Anonymous
03/16/2025 17:49
Subject: In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
Anonymous wrote:My 12yo is part of our youth group.
It didn’t even cross my mind to be suspicious because it’s a Church. DD knows about red flags, warning signs etc.
all the activities are in a group and during day hours.
If there was ever a sleepover type event I’d ask the same questions I’d ask any other sleepover event.
And that is what many predators rely on. The easy prey.
Anonymous
03/16/2025 12:54
Subject: In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:No, I wouldn’t be comfortable with any group that’s proselytizing to my child.
+1
+ 1 million
Anonymous
03/16/2025 10:27
Subject: In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
I allow them to go but no overnight events till high school and no 1x1 with adults, ever.
Anonymous
03/16/2025 09:18
Subject: In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
My 12yo is part of our youth group.
It didn’t even cross my mind to be suspicious because it’s a Church. DD knows about red flags, warning signs etc.
all the activities are in a group and during day hours.
If there was ever a sleepover type event I’d ask the same questions I’d ask any other sleepover event.
It didn’t even cross my mind to be suspicious because it’s a Church. DD knows about red flags, warning signs etc.
all the activities are in a group and during day hours.
If there was ever a sleepover type event I’d ask the same questions I’d ask any other sleepover event.
Anonymous
03/16/2025 08:48
Subject: Re:In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:There was a scandal in my church between the youth leader and a teen girl right before I aged into the youth department. During the time I was in the youth, we had 4 different leaders, some better than others, but there was absolutely nothing inappropriate with the kids. I have some wonderful memories of my experiences with my youth group.
I encouraged my daughters to participate in youth group, but I trusted the leader and his wife, along with the other volunteers. I also raised my girls from a very young age to be cautious, to recognize inappropriate behavior, and what to do if they had concerns.
While there can and have been problems in youth groups (both amongst boys and girls without sufficient supervision and from adults taking advantage of their position), those problems are not limited to religious groups (youth or otherwise). Anytime kids get together there is the potential they’ll be inspired to engage in behavior their parents would disapprove of, and if they’re motivated enough, they’ll find a way to act on it. Similarly, predatory adults can be anywhere (neighbors, friends, family members, etc.), but are especially likely to be anywhere there are kids (coaches, teachers, scout leaders, etc.).
Parents have to decide in any situation if they can trust both the adult(s) in charge of their kids and the procedures in place to protect the kids under their supervision, and if they have prepared their kids well enough to recognize problems and to know how to deal with them.
You are advocating that is ok for abuse to happen at church.
PP did no such thing.
Anonymous
03/16/2025 08:45
Subject: Re:In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:There was a scandal in my church between the youth leader and a teen girl right before I aged into the youth department. During the time I was in the youth, we had 4 different leaders, some better than others, but there was absolutely nothing inappropriate with the kids. I have some wonderful memories of my experiences with my youth group.
I encouraged my daughters to participate in youth group, but I trusted the leader and his wife, along with the other volunteers. I also raised my girls from a very young age to be cautious, to recognize inappropriate behavior, and what to do if they had concerns.
While there can and have been problems in youth groups (both amongst boys and girls without sufficient supervision and from adults taking advantage of their position), those problems are not limited to religious groups (youth or otherwise). Anytime kids get together there is the potential they’ll be inspired to engage in behavior their parents would disapprove of, and if they’re motivated enough, they’ll find a way to act on it. Similarly, predatory adults can be anywhere (neighbors, friends, family members, etc.), but are especially likely to be anywhere there are kids (coaches, teachers, scout leaders, etc.).
Parents have to decide in any situation if they can trust both the adult(s) in charge of their kids and the procedures in place to protect the kids under their supervision, and if they have prepared their kids well enough to recognize problems and to know how to deal with them.
You are advocating that is ok for abuse to happen at church.
BS - pp advocated no such thing.
Anonymous
03/16/2025 08:44
Subject: In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Number one reason girls get pregnant at church
What are the second and third reasons that girls are getting pregnant at church?
Hopefully, it was just a figure of speech.
Anonymous
03/15/2025 23:53
Subject: Re:In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:There was a scandal in my church between the youth leader and a teen girl right before I aged into the youth department. During the time I was in the youth, we had 4 different leaders, some better than others, but there was absolutely nothing inappropriate with the kids. I have some wonderful memories of my experiences with my youth group.
I encouraged my daughters to participate in youth group, but I trusted the leader and his wife, along with the other volunteers. I also raised my girls from a very young age to be cautious, to recognize inappropriate behavior, and what to do if they had concerns.
While there can and have been problems in youth groups (both amongst boys and girls without sufficient supervision and from adults taking advantage of their position), those problems are not limited to religious groups (youth or otherwise). Anytime kids get together there is the potential they’ll be inspired to engage in behavior their parents would disapprove of, and if they’re motivated enough, they’ll find a way to act on it. Similarly, predatory adults can be anywhere (neighbors, friends, family members, etc.), but are especially likely to be anywhere there are kids (coaches, teachers, scout leaders, etc.).
Parents have to decide in any situation if they can trust both the adult(s) in charge of their kids and the procedures in place to protect the kids under their supervision, and if they have prepared their kids well enough to recognize problems and to know how to deal with them.
You are advocating that is ok for abuse to happen at church.
Absolutely not. I am saying that abuse can happen anywhere, so before you entrust your kids to anyone, anywhere, you need to: consider whether the adults involved are trustworthy, whether there are procedures in place to protect kids, and whether kids can not only be trusted to make good choices for themselves with other kids, but also know what to do if despite all your precautions, someone tries to do something inappropriate they can recognize the danger and get help.
Just to be clear - ABUSE IS NEVER OKAY. It’s not okay at church. It’s not okay away from church. There is no time, place, person, or circumstance that makes abuse okay.
Anonymous
03/15/2025 19:43
Subject: Re:In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
Anonymous wrote:There was a scandal in my church between the youth leader and a teen girl right before I aged into the youth department. During the time I was in the youth, we had 4 different leaders, some better than others, but there was absolutely nothing inappropriate with the kids. I have some wonderful memories of my experiences with my youth group.
I encouraged my daughters to participate in youth group, but I trusted the leader and his wife, along with the other volunteers. I also raised my girls from a very young age to be cautious, to recognize inappropriate behavior, and what to do if they had concerns.
While there can and have been problems in youth groups (both amongst boys and girls without sufficient supervision and from adults taking advantage of their position), those problems are not limited to religious groups (youth or otherwise). Anytime kids get together there is the potential they’ll be inspired to engage in behavior their parents would disapprove of, and if they’re motivated enough, they’ll find a way to act on it. Similarly, predatory adults can be anywhere (neighbors, friends, family members, etc.), but are especially likely to be anywhere there are kids (coaches, teachers, scout leaders, etc.).
Parents have to decide in any situation if they can trust both the adult(s) in charge of their kids and the procedures in place to protect the kids under their supervision, and if they have prepared their kids well enough to recognize problems and to know how to deal with them.
You are advocating that is ok for abuse to happen at church.
Anonymous
03/15/2025 18:06
Subject: In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
Anonymous wrote:Number one reason girls get pregnant at church
What are the second and third reasons that girls are getting pregnant at church?
Anonymous
03/15/2025 16:58
Subject: In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
Yes, but we ensure there are a lot of extra adults involved. We go way beyond 2 adults.
Anonymous
03/15/2025 16:40
Subject: Re:In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
There was a scandal in my church between the youth leader and a teen girl right before I aged into the youth department. During the time I was in the youth, we had 4 different leaders, some better than others, but there was absolutely nothing inappropriate with the kids. I have some wonderful memories of my experiences with my youth group.
I encouraged my daughters to participate in youth group, but I trusted the leader and his wife, along with the other volunteers. I also raised my girls from a very young age to be cautious, to recognize inappropriate behavior, and what to do if they had concerns.
While there can and have been problems in youth groups (both amongst boys and girls without sufficient supervision and from adults taking advantage of their position), those problems are not limited to religious groups (youth or otherwise). Anytime kids get together there is the potential they’ll be inspired to engage in behavior their parents would disapprove of, and if they’re motivated enough, they’ll find a way to act on it. Similarly, predatory adults can be anywhere (neighbors, friends, family members, etc.), but are especially likely to be anywhere there are kids (coaches, teachers, scout leaders, etc.).
Parents have to decide in any situation if they can trust both the adult(s) in charge of their kids and the procedures in place to protect the kids under their supervision, and if they have prepared their kids well enough to recognize problems and to know how to deal with them.
I encouraged my daughters to participate in youth group, but I trusted the leader and his wife, along with the other volunteers. I also raised my girls from a very young age to be cautious, to recognize inappropriate behavior, and what to do if they had concerns.
While there can and have been problems in youth groups (both amongst boys and girls without sufficient supervision and from adults taking advantage of their position), those problems are not limited to religious groups (youth or otherwise). Anytime kids get together there is the potential they’ll be inspired to engage in behavior their parents would disapprove of, and if they’re motivated enough, they’ll find a way to act on it. Similarly, predatory adults can be anywhere (neighbors, friends, family members, etc.), but are especially likely to be anywhere there are kids (coaches, teachers, scout leaders, etc.).
Parents have to decide in any situation if they can trust both the adult(s) in charge of their kids and the procedures in place to protect the kids under their supervision, and if they have prepared their kids well enough to recognize problems and to know how to deal with them.
Anonymous
03/15/2025 16:17
Subject: In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
Number one reason girls get pregnant at church
Anonymous
03/15/2025 16:15
Subject: In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
When I was a teen 10ish years ago, I had a few female youth leaders from a church group that met at my school that looking back, were a little pushy with wanting to spend time with me 1x1 and now I would never let my daughter do that. I never told my own parents about this or the mixed feelings it brought. I was bullied in school and felt special when these women wanted to spend time with me but kinda weird that they wanted to befriend me and talk about their own personal problems with eating disorders, insecurities, body image issues, ect when they were in their late 20s. In retrospect it wasn’t appropriate even if physical boundaries weren’t crossed.
My kid is way too young to talk about any of this, and I don’t want to scare her, but we do go to church as a family and I teach Sunday School so she isn’t alone with any adults at things like that yet. Same with swim lessons, I stay the whole time!
In short, trust your gut and don’t feel bad for wanting to be extra careful! They’ll understand one day.
My kid is way too young to talk about any of this, and I don’t want to scare her, but we do go to church as a family and I teach Sunday School so she isn’t alone with any adults at things like that yet. Same with swim lessons, I stay the whole time!
In short, trust your gut and don’t feel bad for wanting to be extra careful! They’ll understand one day.
Anonymous
03/15/2025 16:00
Subject: In this day and age, are you comfortable with Youth Group?
Also, keep talking to your children about safety even with other peers. Peers can be abusers as well.