Missionary Kids Alone
“My mom told me that we would leave the field if that’s what I needed. So I couldn’t tell her how much I was struggling… God called them here. Who am I to defy God?” A warm breeze played across my goosebumps as I sat with an MK, telling me things he had never shared before.
With his permission, I shared this with his parents. He was repatriating the next month, so the point was moot. But together we were devastated to find that MKs can feel alone even when they have a parent in the next room who would love to be there for them. A missionary kid can have loving, accessible parents and still believe they have to face the hardships of life abroad alone.
When MKs feel overlooked:
Our work is so unique in that it isn’t usually a 9-5, but a life’s work that bleeds into all hours of the day and consumes our focus in a distinctly different way than jobs where you clock out. And too often, MKs see the prioritization their parents put on their work and feel like a secondary consideration. According to our 2024 research, almost 2 out of 10 missionary kids said that, as children, they felt their parents didn’t love them or think they were important. Our 2021 survey found that number closer to 4 out of 10. But I have never met a missionary parent who said “I don’t love my child” or “My child isn’t important to me”. That’s the part that breaks my heart: this is just a devastating gap between intention and experience. Parents can deeply love their children, be willing to sacrifice the world for them, and still unintentionally communicate that the ministry takes priority.
When MKs feel shut down:
We want our children to be happy. And so, when our children come to us with their hardships, we can sometimes be overly enthusiastic about trying to make the hard emotions go away. Every time we respond to our children, we are training them whether they should come to us again the next time they have a worry, frustration, or grief. In our 2024 research, 70% of missionary kids said they felt safe and accepted when talking about their feelings with family. Which means 30% didn’t. Nearly 1 in 3 MKs didn’t experience their family as a safe place to talk about their feelings.
When we use Shut Down Responses (downplay the seriousness, defending their opposition, comparing their hardship to a worse one, correcting the details of the story while missing the point), our children can leave feeling like they didn’t get the support they were looking for. However, when we start with Safe Space Responses (acknowledge, affirm, and comfort: “Thank you so much for telling me that. It makes sense you’d feel frustrated. Would you like a hug?”), our children learn that coming to us helps them to feel better. We can absolutely help our children contextualize the seriousness, consider the opposition's reasoning, gain some perspective, and clarify facts, but those conversations need to start with our child feeling heard and supported.
When MKs feel obligated:
Kids can take on responsibilities that they were never meant to hold. One child, in the passing of his grandparents, fell into the role of being the easy child who didn’t show grief, because he saw how sad his parents were and didn’t want to add to their grief. Another missionary kid was told directly that if she didn’t slap a smile on her face and get on that plane, she would ruin her parents’ ministry, and people in Africa would go to hell because of her.
We do not know what beliefs our children may have picked up along the way, which is why it’s important to explicitly tell them that we want them to share with us, that sharing a struggle doesn’t ruin a ministry, and to give them spaces where they can share the things they cannot tell their parents.
Overlooked, shut down, or obligated, the message a missionary kid can receive is the same: “You’re on your own.”
Don’t let the most important things go without saying
When MKs feel like they’re not important, heard, or helpful, they can conclude that they have to handle the struggles of life abroad by themselves, even when that’s resoundingly untrue.
In order to avoid this type of miscommunication, we need to make sure we teach our children what is true, explicitly and repeatedly:
You are more important to me than the ministry.
Your struggles will not ruin God’s plans.
You never have to pretend you’re ok to protect us.
You can tell us the truth.
If you need to talk with someone else, we’ll help you find a safe person.
Our MKs are not alone on the field. But if they believe they have to carry their struggles alone, the distinction doesn’t matter very much. We need to tell them otherwise. And then we need to keep telling them until they believe us.
