Breathe - Support for Parents of At-Risk Youth, 2320 Sulphur Springs Road, Inwood, WV (2026)

10/14/2022

What a great year this has been! We completed the 2022 series on emotional growth and understanding for parents of special needs and challenging children. We have greatly enjoyed building a stronger group of parents through the love of Christ! Thank all of you for your help and dedication in showing that we are not alone and we are stronger together!

For the rest of 2022 we will leave Thursdays open to parents who might just need to get together for help or reassurance in your struggles and thoughts. Just let myself or Penny know if you would be interested in a group or just one on one. We have been there as well - wishing there was anyone who could just understand a minute of the stress of feeling isolated without all the judgment!

We love you all and ask Christ to continue to lift your minds and hearts! We are hopeful the holidays will bring your families even closer as we ramp up for the 2023 series going forward on Thursdays starting January 5, 2023.

God bless you all!

08/18/2022

This week’s focus has been Fear – its only four letters long and yet the weight of the entire world cradles in it. I have thought long and hard in this most dangerous emotion and I have often struggled in trying to carry it to positivity. I struggle through moments of fear daily as I am sure many of you are as well.

How often do we get caught up in the thoughts of how we desperately wish we could overcome this or that fearful thought with an “insert miraculous fix here” effort? We know that’s not realistic, but because we are trying to overcome our fears on our own, we often forget what is real. That is because we are trying to beat fear while being in fear; we are forgetting to look up to find our strength in the lovingkindness and strength of our Lord.

Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9).

Fear is a concern for all parents, and as parents of a child with special needs we are certainly not excluded! From worries about the daily needs of our children, to being fearful about their futures, and about how they will overcome their unique need. We worry about what being an adult looks like for our children and often about who will take care of them if we cannot or worse if we die before them… Those are just some of the regular parental fears; what about the fears of being the parent? Is this my fault? Am I doing enough? Will my child be okay? Why is this happening?

The fears and related struggles lead to feelings of judgement, despair, bitterness, hopelessness, loneliness, exhaustion, frustration, failure, blame, and all the emotional stress and baggage that those pack for our already heavy shoulders!

There are 112 verses in the Bible that tell us to "Fear Not", and if we force ourselves to focus on God’s love, for both us and our child, we can find the courage to run our minds to our faith instead of fear. Knowing God is with us and that He will take care of the things that are out of our hands gives us peace as well as the ability to be the parents God created us to be. I am not saying that the problems will all get better and that our children will find any of their special needs fixed when they wake up in the morning, but I am saying that those needs, and our minds, can become much more manageable with Christ at the head of our thoughts instead of being led by fear!

We are definitely not alone in parenting special needs children. God has put in our lives’ other parents with similar challenges, and through this God is encouraging all of us with his grace, love, wisdom, and strength:

"Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor; for if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up! Furthermore, if two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone? And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).

When we are going through any kind of trial, we shouldn’t be too embarrassed to accept the love and support outside of the “very short list of the normally trusted ones” and we should be willing and able to look to our church family and friends for the help we know we need. It’s not a sign of weakness to accept offers to babysit, help with housework, or a friend to talk to or sit with during those moments of parental desperation – especially if we can offer that similar help to others when our struggle days seem a little bit lighter!

Sometimes we’re afraid to open up to others about our struggles as a parent with a special needs child because we don’t think anyone could possibly understand. We also may be afraid of being judged. But the truth is, when we reach out, others are often able to talk about their own challenges, even if they aren’t the same as ours. We learn from and encourage each other by sharing in each other’s struggles. Humility helps bring on the healing and that beats fear every time!

My hope and prayer this week is that through Christ we can all find someone to help us overcome even one fear - large or small, and that we can be that same kind of help for someone that we may know to be struggling as well!

08/08/2022

One of the hardest things a parent of a challenging child must do is to accept that their child has a special need. The desire for our children to be “normal” is so great that we mentally battle ourselves to a fault in trying to believe there is nothing wrong with our child. Even to the point of thinking it is our fault or problem that we must fix.

Acceptance is such a painful yet necessary word. Many of our former friends and family relationships will change as we progress through life taking care of a troubled child. Some of those really close relationships, childhood friends, siblings, even parents, often disappear as our lives are much too complicated. Acceptance is understanding that this is not our fault and certainly not the fault of our child. But the real problem is that as we all know, having a troubled child is difficult, its messy, its draining, its emotionally painful – the world tells us that it’s not supposed to be acceptable. Without acceptance where are we – back at our favorite word, isolation…

The isolation that comes with having a troubled child is the direct result of not being ready to accept what is happening in our family. Often that frustration leads to thoughts of us wishing people would just stop talking about their wonderfully perfect kids and forgetting that we are no different – we are always caught in conversations about how difficult our children are... So jealousy creeps in and the sadness starts to take over. If you are like me – you can easily begin to feel utterly crushed…

“The human spirit can endure in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?” ~Proverbs 18:14

One of the hardest things to accept is the loss of the future we thought we were going to have. Not accepting our children’s difficulties and continuing to live in a crushed state is far worse than any thoughts around accepting our children’s, as well as our own, limitations. We must in its fullness accept that we do not have control of our world and that maybe these difficulties are just new opportunities we never thought of.

We must lean into the Holy Spirit and Christ for help in acceptance of what is happening without becoming a defeated parent and eventually host to a lonely, broken family. The Holy Spirit is so often overlooked and unappreciated – we are filled with the Holy Spirit in baptism for a reason!

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” - John 14:26

For the sake of our family and with the love shared through Christ, we must look to the entirety of God for strength and to the body of Christ for other examples of success. Finding support groups related to our child’s specific special need can be helpful, but often just finding other parents of difficult or special needs children can give us the strength to see beyond those family’s that do not have the struggles our family has. This will help us to realize that even they have their own struggles no matter how hard we try not to see or understand.

The many families participating in Breathe are accepting their child’s struggles and as a result these stronger families are working towards better decisions with a greater love between family members. We are accepting that we do not have to live with the fears, the loneliness, the embarrassment, the judgments, and the isolation.

Outside of coming to Christ, Breathe has been one of our family’s greatest joys, the ability to share our struggles with other parents in a non-judgmental way and feel the warmth of understanding has been tremendous. Accepting that we cannot heal our child on our own, and that we cannot hide them away until they comply or at least until the world changes is no longer the go-to thought. We like many of the parents in Breathe are finding acceptance socially and within our family. We are not alone, we are not fearful, and we are not hiding.

We are sharing acceptance of a lovingkindness in its greatest form, a strong family of likeminded friends who can openly share and most importantly without fear of judgment. What a wonderful way to bring glory to God – love like this is exactly why He accepts us with all our faults and all our shortcomings… If He can accept all of that from us, how can we not try to be more accepting in our own lives?

God bless you all, we love you and hope to see you this Friday to join in discussions about “Fear”!

07/30/2022

As a Christian the word pride stirs some pretty strong emotions, especially considering God’s Word. In James 4:6, we see exactly what God thinks of the prideful: “But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”” And again in James 4:10, Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

We all struggle with pride when it comes to taking care of challenging children. Today we are focusing on the difference between the kind of pride that leads to sin and the kind of pride that parents and caregivers feel in their children. Sinful pride is derived from a “self-centered” way of thinking, this can be seen in the desire to hide from the world, to lock-down our troubled children, not working to understand their illnesses, and to even shutdown love for a child that continuously exhausts, mentally, and physically hurts us. On the other hand, when we are feeling love, or a desire to help, care for and yes even the deep satisfaction in our children’s accomplishments we are actually being “other-centered” in our way of thinking. When we are “proud” of them not for what we do in them but for them and their accomplishments it is similar to when God declared Christ was His beloved Son and that he was well pleased in Him (Luke 3:22).

The importance in the distinction is that we want to be humble and care more for others than ourselves – and yes this especially includes our children: Philippians 2:3-4 (3) Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; (4) do not merely look out for your own personal interests,
but also for the interests of others.

Children need to know that they are loved and appreciated – even when they are at their worst. Their sense and understanding that they are made in God’s image and that God desires all children to experience and participate in His grace and be members of the Kingdom – is based largely on the investments of their parents and caregivers. Children typically grow up seeing themselves through the eyes of their parents. They will often be what they hear that they are – good or bad. In other words, their desire to find Christ in their lives more often than
not starts at home. When a child has been consistently told they are broken or shown that they are feared, rejected, hid away, or reduced to time served until they turn 18; it is impossible to imagine they could feel that they are important to God. Children need to be reminded that they are made in the Creator’s image, and that Christ died for them. Showing your children Christ will help in providing restoration in the family for those who need it most, families such as ours - those in crisis.

Pride can stop us from growing in our own faith and will certainly hinder our children’s as they see their parents struggling to live a scripturally accurate life. Pride is a tough emotion to plow through – it affects each of us every day and the more difficult our children are the more our useless self-pride is injured.

This week’s focus on Pride is to help each of us to understand how self-centered thinking can be
identified so that it can be overcome with other-centered loving thoughts; helping each of us to
understand that through the leaning into each other for examples of how to overcome shame and embarrassment that self-centered pride creates can help to lead each other away from the loneliness, isolation, fear, and eventually hate that follows. By identifying these negative areas, we are closer to finding ways to protect the hearts and minds of everyone in our families and ultimately find us closer to Christ!

We pray that each of us find strength in each other as parents and through the support of other parents within the body of Christ to overcome the negative effects of self-centered prideful thinking! We pray that through other-centered thinking we can all find ways to love our children in new stronger relationships that brings a stronger vision of Christ into all of our homes!

God bless you all and we hope to see you on Friday!

07/24/2022

Being a parent can be an amazing opportunity, but unfortunately with challenging children it can be exhausting. Truth is we are exhausted an awful amount of time. The moment our troubled child gets officially noticed, diagnosed, or becomes problems for those around us we know our lives have been changed forever. From the friends, family, schools, legal actions, doctors, therapists, medications, and often to inpatient hospitalizations and repeat in any order you like several times throughout life we start to worry - will it ever end? Will life ever be normal again?

I am constantly thinking If only I had known… I wish I had a way…. if only they would do what I say… then comes the guilt. I know I am trying to do the best I can but that does not make my brain stop!

The best advice I have received came from a friend I often miss… That’s not your burden to carry, Dave. God has forgiven you—for both real and perceived failures—and He tells us to cast our burdens on Him.

PSALM 55:22 Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you.

But honestly that is hard to do on the daily – it is something I work on and pray towards daily but just like most parents of challenging children, the exhaustion can seem never-ending. Between helping our child with basic needs and then dealing with the difficulties they are facing, as well as any medical care, we also have to be our child’s advocate.

The concern is that exhaustion can put us in a state of burnout – just a constant state of barely on the good side of giving up. We know we are exhausted but what are we doing about it? We need to make sure we have a plan to deal with the exhaustion in a healthy way before we look for ways to throw in the towel! Today’s focus is to be on ways to handle exhaustion and areas it has gotten out of control so that we can try better on the future to get re-energized in a healthy way.

I am not sure about you, but I often wonder whether or not my feelings of tired are normal. Understanding our personal levels of tiredness can help to identify emotional areas that are being negatively affected – causing more stress and more exhaustion – we need to break the cycle.

Doctors show there are four core areas that being exhausted affects – are we sleeping enough or too much? How is our parental relationship going - Stressed or healthy? How effective as a parental role model are we - Is the child running your life or are you leading theirs? And our health? Exhausting can cause serious medical side effects or enhance existing ones!

Understanding ourselves in how exhaustion affects us helps to minimize feelings surrounding confusion, isolation, and the feelings of inadequacy. We all know too well that exhaustion does not help with the feelings of despair and detachment from the activities we once enjoyed. Exhaustion is the step right before we start to reach a breaking point. So how do we break the cycle?

One way to help relieve exhaustion is finding time for the things we enjoy – this in turn helps us with our sense of self. Our children do not have to be our every moment. Yes, they may need extra care, guidance, and support, but that does not mean that care come only come from the parent(s). In order to enjoy the “me” time, we will still need to be prepared to confront a number of known issues our children can throw at us as we try to schedule time for doing anything that is not for our difficult child. Think about the different ways our children make going places or doing things difficult and start creating ways to defuse those moments, try to take the surprise reaction away from the situation.

In the end, we have to make the time for ourselves and our whole family! Especially as more often than not, self-protection and isolation can hurt more than it helps. Once we get in the habit of not getting involved in anything but caring for our child and the protection of our emotions, it can become way too easy to avoid discomfort and then to start say no to anything outside our “safe” areas. This leads us right into pretending we are not suffering from any self-inflicted mental health issues like anxiety and depression from these so-called acts of self-preservation. We need to accept that by taking the time to do the things we and our family enjoy does not mean we are being self-indulgent! It means we love our family!

God bless you, and may you find a moment to rest, to love, and to enjoy life the way our Lord intended!

07/19/2022

During our last meeting we focused on "Bravery" both for and with our children and our families...

In our experience, life can feel so overwhelming at times, and often the way through is not clear. Too often we can find safety and comfort by staying stuck in the where and what of things we know, even when that is so much less desirable. Leaving the safety of our comfortable known and showing how vulnerable we are, especially trying new things, pursuing our families’ passions, or making sure that we are moving forward regardless of fear requires all the braveness we can possibly collect. After all, our troubled children can challenge everything and everyone outside our comfortable areas – making us feel ashamed, alone, and desperate.

This is where “Breathe” is most helpful - in order to bring success to our families, we are choosing to support each other with those who are just like we are. To declare that we as parents are not alone, that we are stronger than any behavior, we are stronger than any mental or emotional health challenges – we lift each other up through Christ who reminds us we are meant for lives of love through the risks and daring. We are the brave!

1 Chronicles 28:20 “Then David said to his son Solomon, “Be strong and courageous, and do the work; do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you nor forsake you…”

God reminds us to be brave, to be strong and courageous because he is with us. We so often forget that we do not complete our journey by ourselves. The eternal life God promises requires us to trust him and lean into the Holy Spirit and the body of the Church.

We offered a challenge to each of the members this week - do at least one brave thing with your family.

We will become braver in our families by doing brave acts. By making one brave choice at a time, we become more loving and as a result we share Christ to our children by being more Christ-like. Find something that makes you feel equal parts vulnerable and loving to your child and say yes to it this week. Try to remove one of those safe “No’s” that holds your family hostage. Together let’s all step out of the pit and into the light. Show lovingkindness to our family and pray for that shared strength to move into our children’s hearts.

As a bonus challenge, if you see someone in your lives, especially your homes, being brave, let them know you are proud of their courage – no matter how young or old that person is. Draw strength and courage from their boldness!

Remember choosing your family even in the hard times is brave! Sharing your struggles with your family, friends, and in support groups is brave! Living each day in the hope provided by Christ, that things will get better no matter how hard it gets, is brave!

Join us next week as we focus on "Exhaustion" and how this can decrease our effectiveness as parents and caregivers! Finding ways to rest our minds, hearts, and bodies is necessary to ensure we are fully engaged in the healthy, loving care of our families!

God bless you and may each of your days bring glory to the kingdom of God!

07/10/2022

The first meeting for “Breathe” was great, as many families came to share in their struggles as parents and caregivers! The most unifying part of the group was seeing and feeling that each of the families were not alone in their hurt and need, that we all as families with troubled children experience the same pains and joys of loving and caring of our children. It so very apparent that continuing to meet and moving forward to lift each other up in these difficult times is a need well beyond ourselves. Thank you so much to those that came, as we believe everyone found a little peace to go to home with. A peace that helped us all understand that we are doing the best we can to raise our children, and that we are not bad parents for struggling to make it work. We all found friends with a common purpose!

Over the coming weeks we are truly hopeful that you will all find this group, this gathering, to be a great group of like-minded friends – the goal being families lifting families for a stronger and more loving family at our homes. We are hopeful that just like us you too would like to be around, relatable, honest, and open people, and we are hopeful this will be a group that can meet that need.

The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians chapter 1 in versus 3-4 – that the Blessed Father of Christ is merciful and comforting in all our difficulties so that we will be able to comfort others who are experiencing similar troubles – just as He did for us.

Not surprisingly just a few weeks ago, Dr. Murthy, US Surgeon General broadcasted a call to parents to unite in helping one another with their children’s mental and troubled behavioral concerns…

“There is something profoundly healing about being able to share openly with other people, to be about being real with other people. I think when you can create settings whether it's at work or in your community, whether it’s among a parent group, or even in your family where you can have truly open, authentic sharing about the hardships you’re going through, but also how you’re trying to address them that in and of itself can be very powerful. The second and this includes children. You know our kids are suffering in the same ways from the same culture of perfectionism, that we are struggling with. A culture that doesn’t allow us to talk about where we may be falling short – our moments of uncertainty or self-doubt.”

This confirms what we as parents already know, this is a national issue. Our hope is that this group can at least help reduce the parental support problem in our community. Realizing there is such a desperate need beyond ourselves for families to support each other, we started to dig around in state and county statistics, and the numbers are staggering…

As of 2018 according to WV DHHR and the CDC…
1. 1.78 million Wv population 363K children 5-17 20.39%
2. 119,171 Berkeley County population 27,049 children 5-17 22.7%
3. In Berkeley County 6,192 or 22.89% children reported a mental or behavioral health issue
4. 8.26% state and 5.69% report a confirmed serious mental health concern
5. West Virginia 1 mental health provider for every 2,342 children
6. Berkeley County - 4.75% children reported suicidal thoughts (1200 kids)
7. Berkeley County - Last 10 years an average of 18 kids committed su***de and in 2018 it was 23 (393 for WV)

That’s just the reported number through medical facilities participating in the studies. I am sure you can imagine that there are many more unreported children in all of those categories.
These numbers and the feedback we have received from the community since starting this journey started leads me to believe that our Lord put this group together in this community for a reason and one part of that reason is to be the kind of friend that helps bring families back together.

We truly believe that getting the support and strength that parents need will make them better in helping their children. If we are coming from a place with stronger love and less anger and shame, then we will be more stabilizing for our entire family!

Having supportive friends like this in each of our lives is so important that Jesus even names us in the same way; He says in John 15:15, "I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you."

So, we are thankful for your friendship in helping reconnect our families through stronger, more stable parental roles! God bless you all in the coming week and we hope to see you next Friday!

06/07/2022

As parents of challenging children, we all need to be able to breathe - often that is the hardest to do, especially when our kids can become so very overwhelming!

Starting on July 8, 2022, join in with Cedar Grove Christian Church and other like-minded parents on Friday nights from 6PM to 8PM to remember what it is like to get the hard to find help; with people who know how difficult it is to breathe while in crisis mode!

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Excitement, joy, pride, concern and admiration are all normalized feelings that parents have while raising their children into adults. However, when a child is an at-risk youth with special or mental health challenges, those thoughts and feelings can radically change into exhaustion and overwhelming frustrations. It can leave a parent feeling discouraged or a failure and these parents often look hopelessly at the future. Many overwhelmed parents talk about the amount of work they have put into their children, and they feel foolish when the child still turns away or still acts out of control.

While these worries and feelings are understandable, getting the support and strength parents need will make them better in helping their child. Coming from a place with stronger love and less anger, will be more stabilizing for the entire family! As one parent put it: “I did not realize the disfunction my disconnected focus to my child put into our family and my marriage. How I responded to my child’s needs defined many relationships in our home – many of which were not good.”

We as challenged parents may feel alone, but nothing could be further from the truth! More often than not, the actions of our children are not our fault. Parents who are looking for help in their family often have not done wrong and those mixed emotions surrounding their child and family are not irrational. We love our children; we just do not know how to help them.

This is where “Breathe” comes in… Meeting together with people who have the same worries and troubles sharing what works and what does not helps us all become better parents. Whether your child suffers from ADHD, BPD, anger issues, inappropriate peer interactions, or even just disrespectful family interactions – “Breathe“ can help! Sharing knowledge of resources, actual experiences and information about inpatient facilities and health care professionals will take some of the edge off of finding a minute to breathe!

As parents of a child with difficult mental health issues, we find it especially helpful just having someone to hear us in our personal struggles, and I mean to really hear us and understand just how hard it is. And then as a group work through shared ideas and resources to get those anxieties under control and help our children as best we can with more tools and more hope than we could ever find on our own!

If you are in need of open hearts, understanding, and a hand to help get your family back then we hope to see you during the next Friday gathering!

God bless!
Dave & Penny Foster

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 - Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Please remember this meeting is for peer discussion only and any discussions are not to be substituted for professional advice. Please seek qualified professionals for any specific personal needs or medical treatments.

Breathe - Support for Parents of At-Risk Youth

10/14/2022

08/18/2022

08/08/2022

07/30/2022

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