The emotions paper chain is a fun craft you can do with kids and can be a crucial part of the Talk About It! component of The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique.
H4HK FAQs are designed to answer questions kids and teens ask when facing difficult situations and circumstances in their lives.
Divorce brings with it all kinds of different emotions. If your parents are divorced, you already know that. Sometimes you will be sad, sometimes angry, sometimes lonely, and sometimes many other different emotions. But, is it ok to be happy? Shouldn’t you be upset and sad following your parents’ divorce? …at least for a little while?
Some kids are happy following their parents divorce, and that is ok! Maybe your parents fought a lot. That can be very stressful to you as their child, and maybe you are happy that you just don’t have to listen to it anymore. Maybe your Dad pays more attention to you when you spend time together after the divorce than he ever did before. That can definitely make you happy. Maybe you’ve had to move or something else that you view your life like a big adventure, and going on that adventure makes you happy. It doesn’t matter what it is that makes you happy, the important thing to remember is that it is perfectly acceptable for you to be happy following your parents’ divorce. And, no one should tell you otherwise.
When you are happy, enjoy it! Even if you are generally happy with the divorce, there will likely be times when that fades and you’re not so happy anymore. That’s ok too. Sometimes we are happy, and sometimes we are not – that doesn’t change after a divorce. The important thing is that we understand that however we feel, that’s ok. It is also important to recognize how we feel and find someone we trust to talk to about it. So, if you’re happy go find something fun to do and enjoy being happy. There is plenty of time for other emotions at a later time.
The Row Row Row Your Boat Emotion Game is a fun way to talk to kids about emotions and what they sound like. It can be a valuable tool in the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique for See It, Say It and Mimic It. Here’s how it works:
It’s that simple! You can use whatever song you want, but we selected Row Row Row Your Boat as a song that virtually everyone knows. A fun game to play if you have a deck of emotion cards (the Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion cards are coming soon) would be to have the player select the emotion then have the other plays guess the emotion being hummed. You could also have the player pick the song they will be doing and have other player name both the emotion and the song. Break into teams and see how many each team can get in a given amount of time.
Credit to my 10-year-old Nathan who helped me come up with this game over dinner after soccer practice. Here’s a little video we made demonstrating the game. Please forgive the poor sound quality – it’s the best we could get with a phone and sitting at Arby’s!
Welcome to Part 10 of 10 in our series on child abuse and neglect. After completing the original nine-part series on child abuse and neglect, I began to search online for sample policies to link to for additional resources. I found quite a few. Many were very similar, and rather than reproduce them all here, I have compiled one singular sample policy which includes elements of many of the policies reviewed.
Before getting to the specific sample policy on reporting suspected neglect and abuse, I wanted to share other sections included in many of the general safety and security policies that I reviewed. They included:
If you are compiling a comprehensive policy manual, you will likely want to include these sections in addition to the sample policy on reporting below. Continue reading
H4HK FAQs are designed to answer questions kids and teens ask when facing difficult situations and circumstances in their lives.
When parents get divorced, there are many things that have to be divided between them. Things like family pictures, checking accounts, vehicles and much more is divided. Sometimes parents agree how to split these items up, and other times a judge tells people who are divorcing how their stuff will be divided up.
The same things happens for time spent with you. Before the divorce, you probably spent time with both parents, but after the divorce there will be some sort of visitation schedule that determines who you will spend time with and how much time you will spend with each parent.
One of the other things that gets split up in a divorce is the family’s income (how much money your parents’ earn). The judge, or your parents if they can agree on an amount, will determine who gets what portion of the family’s income. The goal is to make sure both parents, and houses, have enough money to live on, but this doesn’t always happen because now the same income has to support two homes instead of just one.
Sometimes one parent earns more than the other parent – maybe your dad worked prior to the marriage and your mom stayed at home or vice versa. In that case, one parent will earn more money. In order to make things more fair, the judge may decide that one party has to pay support to the other. There are two types of support a judge might order – alimony and child support.
The Pigeon Has Feelings, Too! is the sequel to the popular Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! book. It follows the activities of a pigeon and his acquaintance the bus driver.
The Pigeon Has Feelings, Too! is a board book aimed primarily at younger children and potentially very early readers. It recommended age range is 0-4.
Welcome to Part 9 of 10 in our series on child abuse and neglect. Today, we will be laying out some additional sources of information on child abuse and neglect used throughout this report.
Most of the information in this article was garnered from the following sources. While I have not attempted to site individual sources for each piece of information presented, I am grateful to these resources for providing the information that comprises this article. I hope that the accumulation and synthesis of the information from these numerous sources will help those who work with kids, and particularly those who work with kids in a church setting, to be better equipped to understand the risks and types of child maltreatment, recognize the signs of maltreatment and develop a plan for responding to suspected maltreatment.
What Is Child Abuse and Neglect? (April 2008), Department of Health and Human Services: The Child Welfare Information Gateway of the U.S.(https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/whatiscan/)
Child Maltreatment Surveillance: Uniform Definitions for Public Health and Recommended Data Elements, Version 1.0 (January 2008), Department of Health and Human Services: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. (http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/CM_Surveillance-a.pdf)
H4HK FAQs are designed to answer questions kids and teens ask when facing difficult situations and circumstances in their lives.
Your parents would not have gotten a divorce if their relationship had not been strained in the first place. In addition, divorce is a hard and stressful time, and many parents come out of a divorce with even more bitter feelings towards one another. They should understand and appreciate that the other parent is still your parent and still important to you, but sometimes they mess up, forget that or ignore that fact and say things they shouldn’t say either to you or in front of you.
When your parents say bad things about one another, there are a few different things you should try to make the situation better.
Remember, no matter what one parent may say, you have the right to love both of your parents and have both of them in your life. Sometimes when one parent says something bad about the other, it is almost as if they are saying that thing about you. After all, you are one-half of each of your parents. Try not to take what your parents say personally, and remember that their words do not define who you are as a person or an individual. You are not defined by their choices or actions.
Find answers to other frequently asked questions on our H4HK FAQs Page. For more resources and information on divorce, family disruption and modern families please visit our Hope 4 Hurting Kids Divorce and Modern Family Help Center.
Welcome to Part 8 of 10 in our series on child abuse and neglect. Today, we will be examining how to report suspected abuse or neglect.
To find out who to call in your state, visit the State Child Abuse Reporting Numbers page at the Child Welfare Information Gateway. The Child Welfare Information Gateway also includes a listing of Toll-Free Crisis Hotline Numbers that you should keep on file.
You can also contact Childhelp®. Childhelp® is a national organization providing crisis assistance and other counseling and referral services. The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with professional crisis counselors who have access to a database of 55,000 emergency, social service, and support resources. All calls are anonymous. Contact them at 1.800.4.A.CHILD (1.800.422.4453).
Editor’s Note: Today, February 23, 2018 is “Stand Up to Bullying Day.” Jackie Glass, a contributor to Hope 4 Hurting Kids, asked that we publish this article from her about bullying back on Stand Up to Bullying Day in 2012.
Ever since I was a little girl, I have rooted for the underdog. And, this is not simply because I’m a Cubs fan. My “underdog” antenna always seemed extra sensitive. I remember feeling extreme sadness when no students on the bus would move over and let the boy from the farm sit next to them. I remember a girl being called “titanic” even though she was not overweight. I felt weird for crying when people I hardly knew endured pain. I had no idea how this seemingly silly sensitivity would continue to transform my beliefs about people’s value and equality.
Fast forward my life and here I am today, passionate about bullying—passionate about equality for people. Bullying is especially close to my heart because the definition of bullying is an imbalance of power amongst two people with a bully seeking to gain power and control (Garrett). This goes against the very belief that all people are created EQUAL and possess equal value.
However, we’ve been lead astray. We tend to believe that aggressive behavior trumps assertive behavior, and we see children repeating these behaviors in preschools, elementary and high schools, and brace yourselves…even in our workplace and families.
