If you’ve ever been a parent, worked with kids, or even been around kids, you understand the importance of stuffed animals in a child’s life. I remember when my daughter was 5, she had to have her tonsils out. Her mother and I got her a purple baby doll to “keep her company” as she went into surgery. From that point on, that six-inch tall purple doll became a source of comfort to her as she faced difficult things in life. There is no doubt that stuffed animals can bring comfort to a child, but did you know that they can also provide valuable insights into what is going on in a child’s life?

Fred Roger’s once said:

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.

Children talk through their play, and if you’re working with hurting young people, you need to be tuned into their play in order to understand what they are going through. Stuffed animals offer you an opportunity to get kids talking who might otherwise keep things bottled up inside.

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Welcome back as we continue our “Sunday Morning Strategies” series designed to help you to accommodate children of divorce and children from single parent homes in your Sunday morning children’s ministry. Two weeks ago we started a series on issues related to dealing with parents and we identified three different types of divorced parents you are likely to deal with:

• The Warring Parents
• The Absent Parents
• The Other Parent

This week we conclude our series by looking at the Other Parent.

3. The Other Parent

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

When your parents split up it’s hard.  There are tons of changes that happen in your life, and you may never really get used to the idea though you will likely adapt to your new life eventually.  One thing that makes the process even harder though is when you parents start to date other people.  When your Mom starts dating other guys or your Dad starts dating other women, it’s hard to get past the initial “ick” factor” let alone learn to cope with the whole dating thing.  That’s why so many kids try to keep their parents from dating at all.  For more on that, check out “How Can I Keep My Parents From Dating After Divorce?”

Assuming you couldn’t stop them from dating, and most kids can not, you may be wondering what you can do to help make the situation easier or better.  Here are some tips:

1. Try not to compare your parents’ new dating interest to your other parent.  If your Dad is dating someone new, don’t spend time constantly trying to figure out how she is or isn’t like you Mom.  Same thing if your Mom is dating someone new.  Try not to compare them to, or judge them, based on your Dad.
2. Remember that no matter what happens with your parents’ new dating relationships, no one will ever replace your mom and dad.  You may have additional grown ups in your life, but you only have one mom and one dad.
3. Don’t determine that you will not get along with your parents’ new dating partner.  Don’t hold your parents’ divorce against them.  They may be a very nice person.  It’s ok to like them, and it’s easier when you’re not looking for them to be a replacement mom or dad.  Liking your parents’ new boyfriend or girlfriend does not mean that you are betraying your other parent.
4. Speak to them like you would any other adult (perhaps the parent of one of your friends, or a teacher at school or church).  You may not like that your Mom or Dad is dating them, but that doesn’t give you the right to be disrespectful.  Remember the Golden Rule and apply it to them like you would anyone else – “Treat others the way you would want to be treated.”
5. Don’t bad mouth the new people in your parents’ lives to the other parent.  That isn’t your role and will only serve to make the tension between your parents worse.
6. Spend time with your mom or dad away from their new relationship.  Remind them, in a nice way, that you still want some time alone with them and ask if they would be willing to do that with you.
7. If your parents’ new dating interest makes you feel unsafe let your parent know that.  If they do anything inappropriate, report it to proper authorities immediately.  If you don’t know where to report it, talk to someone at school or church who can likely help you (a counselor, minister or teacher).
8. Find someone you trust to share what you are going through.  Make sure that it is someone who is willing to tell you if you are being unreasonable or are wrong.  It doesn’t do you, or anyone else, any good to only talk with people who are going to “side with” you no matter what.
9. Give it time.  All relationships take time to develop and grow.  Whatever relationship you might have with your parents dating partners will also take time to develop.  Don’t write them off right away, and don’t be discouraged because you are not instant best friends.

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Children and teens live in an ever-changing world that throws more and more at them and prepares them less and less to deal with the direct impacts, the collateral damage and the emotions that follow. At Hope 4 Hurting Kids, our goal is to help these hurting children and teens move from hurt to hope and healing.

Today we announce a three stage plan to help young people understand, deal with and overcome the difficult emotional circumstances of their lives. We’re calling it:

JUMP In! STAND Strong! RISE Up!

We contemplated other names for this strategy like “Recognize, Survive and Thrive” and “Know It, Own It and Grow From It”; but in the end we settled on “Jump In! Stand Strong! Rise Up!” as a visual picture of the three stages of dealing with difficult and unpleasant emotions. Let’s have a closer look at each stage. Continue reading

In the past, we have discussed the importance of helping young people to name and understand their emotions using the Super Simple Feelings Management Technique. We have also discussed the importance of helping them to build a tool box of coping skills by discussing Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff.

So, how do we know when these tools are working? That is why at Hope 4 Hurting Kids we’ve developed the

Grand Feelings Exit Plan

The Grand Feelings Exit Plan helps a young person to know the signs that they have truly dealt with and moved past a difficult emotion or circumstance. Like the Super Simple Feelings Management Technique and Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff, the Grand Feelings Exit Plan is a mnemonic to help young people, and the adults who care for them, to remember the four signs of emotional healing. Let’s have a look at each sign. Continue reading

The first step in helping kids (or anyone for that matter) to deal with and process the difficult emotions in their lives is to help them understand and name emotions. At Hope 4 Hurting Kids, we use the Super Simple Feelings Management Technique for that. Once we have helped kids to understand their emotions, we need to provide them with means for dealing with those emotions.

The second step towards emotional maturity and healing is to develop a robust set of coping skills. Coping Skills are designed to help “take the edge” of emotions and assist us in dealing with them. Unfortunately, that moment when a young person is drowning in emotions is not the right time to start thinking about coping mechanisms. Instead, it is important that kids and teens have at their disposal a tool box full of coping mechanisms that work for them that they can draw from in a time of crisis.

At Hope 4 Hurting Kids, we’ve developed another mnemonic to help keep track of the many different types of coping mechanism. This time we borrowed from the title of a popular book series by Richard Carlson. The different types of coping skills can be readily recalled by remembering the phrase:

Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

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Welcome back as we continue our “Sunday Morning Strategies” series designed to help you to accommodate children of divorce and children from single parent homes in your Sunday morning children’s ministry. Last week we started a series on issues related to dealing with parents and we identified three different types of divorced parents you are likely to deal with:

• The Warring Parents
• The Absent Parents
• The Other Parent

This week we continue our series by looking at the Absent Parents.

2. The Absent Parent

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

When it comes to step and blended families, this question gets asked a lot.  It is difficult living in the same house as someone you don’t really like. In order to answer this question though, we need to think about WHY you don’t like your stepparent.

In my experience, people who don’t like their stepparent fall into one of four categories:

#1: You don’t like your stepparent because they are a genuinely mean or unkind person. This is the category most kids who don’t like their stepparent would likely say they fall into, but in actuality it is the rarest of category and generally not the reason for the friction in the relationship. However, If this is genuinely the case (that your stepparent is mean or unkind), there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it. Unfortunately, you can’t change people overnight. Instead, be respectful and aim for peaceful coexistence (meaning that you may not like him/her but you will at least choose to seek after peace rather than arguing or fighting). Remember that, as your stepmother or stepfather, this person is important to your biological parent even if he/she is not all that important to you. Remember to be respectful in your dealings with your stepparent even when it is hard.  Choose to be respectful because it is the right thing for you to do even if the other person doesn’t necessarily deserve it. Try your best to be loving and kind to them. You never know – you’re actions may impact how they choose to live their life and that act of love or kindness may come back to you and lead to a more healthy relationship.

With that out of the way, we can talk about the other, more likely, reasons that kids don’t get along with their stepparents. Even if you think you into the first group, you need to try to step back and evaluate the situation unemotionally to figure out if it is actually something else driving your dislike for your stepparent. This can be hard, and it might help to ask some people you trust (friends, aunts and uncles, grandparents, etc.) to be honest with you about why they think the conflict exists.

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Feelings pong is a fun game to play and easy to set up – all you need is a table some cups and ping-pong ball. It is another great activity to use with the Super Simple Feelings Management Technique to help kids and teens to better understand and deal with the emotions they face.

Here’s what you need:

1. Plastic cups (9, 13, 18 or 24 cups work best for a pyramid). We used multi-colored cups so each color represented a group of emotions but that isn’t necessary for the game.
2. Ping-Pong balls.
3. Permanent Marker.

Here’s how it works. Continue reading

Many of the resources and articles you see here on Hope 4 Hurting Kids include ideas and activities for teaching kids to better understand and deal with the difficult emotions that they face in life. To accomplish that goal, we suggest five main strategies to help kids to better recognize, understand and process their emotions. These five skills are represented by the letters SSFMT and the mneumonic:

Super Simple Feelings Management Technique

Here what each letter represents:

S(uper) – See It

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