Children need to know about negative peer pressure. They need skills to act in caring, positive ways toward their peers. And they need to know how to choose friends who bring out the best in them and help them grow in their faith.

So how can you help? Try these strategies.

Team up with parents.

Children and teenagers learn interpersonal and relationship-building skills largely from their parents. Help parents build their own friendships so their kids see them as role models. Talk about ways they can encourage their children to have positive relationships. When parents start to worry about their kids’ negative relationships or pressures, give them opportunities for honest, nonjudgmental sharing with other parents.

Get to know community kids.

Find out about children’s friends: their names, what they’re like, what they do together. You’ll discover the positive influences and the not-so-positive ones. You may find opportunities to encourage the positives and raise questions about the negatives. As you ask questions, you’ll help children think through their friendships and how they either help or hinder their spiritual lives and values.

Teach kids to negotiate friendships.

Teach children friendship skills. Help them practice with experiences that deepen their relationships with other kids at church. They’ll carry that practice with them at school and with other friends.

Avoid being judgmental about kids’ friendships. Children are likely to dismiss you if you attack their friends; then they won’t come to you the next time.

Remember, too, that kids are often trying out different types of friends as they sort out who they are and which friendships are important to them. As they grow up, they’re likely to move beyond the negative friendships if they have other nurturing relationships.

Get youth involved.

Your church’s youth group may be one of your most important resources. Young people—who are often heroes to younger children—can teach about negotiating the pressures they’ll face in the community. They can also guide kids toward the positive resources and influences in their schools and neighborhoods. Encourage your youth leaders to offer peer ministry training for their kids, then use those peers in supporting your ministry with children.

Link with allies in the community.

Lots of people in your community want the best for children. Find them. Get to know them. Support and encourage them. You can work together to increase the chances that the community’s young people, adults, and neighbors work together to create positive opportunities and influences for children. See yourselves on the same team for children, even if you’re doing very different things and have different emphases.

Celebrate growth.

When our son was in third grade, he did something that really pressured his friends. He wanted to play viola in the school orchestra, but he didn’t want to do it by himself. So he convinced several of his friends to sign up, too. For the next several years, those boys were a force to be reckoned with in elementary orchestra.

When we see kids’ relationships grow strong and we see them influencing each other in positive ways, we can celebrate that they’ve learned to negotiate negative pressures and influences—and grow with the positive ones.

Eugene Roehlkepartain served as co-director of Search Institute’s Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence.

Crisis Stress: The Faith-Shaker

A definition of “at-risk” children can be difficult to pin down. It’s safe to say that in this fallen world, all children are at risk. All children must navigate situations that could either build or break them. Some children suffer distinct disadvantages during their development that impact relationships, vocations, self-identity, and spiritual formation.

What are the basic needs of children?

The most important and most basic emotional needs all children have are to feel safe and to feel secure. These two basic human needs are best met by providing for other essential needs like: clear structure, unconditional love, consistent affirmation in who they are, a healthy balance of grace and justice, positive modeling of conflict resolution, respite in the arms of a parent or caregiver, healthy touch (hugs and kisses), receiving gifts, empathy from elders, clear expectations and consequences, and social success.

Recognize unmet needs.

Children become at-risk or in crisis when their needs for safety and security aren’t met. When a child’s foundation is shaken, he or she feels alone, angry, confused, misunderstood, unworthy, ugly, and unlovable. How a child navigates these deficits is a defining moment because kids are establishing behavior patterns and interpretive skills that’ll profoundly impact their adolescence and adulthood.

Understand their challenges.

Children concretely process their thoughts and feelings. They’re typically not self-aware to report on what they feel and experience. So a child in crisis carries burdens which usually manifest through observable interaction with parents, siblings, peers, teachers, and elders. Signs include tantrums, withdrawal, defiance, poor academic performance, seeking negative attention, and poor social skills.

Over time, an at-risk child internalizes what he or she feels and interprets these events in black-and-white terms. For example, “Those kids won’t play with me. I’m a bad kid.” Or “They all laughed at me, and I hate feeling like a loser. I’ll make sure they never laugh at me again,” as the child becomes an aggressive bully. As a result, kids enter survival mode as they attempt to gain the support, safety, and security (their basic emotional needs) they need in specific situations.

Crisis affects a child’s faith.

As with their life experiences, children’s faith experiences are concrete and experiential. A child in crisis interprets and experiences faith in the same survival mode that protects him or her every day. It wouldn’t be uncommon for a struggling child to fully think and believe, God doesn’t love me or God hates me and I’ll validate his hate by acting out because I’m unworthy of love. So while kids typically embrace God as fact, they’ll experientially recall their life experiences when interpreting God’s relevance and significance in their lives.

Your ministry is crucial.

This puts you in an exciting place. You can give struggling kids many opportunities to experience God’s love for them in your ministry. Your ministry is an extension of Jesus, displaying patience, grace, justice, and unconditional love that the child may not experience in other settings. And these consistent experiences over time can transform a child’s life, eventually resulting in the concrete, life-impacting understanding: “God loves me as I am, and he is proud of me.”

Trevor Simpson served as a youth and family therapist in Wheaton, Illinois. He is a contributing author of Emergency Response Handbook for Youth Ministry (Group).

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Looking for more ways to help kids deal with stress? Check out Group’s Emergency Response Handbook for Children’s Ministry. You can also check out this article.