Welcome to our new series of one page guides for helping children to deal with difficult emotions. In this first installment, we look at dealing with Anger. Click here or on the picture above for a pdf version of this graphic.

For more awesome resources for learning about and dealing with emotions, please visit our Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotions Help Center.

Stress is a huge issue for all kids in our society today. The levels of stress amongst children from disrupted homes though is through the roof. Dealing with things like fighting parents, complex schedules, new homes, new family members, stressed out parents, packed schedules and so much more can leave kids and teens from disrupted homes with lots a stress and little time. One simple solution which works amazing well with younger kids (though you may be surprised how well it can work with older kids too) is a simple container of bubbles. Here are a couple of ideas of how to use bubbles to help kids deal with stress.

Visualization With Bubbles

Bubbles are a great way to help kids visualize their emotions. Whether they are experiencing anger, stress, fear or other emotions, encourage the children to visualize each bubble as a negative emotion and watch it float away. Talk about the things that are stressing them out and encourage them to release those things in the bubbles as they float away. For younger children, allow them to stomp on the bubbles as they land on the ground. In addition to being a good visual reminder of letting things go rather than keeping them buried inside, the process of blowing the bubbles also encourages deep breathing.

Bubble Karate Master

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The word “peanuts” has become something of a “dirty word” for people who work with kids. In this article, we’re going to talk about how a simple peanut based exercise can help kids to calm down. Whether they’re anxious, stressed out or angry, the Peanut Brittle to Peanut Butter relaxation technique is a fun way for kids to remember how to calm down.

Here’s how it works:

1. Have the child inhale and stiffen their body like PEANUT BRITTLE. Encourage them to squeeze their muscles, clench their fists, curl their toes, push their chest out and contract the muscles in their face.
2. Have them hold their breath and that position for five seconds.
3. Now, tell them to exhale their breath and let everything go soft like PEANUT BUTTER.
4. Repeat as neccessary.

Like deep breathing, the process of going from tense to relaxed helps kids to let go of the intense emotions they are feeling.

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There is very little more heartbreaking than reading a story about child sexual abuse. When that abuse happens in the church (and is does far more often than you might think), those stories are even more heartbreaking. God has a heart for kids, and to read stories of sexual abuse that happens in a place where kids should be safe is even more heartbreaking. Being in church can give you a false sense of security. As a parent, as someone who has volunteered in children’s ministry and someone who works with children who are particularly vulnerable because of family transition, the issue of keeping our kids safe is paramount in mind, and it should be in the church as well.

In his article, 11 Vital Steps to Minimize Risk of Child Sex Abuse in Your Church Thom Rainer explores 11 different things your church SHOULD BE DOING to help to minimize the risk of abuse in your church.

Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

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Attached is a pdf file with the notes from my breakout session at the 2015 CMConnect Conference titled Kids in Crisis: Ministering to Kids from Modern Families. Almost 100 showed up t learn about kids in modern families and how their churches and they individually can minister to Modern Day Orphans. If you were there and need a copy of the notes or weren’t there and are interested in learning more, the files linked below will help you.

Part of the breakout was a ten question quiz. Take the quiz first, then click on the answers pdf for the answers to the questions and see how you did!

CLICK HERE for the Handout.

CLICK HERE for the Answers. Continue reading

Every child of divorce is different and unique, and how you work with and for that child must be tailored to their personality, circumstances and environment. That said, there are some common things that all children of divorce need. If you work with kids, you need to be prepared to offer these to them. Likewise, as the church, we must work to ensure that our ministries and our congregants are equipped to offer these six basic needs to children from disrupted families.

1. LOVE

The first thing every child of divorce needs, indeed every child for that matter, is adults in their life who love them and model the love of Christ for them. While a divorce will not cause parents to love their children any less, it will cause children to question whether their parents still love them. On top of all that, the emotions and stress that comes along with a divorce takes time away that parents might otherwise spend with their kids and may leave parents emotionally drained and incapable of adequately expressing their love for their children. As a result, children from disrupted families are often left with a love tank on empty and desperately seeking attention and affection. Find appropriate ways to show the child of divorce that you are there for them and that you love them. Demonstrate the sacrificial love of Christ to them and for them. Read 1 Corinthians 13 and challenge yourself to show them love as defined in that chapter. You may be the one person in the life of a child from a disrupted family that keeps that child from seeking love and attention in destructive places.

2. HOPE

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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

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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