Linda Ranson Jacobs is a good friend. She has been a mentor and you’ll find many of her articles and insights here on Hope 4 Hurting Kids. One of the positions she holds very strongly that gets an awful lot of feedback is that rewards based behavior system do not work. She has written a couple of articles about it on her blog at DC4K:

A Class Without Stickers! Are You Kidding Me? (Part 1)

and

A Class Without Stickers! Are You Kidding Me? (Part 2) Continue reading

In ministering to children from disrupted homes, we stress the need to empathize with what the kids are going through – not sympathize! This great video is one of the most succinct explanations of the difference between empathy and sympathy that I have found.

The video makes some great points, and I encourage you to watch the whole thing (it’s only 2:53 long after all).

One of the interesting things in the video was a study of professions where empathy is relevant and identifying four components of empathy:

1. Perspective taking (taking someone else’s
2. Staying out of judgment
3. Recognizing emotion in other people
4. Communicating that

There are some great takeaway quotes from the video too: Continue reading

A report released by Princeton University shows that approximately 40 percent of children in the U.S. lack strong emotional bonds in their lives. A child’s primary attachments will form with their parents and begin very early in life. However, there are different levels of attachment that kids can form. In the absence of appropriate emotional bonds with their parents, many of these children can still bond with an alternate caregiver such as a grandparent, childcare staff or caring baby sitters. These “secondary bonds” allow these kids to move forward with only minimal attachment issues.

Why is this important for our future? If children don’t form emotional bonds and connect with their primary care givers as infants, they will more than likely face behavior issues such as aggressiveness and defiance as children and hyperactivity as teens and adults. Because of their behavior issues, many will face limited educational benefits as they may be suspended from school; sent to alternative schools or end up dropping out of school all together. Some may grow up without a developed conscience intent on doing harm to anyone who gets in their way. If children are severely unattached they will not be able to trust others. Because they learn not to trust others, they turn inward and only trust themselves. These are the children who will lie, steal, hurt animals and hurt other people. These are just some of the problems faced by kids who don’t develop proper attachments early in life.

Attachments issues can arise in many different environments and are the result of the child not getting adequate time an opportunity to attach with their caregiver. Take for example infants who live in a high stress single parent home. The single parent, whether it is mom or dad, might be in a state of shock and barely surviving. They take the child to childcare, work a full day, pick the child up and stumble home. Hoping the childcare gave adequate care for the day; they may just feed the child and put them to bed as they struggle to keep up with life.

Reasons for Attachment Issues

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Anxiety is a very real problem for many kids and teens, and there is no “quick fix.” However, there are techniques you can use to help a child struggling with anxiety and some of them are quite simple.

This paper airplane technique requires only one piece of paper (almost any type will do), some sort of writing utensil and time to talk to the child dealing with anxiety.

Here’s how it works.

1. Sit down with the anxious child and talk about the things that are causing them anxiety. You can guide the conversation, but make sure to allow the child to lead the conversation and discuss their own anxieties.
2. As you discuss each item which causes anxiety, have the child write it (or draw it) on the piece of paper.
3. Take the opportunity to talk about different breathing techniques and other things the child can do to help when they feel themselves getting anxious.
4. When you are done listing things on the paper, make a paper airplane. If you’re not a paper airplane aficionado, you can find instructions here.
5. Have the child throw the paper airplane across the room or, ideally, into a trash can.

Although a very simple exercise, the Anxiety Paper Airplane has numerous benefits. They include: Continue reading

Over the last ten to twenty years, there has been significant research on the effect of divorce on kids. In more recent years, the volume of studies on children from other family types (cohabiting families, grandparent led families, complex families) and family transitions has increased. There is still much study which needs to be done, however the consensus seems to be that our kids are growing up in increasing complex families, and experiencing (on average) multiple transitions in the families in which they reside, and reflecting worse outcomes than kids raised in traditional two-parent married biological parent families. I wrote this article as the result of one recent study which examined the life course of a group of children.

Do you know the kids in your ministry? Do you know what types of families they are living in? Do you know what types of family transitions they have lived through? Consider the following example:

Suzie was born ten years ago to a single mother. At the time she was born, her mom Angie (who was 22 at the time) was living with a man named Bernie who was not her biological father. Bernie loved Angie though, and so did his parents. Bernie was there as she learned to walk and talk and was potty trained. However, when Bernie was two years old, Angie and Bernie split up. One day he was there, and the next day he wasn’t. Suzie never saw him again – or his parents (the only grandparents she had ever known as Angie’s parents had disowned her).

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One of my favorite Bible verses is:

Be still and know that I am God. – Psalm 46:10

With four kids, two dogs and a busy live, I find myself surrounded by constant motion and constant noise. This time of year, that only intensifies. In the midst of all of that, is important to remember to find time for silence. So, this Christmas, those of us here at Hope 4 Hurting Kids wish you and yours a:

Silent Christmas

As I was pondering all of that this week and driving to work, I happened to listen to a podcast called Where There’s Smoke. I have listened to it for a while now and like it more and more each week. This particular episode was called “Soaking in the Holidays (Feeling).” In this episode, after a brief introduction, Brett and Nick discuss what to do if you’re feeling down this Christmas season and then explore the importance of silence (and the peace it brings) at Christmas. In the hustle and bustle of Christmas, I encourage you to take some time to listen to this very helpful podcast and to embrace the silence of the season.

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Dear Hurting Child,

This weekend is Christmas! You probably knew that all ready. The malls have been decked out in red and green for well over a month now. Traffic is crazy, and you don’t even want to venture into the local store to do any last minute Christmas shopping (Trust me! I know!). Children have sent their Christmas wish lists to the North Pole. Parents have fretted over how to ensure that their kids get all that they want for Christmas. Stockings have been hung, Christmas Trees decorated, cookies baked and carols sung. There is no avoiding the spectacle that Christmas has become in our country.

All over this country this weekend, indeed all over the world, kids will open presents. Parents will take time out of their busy schedules to spend time rejoicing in the joy and happiness of their children. Stocking will be emptied, presents will be exchanged, laughter will be heard, and people will enjoy time together with family and close friends. Indeed, Christmas has become a time where family is celebrated and togetherness has become the ultimate goal.

Yet for many of you, we know that Christmas does not bring warm tidings of great joy. It comes with memories of the way Christmas used to be or maybe the way you wish it should be. It comes with decisions about who to spend this most important day with and desires for people long sense out of lives. For some it brings an overwhelming sense of loneliness even as they spend the day in the company of many people. We understand that Christmas can be a very stressful time for you and your families as you struggle with less time, less money and less togetherness. If Christmas is all about families and togetherness, then for many people it will not be much of a celebration at all these days.

But, that is not the end of the story. See, if Christmas is all about family and great tidings of good joy, then it is understandable why there might not be much there for you. But, Christmas is about so much more than that. Christmas is about the Creator of the Universe giving up everything He had in heaven to come to earth as a helpless infant. He gave up the adoration and worship of a multitude of angel for a dirty stable and a manger for a bed. He gave perfect union with the Heavenly Father to come and walk amongst His creation, and ultimately to be rejected by those He had given life.

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A young single mom entered my class one Sunday close to Christmas. She was almost trembling and I could tell she was very upset. She just stood there looking at me and when I asked,

What’s wrong?

She said,

I need a hug.

Single parenting is tough almost all the time, but Sundays seem particularly hard for single parents. It could be that they are exhausted from the week and don’t have to rise as early as on the weekday so they sleep in for a few minutes or an hour. Then, it’s hard to get out of bed and face getting the children dressed, fed and in the car by yourself. Or perhaps it is attending church where it seems like everyone is part of a couple.

Christmas time is no exception, and many times worse, because of the added stress of it being Christmas. The single mom above was one such mom. Added to the stress of Christmas was the birthday of her daughter who turned one year old a few days before Christmas. She had been parenting alone since before the baby was born. Plus she had a two year old.

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The past two weeks we have examined some of the short-term and long-term legacies of divorce on children. In this article we will look at ways you can help children in your church lessen the impact of some of these issues.

Do Something

Many children’s leaders have shared that they tend to hold back or shy away from children of divorce simply because they are afraid of making things worse for the child. Next time you face such fears, think to yourself,

How much worse can anything be than to watch the two people in the world you love the most split up and live in two separate households?

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Kids these days are stressed. There are a multitude of different ways to help kids deal with stress, but there is one very simple stress reliever that you’ve probably all tried at one point or another – packaging bubbles. Despite Amazon and many other online stores abandoning this joy inducing packaging in their boxes, it’s still pretty easy to get you hands on the old-fashioned bubble wrap (check out your local office supply store, do it yourself moving store or big box retailer).

I like to have a little fun with it and make a label for the bubble wrap. I keep a handful on hand to pass out to stressed out kids (and adults). Here’s a picture of the stress reliever we put together (I printed the labels; my son and daughter cut the bubble wrap and stapled the labels to the bubbles).

Here’s what our label says:

STRESS RELIEF

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