Anger is an almost universal emotion. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve been angry at some point, and kids are no exception. Kids get angry for any variety of reasons.

• It could be family related turmoil – like when their parents divorce. In fact, it is one of the most universal reactions we see in kids when they experience any sort of family transitions. When visitation arrangements change, kids get mad. When dad doesn’t pick them up for his time with them, they get angry. When mom starts dating some new guy, they begin to boil. When they have to move, change schools, deal with new siblings, listen to one parent bash another, and on and on and on, they get angry.
• It could be a reaction to stress – from school or family or sports or just not having time to be kids. Kids today are more stressed than ever, and anger is a typical reaction to stress.
• It could be in response to fear – about what is going to happen in the future, how a family situation is going to turn out, how the kids at school will react, feeling embarrassed or any number of other things.

The list is endless, and teaching kids how to deal with anger and coping mechanisms they can safely use as they move from irritated to annoyed to angry to enraged is critical to helping them move past the anger and deal with other underlying emotions.

This craft from the website Home Stories A to Z is an awesome tool for helping kids both to deal with anger they are currently feeling and to deal with future bouts with anger. The instructions are simple (and included on the template):

• Download the template from this site.
• Color the various triangles on the sheet. If you want the colors to match as you use the anger catcher, color the number and coping mechanism the same color as is printed in the triangle between them. We didn’t do this as we were making our anger catchers, and it doesn’t make a difference in its use.
• Fold each corner towards the center of the page so that the numbers and color names are facing you.
• Turn over the anger catcher
• Fold each corner into the center so that only the color names are visible.
• Fold the anger catcher in half so that the color names touch and the numbers are on the outside.

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The following relates my experience volunteering in my very first 13 week session of Divorce Care 4 Kids (DC4K) back in 2011. Since that time, I have gone on to lead a number of DC4K groups at multiple locations and will lead my next group starting in mid January of next year..  I hope that you will find this telling of my experience both informative and useful.  Ultimately, I hope in some way that it will lead you to getting involved in DC4K ministering to children of divorce or ministering to hurting kids in some other capacity.

One question that I get asked more than any other since I started working with children of divorce is:

What can a church do to minister to children of divorce?

I believe there are number of things that the church must do in order to truly minister to children of divorce. One significant thing a church can do is to start a support group for kids who have been, or are going, through a divorce. The best program that I am aware of for churches is Divorce Care 4 Kids (DC4K).

What is DC4K?

Divorce Care 4 Kids is a 13 week curriculum developed by Church Initiative who also produce Divorce Care, Grief Share, Single & Parenting and Chance to Change. According to the DC4K website,

DC4K is a special group to help your children heal from the pain caused by a separation or divorce. DC4K provides your children with a safe and neutral place to recognize and learn to share their feelings.

For 13 weeks your children become involved in a fun, caring group at a church near you. The weekly session topics help your children learn that God’s love strengthens them and helps them turn their sadness to hope and their anger to joy.

Each session is filled with motivating and exciting activities. Games, crafts, role-playing, discussion times, journaling and activity books help your children process the divorce and move forward in their lives. The music CDs, snacks, read aloud stories, exercises and Bible verses teach your children to relax and rest secure in God’s love. The Kids Like Me and Stories from the Bible video dramas present stories of children just like your children, who are experiencing divorce-related problems and have found help and encouragement.

DC4K is a powerful ministry for kids 5–12 years of age.

What Topics Does DC4K Cover?

During the 13 week course, the DC4K curriculum covers a variety of topics in a setting where your kids can feel safe. The topics covered by week include:

• What’s Happening to My Family?
• God Loves Children in All Kinds of Families
• Facing My Anger
• Journey from Anger to Sadness
• I Am Not Alone
• God’s Plan for Me
• Developing New Relationships
• Developing Money Smarts
• It’s Not My Fault
• Telling My Parents How I Feel
• Forgiveness
• Loving My Parents
• Moving On: Growing UP and Closer to God

What Does A Child Experience at a DC4K Session?

Although you can customize what you do for any given week, a common session might include:

• A video presenting circumstances that a child of divorce can relate to.
• A video presenting a relevant Bible story.
• Journaling and drawing pictures in a child’s Activity Book.
• Arts and crafts projects which allow children to express themselves.
• Singing and listening to music.
• Playing games.
• Connecting with leaders and other children of divorce.
• Stretching and exercising to help reduce stress levels.
• Reading scripture.
• Eating together.

How Do I Find a DC4K Group in My Area?

Go to http://www.dc4k.org/findagroup and enter your zip code, or search internationally, to find a group in your area.

An Introduction to My First DC4K Experience

When I originally envisioned this article, I didn’t expect it to be as long as it eventually turned out to be. I thought I might hit on some the highlights and some of the things I learned from my time and be done. In the end, I decided that perhaps the best thing I could do was to give you a glimpse into our class itself so that you can see how a class like DC4K can impact the adults who run it and, more importantly, the kids who attend. Continue reading

How is your church doing in meeting the special needs of step families (sometimes called blended families)? Recent government statistics show that in the United States almost 9% of all kids live in a step family (this does not include children living with cohabiting, but unmarried, couples). In his article Understanding the unique needs of step families, Ron Deal explains the importance of ministering to step families.

Ideas for Further Discussion About Step Families

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The Superpower Game is simple game that doesn’t require any preparation or materials, but it can tell you a lot about what a child is experiencing. You ask one simple question:

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

As the child answers, listen for clues to what they are feelings and what they are going through. Think about why the child might want a particular superpower and/or what emotion it might help them to deal with. For example:

• Invincibility or Super Strength could be an indication that the child is anxious about something or someone.
• X-ray vision might mean the child is struggling to understand what is going on and wants to be able to “look inside” of his/her parents to figure it out.
• Flying can signify that the child is overwhelmed and just wants to get away from it all.
• Power of Healing might suggest that the child is worried about their parents or someone else and what they are going through.
• Time Travel could suggest that the child is dealing with regrets or guilt that they want to go back and fix or a desire to have things “the way they used to be.”
• Telepathy and Mind Reading can indicate that the child feels “left in the dark” or insecure and wants to know what other people are thinking.
• Precognition or Knowing the Future could relate to anxiety about what might happen next in the child’s life.

Of course, these are just guidelines.  It is possible that a child just wants a certain super power because it seems cool, so you may want to take the conversation a little further:

• Why would you want to have that power?
• Would you have a superhero name? If so, what would it be? If not, why not?
• If you had that power, what is the first way you would use it?
• What are the positives and negatives of having that power?
• Would you want to have a superhero costume? If so, what would it look like?
• Would you have any superhero gadgets? If so, what would they do?
• Would you want your friends and family to know that you had the superpower?
• Would having a superpower change how you think about yourself? If so, how?

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For many of us, Christmas is a joyous time filled memories of Christmases gone by, but for many children the season brings all kinds of additional stressors and emotions.  This includes children spending this holiday season suffering through their parents divorced, with absentee parent(s) and under tremendous stress for any variety of reasons.

At Hope 4 Hurting Kids, we’ve put together the following simple infographic to help you help hurting and stressed out children navigate this Christmas season.  It includes an explanation as to why Christmas is not always the “Most Wonderful Time of the Year” for kids, tips for parents and others for helping children this season and a brief reminder of what Christmas is really all about.  This resource is intended for parents, children’s pastors and anyone else who work with children.

Please click on the graphic below for a larger pdf version of the resource for printing.

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Children of divorce suffer many consequences because of the divorce of their parents (legacies of divorce). Many legacies of divorce can cause immediate problems for some children. Other legacies impact the child of divorce for years to come. While some children seem to breeze through the divorce of their parents with no lasting impact at the time the divorce occurs, many will find themselves wrestling with various consequences later on in life and throughout their adult years.

Several researchers divide the legacies of divorce into two different time frames. Short-term legacy is the term used to define the consequences that affect the child at the time the divorce occurs and immediately following. Long-term legacy represents those consequences that impact the child of divorce later on in their teen or adult years.

Not every child of divorce will personally experience every short-term or long-term legacy. Much depends on the child’s support system, the child’s personality, the relationship with both parents, how the child is told about the divorce, how the parents experience the divorce individually, and the relationship, actions and attitudes of the parents after the divorce occurs.

There are a number of short-term legacy effects that you might see in children of divorce. In this article, we will examine 9 different short-term legacy effects. Continue reading

When you work with kids who are hurting from any variety of circumstances, it is important to know when you are in “over your head” and when you need to seek professional help for the child.

Know your limitations

For those us who are passionate about helping kids and/or who have worked with kids for some time, we sometimes want to do it all ourselves to make sure that child we are working with is helped. It’s easy to lose site of the fact that sometimes our ability and skills just aren’t enough. If we really want to help these kids, we need to be able to recognize when we need to get a Professional Counselor, Psychologist or Psychiatrist involved.

If you work closely with kids, there will be times when you will need to be prepared to refer a child to a professional. You should be prepared for this eventuality by compiling and keeping a list of Christian Counselor and other professionals in your area that you can refer kids (and their families) to.

Know the Signs that Professional Help May Be Needed

If a child your are working with exhibits any of the following signs consistently, you should consider the need to refer to another professional: Continue reading

One of our goals at Hope 4 Hurting Kids is to find very practical ways to serve hurting kids and their families. For us, it is not enough to just speak or write generally about children who are hurting; we want to serve those children directly, and their families. We also seek to serve those who work with hurting children. One very effective means and practical way that we can serve these kids and this community is through prayer.

James 5:13-16 tells us:

¹³ Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. ¹⁴ Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵ And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. ¹⁶ Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

Prayer is important, and it is something that God calls us to do for one another. There are so many verses in the Bible dealing with prayer that I can’t possibly include them all here, but I do want to share a couple:

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Dale Hudson offers up background information on foster kids and ideas on how to minister to them in a church situation in his article How To Minister to Foster Kids in Your Church (from Relevant Kids Ministry).

Ideas for Further Discussion About Foster Families

• How many foster kids are there in your community?
• Are there foster kids in your church? How do you know?
• Do you understand how the foster system works?
• What do you do for the foster kids and families in your church and community?
• Are there things you should you be doing that you aren’t?
• What’s worked for you and what hasn’t?

Scripture includes the revelation of God, and as such it guides and forms our view of all things – including divorce. Too many churches and ministries avoid this topic for fear of the backlash from their congregations. It is time that we, as the Church, stood up in love and took a position on this issue.

Before we get into the scriptural passages about divorce, I want to say a couple of words of Hope 4 Hurting Kids. Our primary focus when it comes to divorce is not on the cause of the divorce or the classification of divorce but on the outcomes of that divorce when it comes to the millions of children who go through their parents’ divorce.

Whether you agree with the position set forth below, or hold some other view, the fact of the matter is that for children the divorce of their parents is a stressful, traumatic and life changing event. We should not, and cannot, let our views on divorce itself keep us from working together to help the children of divorce.  Nonetheless, we do believe that God is our ultimate guide, and He has chosen to provide us with insight into divorce within scripture.

With that caveat, here is what we believe the Bible teaches about divorce. We have included scripture references for your review: Continue reading