Welcome to Light for Parents and the WELS Mindshift Project!


Parents of children who have disabilities or have complex health challenges, who have been adopted or experienced other traumas, or who have other significant needs, face unique challenges that are hard for others to fully understand. We're here to help on this journey and to encourage a mindshift in WELS churches and schools that increasingly opens hearts and makes room for all of God’s unique children. Whether you are connected to children with extraordinary challenges as a parent, grandparent, pastor, teacher, volunteer, or caring friend, we pray that our two ministries will be a blessing to you.

News

New WELS Parent-Run Group

A group of WELS parents of children with disabilities and complex medical needs has been started and is energetically working on projects with Light for Parents. Read our article to learn more about The WELS Mindshift Project.

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!


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 "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 significant needs.


A link to the IDDM page is included below.

Special Ministries, IDDM committee