As children’s church leaders we may never know how our words and actions might impact a child of divorced, never married or separated parents. This week I was blessed to find out how much I had said over a year ago impacted a young man’s life.

In the fall of 2010 and early 2011 I led DC4K, DivorceCare for Kids, at a church in North Carolina. That next summer I moved to Florida to be near my own grandchildren. I have never completely left the family of one little boy from the class. We stay in touch through FaceBook.

This week I noticed a message his mom had posted on FaceBook.

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A significant part of helping kids to deal with their emotions (Jump In! Stand Strong! Rise Up!) is helping them to develop a robust feelings vocabulary. That is why we are excited to present our very own set of Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards.

What Are Emotion Cards?

Each of these 54 cards includes the name of an emotion, a face demonstrating that emotion, and a brief definition of the feeling. Definition have been taken from, or adapted from entries in the WordNet® lexical database of English. The emotions included in this deck of feelings cards were extracted from our upcoming book 150 Emotions Every Kids Should Know – By Age (coming, hopefully, in late 2018).

How Do I Get These Cards?

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Feelings Pictionary is a new take on an old game that help kids to learn about emotions while having fun at the same time. It’s a great game for small groups, schools or family game night. This game builds on the history of games like Pictionary; Win, Lose or Draw and Draw Something to create an environment where kids and adults can explore what emotions look like in all kinds of fun ways. All you need to play is two sets of cards that you can download here at Hope 4 Hurting Kids and something to draw on.

The Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards

The first set of cards you will need is our free Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards. Each of these 54 cards includes the name of a emotion, a face demonstrating that emotion, and a brief definition of the feeling. Unlike regular Pictionary where the drawer only needs to get their team to guess the object they are drawing, in Feelings Pictionary the teammates will have to guess both the object and the emotion shown on the Emotion Card.

The Feelings Pictionary Cards

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A New Report

Melinda Lundquist Denton of Clemson University conducted a study of the spiritual impact of divorce  which offers a new way of looking at the spiritual impact of divorce. The results were released in the article, “Family Structure, Family Disruption, and Profiles of Adolescent Religiosity” published in Journal For The Scientific Study of Religion.

How Is This Study Different?

The report explains that many of the reports that have been done thus far on the spiritual impacts of divorce on kids have utilized a “variable-centered” approach. In other words, they have measured the effect of divorce on one individual measure of religion. In other words, previous studies, for example, might have asked “What is the impact on divorce on a child’s religious attendance?” or “How does divorce affect a child’s prayer life?”

By contrast, Denton’s current report takes a “person-centered” approach to studying the impact of divorce which accounts for the varied ways in which children understand and practice their religious faith. As such, it is better able to capture and analyze the “complex religious profiles of adolescents.”

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Lazy 8 Breathing is a very simple technique to help teach kids deep breathing. Deep breathing is a foundational skill when it comes to coping and is a vital part in the Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff coping tool box. Whether you find the number 8 in a magazine or book or draw your own on a sheet paper, you can quickly and easily teach kids a simple method to practice deep breathing.

How Does Lazy 8 Breathing Work

Have the child trace the number 8 with their finger. Obviously, the speed will vary depending on the size of the 8, but try to have the child trace the eight in such a way that tracing each side of the eight takes about 3-4 seconds. As the child traces one side of the 8, they should breath in deeply through their nose. As they cross the intersection line and trace the other side, have them breathe out through their mouth. That’s it! We told you it was easy, but it is a simple and effective way for kids of all ages to remember how to breathe deeply in order to cope with difficult circumstances.

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Emotion Face Plates are a fun way to get kids thinking about what emotions look like. Emotion Face Plates are an easy project that you can do with objects lying around your house, and once you get kids started, it is something they can continue to work on by themselves.

Supply Listing for Emotion Face Plates

This is a fairly simple task. All you need is:

• Paper plates (that you can write on).
• Markers, pens or crayons.
• Scissors (if you want to make the half-plate emotion faces).

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While serving children and their families, our hearts are tuned in to their care. So, what are we to do when we find out a child’s parents are getting or have gotten divorced? Here are a couple of thoughts as we seek to serve the family.

1. Ask Questions & Listen

Every family loves to be listened to and to be heard, especially families experiencing a divorce. Ask questions. Ask both surface questions as well as deep questions, and then your job is to listen. Truly listen. This type of listening includes repeating the same words and phrases back to the family to see if they agree with your statement. If they continue on in their conversation that means you’ve listened correctly. The main thing to be aware of with asking questions and listening is to always respect the level of information the family wants to share. Not respecting their level of privacy demonstrates that you as the caregiver are seeking to know information more than wanting to do what’s best for the family.

2. Volunteer consistently, allowing church to be a consistent place with a consistent face.

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With Easter coming up soon, it’s a great time to stock up on empty Easter Eggs. These Emotion Egg Faces are a simple, fun and captivating way to help kids learn about, and express, emotions. They can be utilized for several of the steps in the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique.

How to Make Emotion Egg Faces

• All you need for this craft is empty Easter Eggs, a marker and some clay or play-doh (optional).
• Draw a different emotion face on each Easter Egg. The eyes and the nose should go on the top half of the egg with the mouth on the bottom.
• Put a piece of clay in the bottom of each egg. This helps them to stand up better (you can see we used stands made out of pool noodle for the picture above)

How to Use Emotion Egg Faces

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Editor’s Note: “Understanding Divorce and Children” was originally published on Ministry-to-Children.com in the Summer of 2011. It has been updated and revised with new information for publishing here on Hope4HurtingKids.com. We hope that you find it useful.

You might be surprised to find out that the divorce rate in the United States is actually decreasing and has been since it reached its high point in the early 1980s. Despite the relatively small decrease, it is still an epidemic. Recent studies show that the projected divorce rate for first marriages in this country is approximately 43%. For second marriages, that rate shoots up to 60%. Indeed, while the decrease in the rate of divorce is a good thing, it is driven primarily by an increase in cohabitation and failure to marry rather than a “real” decrease in divorce.

You might think, given the Biblical mandates on divorce, that divorce rates in the church would be much lower than those in the general population. Unfortunately, that is not true! According to a Barna study done in 2004:

Although many Christian churches attempt to dissuade congregants from getting a divorce, the research confirmed a finding identified by Barna a decade ago (and further confirmed through tracking studies conducted each year since): born again Christians have the same likelihood of divorce as do non-Christians.

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H4HK FAQs are designed to answer questions kids and teens ask when facing difficult situations and circumstances in their lives.

Divorce brings all kinds of changes into your life.  Some changes are obvious.  You no longer live in the same house with both your mom and your dad.  Maybe you spend most of your time at one parents’ house and visit the other parents’ house every other weekend, or maybe you split your week between two houses.  Sometimes one parent moves far away and most of your contact with them will be by phone or e-mail.  In some cases, children of divorce don’t see one of their parents very often or at all.  There are many other potential changes.  You might have moved out of your house following the divorce and live in a brand new house or apartment.  Maybe you go to a brand new school or you’re in a living in a new neighborhood or going to a new church.

Some changes in your life are not obvious.  Other people probably don’t even notice these types of changes in your life at all, but you probably do.  Maybe your family had a special Christmas tradition before the divorce that you no longer get to do.  Perhaps you used to sit down every Saturday morning as a family for a pancake breakfast with dad that doesn’t happen anymore since the divorce.  Maybe it’s as simple as missing how Dad used to stop by your bedroom door every night and tell you “Sweet Dreams” as you were drifting off to sleep.  All of these little things may not seem important by themselves, but they form an important part of what we see as “normal.”  We call these little things that you’ve gotten used to rituals and routines and they define what “normal” is to us.

One important things that you can do after a divorce to help things get back to “normal” is to come up with some new rituals and routines to engage in with your family.  They may not be the same rituals and routines from before the divorce, but they can be just as fun and with time they will become just as important to you.  You’ll need to come up with some rituals and routines that work for you and you family, but here are some suggestions:

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