Aug
08
2012
Everyone Benefits by Including Children in Small Groups
Small groups are gospel-centered communities on mission. The scriptures beautifully describe a small group of believers committed to seeing the gospel of Jesus Christ flourish in one another, then extending the gospel to all their neighbors. The idea sounds simple, yet living it becomes complex and challenging.
Many small groups struggle with how to handle children in the community. Maybe you can relate to one of our communities that had 14 adults and 16 children under the age of 8. In their mind they fit the ideal size of 12 t0 15 for a community group, and they were seeking to be innovative in their scheduling and structure. They rotated their meetings with men meeting one week, women the following, couples going out on date night, and then enjoying a family outing on the weekend. Theoretically this schedule allowed them to see each other weekly, but they never formed into a community that encouraged one another and extended the gospel to their neighbors.
Where Do We Go Wrong?
Many of our small groups apparently believe children get in the way of adults seeking to be in community and on mission. To be fair, no small group model communicates so explicitly, but when children aren't included in the number for the community group, it unintentionally conveys their lack of importance. We know Jesus welcomes children as valuable to God. The Book of Acts speaks of entire households participating in this new gospel faith in Christ and describes church life happening in believers' homes. The scriptures never explicitly speak of children in these communities, but we can still deduce that God views children as a blessing and the primary mission field for parents. So a gospel-centered community on mission embraces the view that children should be included and seen as members of the community in need of becoming disciple-making disciples.
We must re-imagine the church community, moving beyond life-stage idolatry to see the church as a family. Repeatedly the Bible refers to the church as the household of God, and familial language is used in describing our relationships with one another. We become spiritual brothers and sisters and make disciples of spiritual children with God our Father because of the work of Christ in making us fellow heirs by the power of the Spirit in the gospel. Community groups that gather around the gospel, then, will includes singles, married couples, and families who seek to fulfill the many "one anothers" of Scripture, discipling one another, and participating in each other's mission fields. Since the parents' mission field starts with their children, the rest of the community seeks to own this mission with them.
For families to share their community's mission, parents will need to see singles and married couples without kids as valuable to them beyond babysitting. When the gospel of Jesus Christ becomes our primary identity, life stage becomes a way to serve God and his mission rather than our main focus. If parents do not invite singles and married couples in their own church to be a part of their family, how will they ever extend the gospel to their neighbor in the same situation?
Good for the Whole Community
The entire community benefits from the gospel-centered community that involves children. This is not only better for the children and the parents, but also for those in the community who don't have kids or may never have children. They become spiritual parents seeking to form a new generation of Christ followers.
The children see models of the Christian life other than their parents in all walks of life with varying pasts that educate them for the future. Kathy Keller's article on raising children in the city speaks of how others in the community can share their experiences to testify to the goodness of God in avoiding the temptations our children will face.
As a father of three now, I'm so thankful for the experienced families who opened their lives to me. If I had never been shown how to parent by a gospel-centered family, I would have been dramatically different, likely over-protective and fearful. I was handed a three-month old when I was a 23-year-old single man and given a bottle to feed her at dinner with the community I had just joined. Thankfully, my education didn't stop there. I saw the delightful side of parenting coupled with the challenging parts. This prepared me to be a father well before I had children myself, giving me hope for a future family to be centered on God.
Many in the church have never seen a family try to display the love and grace of Christ to their children. Many whose parents did not model this love struggle to figure it out on their own. When we seek to integrate children, we bless the family and the kids, but we also bless every other member of the community who can learn from watching parents who seek to love their kids.
But How Does It Work?
If you share this vision and conviction to include children in community life and mission, what does the actual meeting look like? There are three primary options. In each one, the community must consider how the children will be shown truth, have fun, and experience the love of Christ. A community group can pursue babysitting, involve the children for part of the time, or involve the children for all of the time. (A helpful resource for can be found in Mike Breen and Alex Absalom's Launching Missional Communities.)
Babysitting
Some community groups choose to pursue babysitting, but each week someone rotates as their way of serving. We also encourage them to use the Jesus Storybook Bible or provide age-appropriate curriculum and feel the freedom to turn on a movie. This way communities serve one another while learning to disciple each other's children.
Children Involved for Part of the Time
This might cause you to change your community group meeting time to incorporate family meals or games with everyone that includes a time focused on caring for and teaching the children. The "formal time" uses babysitting to have fun, know God, and extend the love of Christ to children. This forces a community to learn to let all of our conversations be rooted in the gospel, including when joined by our children.
Children Involved for All of the Time
In this scenario, the entire community must be prepared to extend Jesus' love to children, as aspects of the community will need to change. The conversations would likely change, the setting would likely be more informal. Encouraging or challenging conversations will have to become normal in the middle of chaos. This will also force accountability times and even some of the prayer times to be different throughout the week.
The benefits of this mindset are many. Seeking to involve children requires that we restructure our community life to no longer revolve around our own convenience but aim to bless everyone else. My children are more joyful and obedient after they have been around a number of people who love Jesus and love them.
As the community develops a regular rhythm that includes children, this community can move toward mission fairly easily during informal time. This would happen through the community opening up their rhythm to their neighbors or seeking to join the activities of their neighborhood. These activities likely follow a similar pattern of sometimes requiring babysitting and sometimes incorporating children.
There's no reason to be surprised that all benefit from community life in small groups that involve children. This is the type of community that God calls together by his Word and invites us to joyfully participate in.
35 Comments
Thanks for sharing this. This is really a must read to everyone involved in small group. I'm impressed with your writings.
Some helpful thoughts for families and community groups.
You my have missed the point. HE was not suggesting that Groups do that but rather it was one of the options. The article was rather rooted in a call for shifting our focus to multi-life stage communities and seeing the benefit from inclusion even if it is measured.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the points made in the article. I see the benefits. I just don't fully understand how community groups that include children 100% of the time apply to real life, then? Yes, the conversation would change, very much, if the children were included in every aspect of the community group meetings. Adults would no longer feel like they could be transparent about real life so that others could pray for them and share their burdens. To me, it just seems impractical and unrealistic, since normal human community does *not* involve children in every aspect, and certainly normal adult life does not. Even husband and wife, a form of human community, *needs* time without the children to build closeness and trust and transparency. To put it more bluntly, no man who is going through a divorce with a cheating spouse and has a wayward teenager that is self-destructing before his eyes is going to feel comfortable or welcomed in that type of arrangement, especially when he is already doing his best the other 90% of the time to keep his burdens covered and quiet in dealing with the rest of life, like at his job and with his children. He doesn't need one more place to "fake it." He needs a family that can *know* about this stuff.
Thank you to Tim for the good comments - I have similar thoughts, but you expressed them well. My husband and I host a "Life Group" and our own children (ages 15,12,10) do not participate - nor do they want to. They attend 2 worship services every Sunday, Christian school, Sunday school, and church youth activities. I cannot imagine why they need to be in a small group as well. As a pastor family, I don't feel like we are excluding them - in fact, I believe they would be bitter if it was an expectation. There are issues of transparency with having older children participate (as was mentioned already) - and if someone has a 2 yr old that is crying or getting into drawers, etc. it doesn't seem like time for a very solid Bible study & prayer time if that is what your small group is about. I don't think having young children away from mom & dad for a bi-weekly Bible study is going to hurt them spiritually. (I remember to add family worship to the above list using a good age-appropriate resource for children as suggested.) :-) I feel if the dynamic of the group is not geared for children, it is OK - it is not that we are "sending them away." If a child/youth would like to join and participate - they should be welcomed if the group was OK with that. Or if the group does a neighborhood party or BBQ or community service event etc, then it is of course great to include children!
I love children - but one has to determine if not having them in a small group is truly spiritual neglect.
Thank you.
"our own children (ages 15,12,10) do not participate - nor do they want to."
I don't think the point is if they *want* to participate. I'm sure they don't want to go to church, school, etc. some or most of the time, either. I guess you have to ask yourself if it is more important for them to experience the full community of the church or be shipped off to youth activities. I realize that sounds harsh, but in my opinion youth ministry that segregates children and youth from the rest of the body is detrimental to the body.
"I love children - but one has to determine if not having them in a small group is truly spiritual neglect."
I would agree with you here. I don't think it's necessarily spiritual neglect. However, I think the question is what is *better*—having them there or not having them there? If the purpose of your small group is simply to grow intimate with others, then you will not agree with this article. I'm not advocating they be there all the time every time, but I would say they should be there *most* of the time. It's important that we demonstrate *why* it's important for our children to be there.
"We become spiritual brothers and sisters and make disciples of spiritual children with God our Father because of the work of Christ in making us fellow heirs by the power of the Spirit in the gospel." This is the key statement from the article that helps to answer the above comment. Don't filter life through the lens of your situation. Always focus the group and the individual to a Spirit-empowered, Gospel-centered life. Staying near the true core of the Christian life like this has built in functionality for dealing with all of life with all people. Fix your eyes on Jesus and be on the receiving end of covenant and see if your community, your whole community could handle life together.
Yes, it is great for children to learn community, but it is also great for adults to actually *have* it. I was involved in a church that was family-focused in every aspect, in family worship, in men's groups, in home groups. It made people who struggled, especially with their marriage and family and children, feel like outsiders -especially because they felt like they had not resource to *have* community and share their burdens with other adults in their church community. To me, the Church community already has a bad reputation as fostering fakeness and appearances while people suffer silently with addictions, broken homes, and certain things like mental and emotional illness -things they *might* talk privately to a pastor about. I have three children, so I am not against teaching the kids. I just don't practically see how it works having them be involved in everything. It winds up fostering superficial adult community (something the church *already* struggles with) for the sake of teaching the kids... and teaching them to be what? Fake? Like they don't notice that all the adults are always smiling and never talking about personal problems?
Tim,
You bring up the challenge of viewing small group life as only happening in those 2 hours when the group meets and maybe the 100% of the time was misleading.
The life of a community cannot happen in those 2 hours every week, but discussing the gospel of Jesus Christ as revealed in the scriptures and it's application for community and mission can. The accountability issues you speak of and the need for prayer isn't most effectively accomplished in the mixed environment.
The community would need to create space and identify times to pursue those away from the community as a whole and not just away from the children.
At the same time, we can err on the side of limiting exposure of children to real messiness in a gospel-centered environment in a way that hurts their understanding of Christianity. Including children isn't an invitation to act fake, it's an invitation to my children to see real conversation and process how a Christian community functions.
There is much more to say on this and I love your feedback and pushback. These are things the church must wrestle with openly to pursue and cultivate missional living as the community of God.
To David... but you cannot have close community without transparency. Sorry. Your answer sounds really good and theological and spiritual, but it fails where the rubber meets the road.
And the answer to "fix your eyes on Jesus and be on the receiving end of covenant" in the sense it was used is entirely un-Biblical.
While empathetic, I am squeamish over the connection between gospel-centered amd family integrated. I would propose a 4th option. Parents of the group serve one another by watching/serving the children on a rotation. If the group has singing, you could even have the children be part of it.
After 14-year of SG life, it seems clear (at least to me) if kids are involved during the study/fellowship/confession part of the group, do not expect the confession to be overly authentic. That is just the reality, I.E. confessing your parenting challenge in front of your children before an entire group will do more harm than good.
Mike, I absolutely agree that having children present, especially your own, while you share your burdens and confess your struggles is not only sometimes completely inappropriate but can also actually be harmful.
Children crying doesn't bug me one bit :). But if community groups are intended to be a forum where I can know and build spiritual friendships with other families and other adults, I don't really know how that can happen if all of the adults have to filter and censor the discussions. If these people are to be my "family," I would *never* leave my children under the care of adults that I do not know personally, including the skeletons in their closet.
Hey Mike & Tim,
Good thoughts and pushbacks on this issue. My wife and I have a beautiful 3 year old son and there is one other baby in our group. This has been a challenge for us and Anthony (my son) is usually in bed by the time CG begins (or at least we aim to on the majority of the weeks to get him to bed on time).
I would have to strongly disagree with the fact that it would be harmful for your older (?) children to hear about how much you need the gospel when it comes to raising, loving, punishing, & praising them. I think it would add so much depth and authenticity to the relationship that would otherwise not be there.
What do we have to hide from our kids? We need to show them how dependent on grace we truly are to be moms & dads. I don't say this to imply you guys in particular have something to hide; nor do I mean to be overly simplistic (some things need to be shared re: genders only...).
At the end of the day, integrating your family is what we will be aiming to do @ Resolved, in such a way that displays the glory of grace, which we are all ridiculously dependent on. I want Anthony to know, see, feel & experience his daddy this way.
With much love in Christ.
Your brother & servant
Arnaldo,
Thanks for the interaction. When I mentioned, "confessing your parenting challenge front of your children before an entire group will do more harm than good." I was pointing out that while “little Johnny” needs to see his parents seek Christ for grace, guidance, repentance and direction....little Johnny does not need his challenging sinful behaviors displayed before an entire group on a week/bi-weekly bases.
A simple convo that says I need help showing my children the love of Christ is cool, but these discussions normally don’t always take place like that. I find they sound more like, "little Johnny did X, I freaked out, yelled and feel terrible." In that situation, more harm than good would come. In your presentation, I could see it as positive. However, stating it on a post and seeing it talk place in the sticky reality of care group life is not the same. When real people, with real problems get together to seek Christ and confess their sins to one another (James), these things just come out.
While I can see benefits of including children, I was just trying to point out that a level of authenticity during group time will not be the same. Off course, this could transpire outside of the CG time. Life together certainly encompasses more then 2-hours a week.
Thanks for your thoughts,
Mike
"I was pointing out that while “little Johnny” needs to see his parents seek Christ for grace, guidance, repentance and direction....little Johnny does not need his challenging sinful behaviors displayed before an entire group on a week/bi-weekly bases."
Maybe he doesn't need them displayed before the group while he is absent, either? This is something I've observed occurring, as well, and the focus is often on "my difficult child." It's possible to share the struggles we are facing as parents without incriminating our children. I think far too often, it's viewed as a time to vent about our children and be transparent about *their* sin, rather than our own. Maybe having them present would actually help parents think twice (though, sadly not, in some situations I've observed) before focusing in on the child's "sin," or sharing how "annoying" their child is (And my three/four year old does pick up on that stuff.)
At the same time, there is likely a time and place for being transparent with our challenges in a way that we cannot share with everyone. And like some might not want their elderly parents knowing caring for them was a huge challenge, there's a similar appropriate way to share the challenges of parenting. Would I want my elderly parents (a fictitious scenario at this point) to be present when I shared with my small group the burden of caring for them? Probably not. But would I want the encouragement of sharing this with others? Probably. But, there may also be ways to do this in an even more private manner, outside of small group (depending on how *small* small group is).
[...] http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/08/08/the-challenge-of-children-and-small-groups/ [...]
My family and I have been a part of 3 successful family-friendly small groups, one of which we were the leaders. We structured it so that the group had roughly 5-7 families. Parents would sign up to watch (and encouraged to play with) the kids in another room, so basically every 5-7 weeks the assigned parents were not in the adult discussion and breakout. We would have our adult discussion, men/women breakout and prayer time. We also had a time for everyone (children included) to chat over snacks at the end.
There were several benefits to this...the biggest being that community was built because we got to know the whole family and not just the adults. The children got to build relationships with other children and adults. Friendships, get-togethers, play dates during the week were a result of the weekly community. We saw our small group come together in time of need or sickness whether it was child or adult. Gatherings like BBQ's were more enjoyable because it wasn't something your children had to go to as a tag-along to mom and dad. They wanted to go b/c they were apart of the group.
No group is perfect and I suppose it could be said that this model excludes singles or single parents. It is a work in progress, but I love that our children are a part of the Church outside of Sunday morning.
Thank you for sharing on this subject.
[...] Everyone Benefits by Including Children in Small Groups [...]
I hear what you're saying, you made some good points, but it smells of the family-integration movement. Been there, done that.
There is a couple have created a whole curriculum for family based small groups.
it is pretty unique, if you want to check it out.
http://bettertogethergroups.com/
I am a leader of a small group in which we use the babysitting model. WE go to one member's house and each family helps pay for a baby sitter. This seems best for us because then no member of the group has to be excluded at any time in order to baby sit the kids. I do like the idea of having some sort of scripotural time with the kids and not just baby sitting. That is good.
As others have said I think having the kids in the groups 100% of the time is not helpful and can actually be harmful. I think it best to include the kids only for part of the time at most. My group used to have a time when we ate and a short time with the kids. That did not work well for us because we are all very busy and have young kids with early bed times. So we have had to streamline our group time and make hard decisions about what is the best use of our time. Maybe when the kids get into later elementary then things will be easier in this regard.
As a small group that's just moving into the "kiddos" phase (2 babies, 2 on the way), we are actively looking for ideas of how to make small group work when you have a family.
Your proposal of kids being involved is interesting, but PLEASE! More explanation and practical how-tos here! How do you keep a conversation going with toddlers wiggling all around?? How do you handle the "lax" parents in the group who let their kids run around screaming and knocking glasses over? How do you challenge adults to dig deep in their understanding of scripture and also keep kids engaged and participating? I think that this kind of practical stuff is what would prevent us from including kids, much more than any theological or preferential desire not to include families.
sara
I don't know if your small group is merely an add on to the pulpit and pew routines where only a small % of the saints even show up to a small group or not. It sounds like it might be. The ceremonialized "worship hour" sets the paradigm for many of the issues you suggest. I would suggest the Bible never instructs saints to line up facing a pulpit for 100% platform driven expression by a few hired experts where the saints never grow up to do all that the "leaders" do. This is another subject. This system is a huge handicap on the true power of interactive small groups. Small groups by themselves can manifest ALL of God's design for His church. Crowd oriented gatherings only do a few of them and poorly at that all the while consuming 75-85% of the "giving" to make it happen.
" How do you keep a conversation going with toddlers wiggling all around?? "
This is a handicap straight from the pews. You can engage with the wigglers and every element of the gathering at the same time. Fight your flesh reaction to want comfort zone management. Patience and long suffering are fruits of the Spirit, not the flesh or natural reactions.
"How do you handle the "lax" parents in the group who let their kids run around screaming and knocking glasses over?"
Ask them if you can help them with the training by intercepting a loose missile and giving a little self-control love with time on your lap. If they say yes, you can be a teacher by example without saying a word to the parents about some specific technique. They will see you do it. Be patient because it may take weeks with plan A through Z. This may be an opportunity for God to build you into being a shepherd. Get rid of the glasses before you get rid of the children. Every Sunday I have someone else's child on my lap. They bring him to me. My wife gets one also. They have 9 under age 12 (8 of them adopted from foster care). Five of them are ready every week with a scripture passage to read and "This is why I like this scripture..." I wish every christian family in America could see this family at work. It is so simple yet totally astounding.
"How do you challenge adults to dig deep in their understanding of scripture... "
This is another handicap form the pews. If parents have been "programmed" to outsource the digging to "their pastor", it is highly unlikely (but not impossible) that they will take personal digging seriously. I led my family in giving up all crowd oriented gatherings and this was one of the hardest for me to conquer. It's not just reading the Word, it's also meditating on it all through the week. If you don't, you will forget what you read. When parents think that weekly Bible lecture is "feeding" enough, they will not likely go beyond perpetual dependency in the pews.
"...and also keep kids engaged and participating?"
The children can read the scripture, pick some songs, pray for needs, answer questions they are directly asked, act out stories. When the children are engaged, it will be the most powerful element of the gathering IMO. All this takes preparation Mon - Sat. but that is exactly what God wants. "Let us consider how we can spur one another...." The "Let us consider how" is the Mon - Saturday church. Heb. 10:24,25 Of course ALL of this passage is not allowed in the "worship hour".
Small groups demand believers growing in the power of the Spirit. You cannot fake it with the flesh. Mormons can do the crowd oriented gathering but they cannot do the "one another" instructions because they don't have the Holy Spirit inside. Believers have Him inside but they have structured their gatherings so that He is not needed. by ignoring God's simple instructions that require Him.
Do you know what actions display the "filling of the Spirit"? See Eph. 5:19 - . I have never sat in a pew where "speaking to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs" was ever done. The exact opposite is always done - never speaking and only singing what a platform guy tells you to sing, and often where you can't even hear yourself sing.
Eph. 3
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with POWER through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have POWER, TOGETHER with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be FILLED to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably MORE than all we ask or imagine, according to HIS POWER that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
You may have missed the point. HE was not suggesting that Groups do that but rather it was one of the options. The article was rather rooted in a call for shifting our focus to multi-life stage communities and seeing the benefit from inclusion even if it is measured.
I got his point but took it further. I was specifically answering Sara's questions, showing that the difficulties of small groups and specifically including children are a result of believers being dumbed down by years of pew oriented gathering. There are zero instructions for pew sitting gatherings. (I have not found one yet.) All the NT instructions and the whole theology of our new identity in Christ are for "one another" and "each one" oriented gatherings. From my observations of believers merely trying to shift from mono-life stage gatherings to multi-life stage communities is a tragic mess because it is mixing old wine with new, flesh with Spirit, what-do-I-get to what-do-I-give, shallow to intimate, traditions of men to God's design. I know its difficult to recognize that what has been considered godly for hundreds of years is really far off from revealed truth. It's easy to want to justify it all because God's grace makes up for some of it. May it never be that we let bad habits continue because of God's grace.
I'm not familiar with where the Bible suggests that the believers gathering involves sharing your carnal failures or specific family breakdown issues. Have I missed it some where? There are many times and places this can be done, face to face and brother to brother or sister to sister. It can even be done partially with email. The believers gathering is specifically stated as having a purpose of building up (edifying) the saints. Why would someone suggest that the main gathering of all the fellowship is the place for divulging adult situations to happen such that we must send the children away for part or all? It sounds to me like there are other unspoken reasons why the children are not wanted, and this reason is given as a "good" reason. We include the children in all of the main gathering and the prayer gathering with zero complications. There is no reason to think this means the adults can never have adult discussions.
Adults need to be trained in what God has designed for the gathering of His people just like the children need to be trained. One of the biggest challenges for training adults is training them how to train their children to be full heart participants in the gathering and with full sensitivity for the Spirits direction. I have seen children participate with greater power and gifting from the Holy Spirit than many adults who have heard 1000 sermons.
A large percentage of the household of faith is still clueless on God's design for building His church through children. Most churches won't let the lay people say a word during what is called "worship", much less the children.
I think its a good question, everything like this should be questioned. A bigger question of how to integrate children and youth into the church after years of age /stage affinity ministry philosophy is probably a great thing to wrestle with.
However here, it needs to be thought out more. Especially for parents with young children, and especially for those who stay at home. We just live in a society that moves in such a way that for some parents they are not getting really good authentic focused interaction, where they can be as many pointed out already, transparent, so they can deal with the things God would have them deal with, where they can receive and also follow the 50+ some commands in the new testament to "one another". (we are often either in front of a screen all day or carting kids from place to place trying to keep them occupied, we are not working in the fields, going on line walks, having extended family around giving us regular breaks to be adults)
So it ought to be considered very carefully, could a sweeping move to include children at least have one effect of just being soul crushing to isolated parents (who may be in some contexts a minority but still) in an attempt to do more 'holistic gospel centered ministry' or whatever but truly be missing the mark.
[...] Everyone Benefits by Including Children in Small Groups: [...]
[...] The Challenge of Children And Small Groups – We’ve been there, have you? [...]
How does this impact a culture that is already too child focused in it's parenting style?
Do you mean a *church* culture that's "too child focused"? What does "too child focused" mean?
In reading most of the comments (except the 5000 word essays there in the middle. :) I think the comment by Logan himself sets the record straight a little bit. If your 2 hour small group meeting is the only interaction you have with the members of your small group then the group is likely failing anyway. Small groups are geared to get people *into* each others lives so that repentance and rebuke and those hard discussions can happen in an organic and natural way. But the meeting itself is usually not the best place for those things.
I'm new to leading a small group but most, if not all of our effective gospel-centered conversations with people in the last year have happened in more intimate settings; having a couple over for dinner, park play dates, morning coffee meetings before work etc. The small group meeting is the means by which we meet people who God wants us to minister to through discipleship.
I will strongly consider and pray through how to incorporate kids more into our small group, since the bulk of those weighty things happen outside the meeting anyway and we miss people nearly every week because of baby-sitter issues.
[...] As a leader of a home church that has a plethora of young children, this encouraging article from The Gospel Coalition helped reaffirm some core beliefs about the importance of including our children in the community of faith. [...]
[...] Everyone Benefits by Including Children in Small Groups [...]