Do you even wonder how kids end up on the street? Are they runaways? Are they disobedient? Did they do something to get kicked out? Do they deserve it?
A friend of mine works with homeless youth in my city. I have to admit that at first I surprised to hear that we have homeless youth. We’re not that big a city, we’re considered a “bible belt” community. Our streets are clean, crime is low and the truth is that we have thousands of homeless youth. Your city has them too.
In talking to my friend the stat I can’t get out of my head is that close to 80% of street kids have a living parent. In the vast majority of cases the parent got a new partner and when the partner didn’t want the kid around, the teen got kicked out.
A tragic, common tale
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Talk to people who work with street kids and you’ll hear the same story over and over. They’ve been abused physically, or sexually, and when they try to tell their blood parent what’s happening, the parent accuses them of lying. Self defense is seen as a violent streak and the teen hits the streets while the happy couple builds a new life together.
In article for CNN this morning one street youth, an 18 year old named Belle said, “People think it’s a choice to be on the streets, but it’s never a choice.” According to the article, her story is tragically common:
She said she has been sexually abused since she was 6 years old and was in and out of foster care until recently.
Now, she is living in a camp with other homeless kids, hiding from her pimp.
“Yeah, it’s not a house, but a house isn’t everything,” she said. “Family. Love. Friends. This is my family. All I ever wanted was a family.”
She has been selling herself, not by choice, simply because she doesn’t have anything else to give. They’re just kids. They shouldn’t have to make choices like this. There is supposed to be someone there to get after them to do their homework, to tell them to eat their greens, to hug and tell them that their heart will heal.
Support changes everything
I remember my first year of university there were days when my heart was breaking. I’d pick up the phone and my Mom, three thousand miles away would listen and tell me that she loved me. She’d remind me that she and my Dad pray for me every single morning and she’d always point out that they were three time zones over which meant that I had been prayed for every day before I even got out of bed in the morning. I was 19 and trying to figure out how to be a grown-up and knowing that they were there for me made all the difference in the world. I cannot imagine going it alone, much younger, with far fewer resources.
What can we do for these kids? The church is supposed to be a family, are their ways for that family to include these kids too? My niece volunteers at the same youth shelter my friend works at. I asked her what she does when she’s there and she said, “Mostly I just listen. I listen and I hug people and it helps.” I need to find time in my schedule to listen.
One very practical way you can help is to become a teen mentor with TruthMedia. Our teen community is often overwhelmed with questions from teens in all sorts of situations. They want an adult’s opinion, they want someone to listen and they need to hear about Jesus. Teen mentors go through the same application and training process as all TruthMedia mentors with one extra step. The law requires a criminal background check for anyone volunteering with youth. Our mentor co-ordinator can walk you through the background check, it’s quick and pretty simple to do.
You can learn more and sign-up to be a teen mentor at thementorcenter.com To apply to be a teen mentor be sure to check off the box for teens and our co-ordinator will walk you through the rest of the process.
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I’ve worked in a group home before and the teens stories are heartbreaking. Sure a lot of them came from broken homes, a lot of teens also came from homes with a parent(s) that betrayed them far worse the getting divorced and remarried.
What they don’t need are more adults trying to assess blame. They need someone who will love them unconditionally like Jesus will. They need someone who is going to be patient with them, listen to them and encourage them to heal. They need someone they can trust, which is not easy to gain and can only happen over time.
Ron,
I wasn’t suggesting that all the blame lies at the feet of every step parent everywhere. However there is a strong correlation between family discord and homeless teens. Teens don’t run away because life at home is wonderful. Blending a family is always a challenge, and some situations are harder than others. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s easy and I don’t think I did. But at the same time anyone who marries someone who already has a child is starting the marriage with more than just two people in it. So yes, it’s more complicated. Part of the work of marriage is finding a way to be a family together whether it’s just two of you, or if there are children involved.
Anger definitely can come from children as well as adults, but I have to agree with Dinah on this point, the weight of responsibility lies with the adults. We have all the power and the choices in choosing to blend a family. The children often have no say at all and yet they are enormously affected by it.
You said, “But please – of course an angry and sad street kid will say it was all the new one’s fault.” I’m guessing there’s a lot of personal experience in that statement, but consider the other side as well. These kids want a home, a family, and for some of them they had that until someone came and took it away. If they are “angry street kids” as you described, maybe that’s not so unexpected?
In comment to the reply left by Ron….the article is about homeless children in America. It’s not about how hard it is to blend a dysfunctional family. No matter how hard it is to be an adult, you are still the adult and more is expected of you than the child. And with sin comes consequence no matter how sorry we are about it. But in Jesus, we can live past that sin as a new person and use it to glorify His name.
The reality of it is, MOST NOT ALL of the kids out there on the streets are trying to escape unbelievable circumstances. I am a part of a “blended” family, if there is such a thing, and my step daughter due to her actions ended up living out of her car for a couple of months and eventually ended up in jail before she decided to calm herself down. Could we have done things differently? Sure! Did she have other safe options besides the street? Yes. Did she blame me? Most likely. But ours is only one example in a much larger picture. The fact is that the majority of the kids have chosen the streets over physical and sexual abuse at home. These kids are long term homeless and usually come from homes that involve drugs and prostitution. Drug dealers, druggies and prostitutes all have children just like the rest of us. And surprisingly enough they are not great role models. These young kids need the love of Jesus and role models that can show them what that love really looks like.
I need to comment on your statistic that says that 80% of street kids are there because of the new partner of the child’s parent. I would like to briefly tell you of my circumstance and ask if that might not be the case in more of these cases.
Before I came to accept Jesus as my saviour and teacher, I left a marriage because of unprocessed anger and unforgiveness towards my then wife. It hurt my children greatly, but I have never revealed their Mother’s unfaithfulness but I have dealt with their anger ever since.
When I met another lady, her son disliked me with a an unbelievable intensity. He has of latter years been diagnosed with a mental illness. I won’t try to assume who was right or wrong, it was and continues to be a very difficult situation. In his anger towards me he once told me would have been the same no matter who had come in to their lives.
When my new partner and I accepted Jesus together and decided we would marry and let Jesus begin to clean up our lives, my wife’s son calmly told me I could move out when we married. His anger at me being with his Mum meant he could not remain with us (he became physically violent a couple of times). His relationship with his Dad and others deteriorated and he went his own way for a while.
Yes I intruded on his already set life.Yes I became verbally angry at him a couple of times, as he often did. But I would not say I was abusive to him beyond trying to get him to behave in a way that any real Dad would do.
I wonder do you think with the fallen nature that we all walk around with, that the situation in trying to blend together broken people from broken relationships in to one new relationship, there might be a little more going on that BOTH the children and the adults are responsible for? Obviously there are a lot of abusive men and women around, but we don’t just begin to sin at age 18 or 21. There are adult victims as well as child.
It doesn’t make the plight of the street child any less horrendous, but please – it’s like the way many people might view all men with little children and have some concern for the welfare of the child. We become brainwashed in to seeing everyone as perpetrators, judging with a black or white view. Perhaps our sinful nature and the complexity of how we all live requires us to look with a little more grace and see that anger from adults and children can contribute to the split in a home. Sin in my first marriage caused me to sin in my anger. Finding a new partner and living with her was sin, it affected her son. He sinned in his anger at a new man in his Dad’s rightful place. His anger. My anger.
But please – of course an angry and sad street kid will say it was all the new one’s fault.
I’m sorry I don’t wish to try to lessen the fact that many children suffer terrible abuse by their own parents and new partners. But rejection and anger at new partners is also real. And your cute phrase “in the vast majority of cases, when the partner didn’t want the kid around, the teen got kicked out” doesn’t quite cover the emotional battleground that is this ungodly alliance we call a blended family. Sorry – but anger and violence come just as easily from children as adults.