Answering the Question “Why Do We Lose Control of Our Emotions” is a key first step in helping kids understand their emotions. This is the focus of the first step of Hope 4 Hurting Kids’ Jump In! Stand Strong! Rise Up! Method (A Comprehensive Plan for Dealing With Emotions). This video from Kids Want to Know is a great explanation for kids and adults of how emotions get out of control and how our brain reacts when they do.

The video’s YouTube page explains more:
Continue reading

The Brain’s Reaction to Fear

We know from the brain research and from studying the experts on brain-based learning that fear strikes at the heart of learning. When a child is fearful or feels unsafe the learning brain begins to power down so to speak. Learning becomes more difficult if not impossible.

Have you ever had something scare the daylights out of you? What were you feeling at the time? Most of us probably don’t think about what we were feeling when that car zipped through the stop light in front of us and we had to slam on our breaks. We just react to the situation. Our brains do what they were supposed to do – they react and keep us safe by helping us to slam on our breaks.

Feeling safe is a basic instinct that each person has, and fear is a basic human emotion. From the time we are born our brains are equipped with the fight or flight capability. This fight or flight capacity is found in the lower level of the brain called the brain stem. Many times we can sense or feel when something is dangerous. Fear can be intense, mild or medium depending on the situation. Fear can be brief or long lasting.

From KidsHealth.org (http://tinyurl.com/6u28czx) we read, Continue reading

We are excited to announce that at Hope 4 Hurting Kids we are hard at work on a new resource, and we are excited today to give you a sneak peek. Tentatively named “150 Emotion Words Every Child Should Know – By Age,” we hope to have this resource completed and ready for you by Spring or early Summary of 2018.

Step 2 of the Jump In! portion of our Comprehensive Emotional Management System here at Hope 4 Hurting Kids, is “Say It!” Say It! is all about helping kids to develop a robust emotional vocabulary, and we set out to create a resource to help parents and other adults to just that. While still in the developmental stage, “150 Emotion Words Every Child Should Know – By Age” will be a collection of 150 emotions, grouped by age, that every kid should know. Each entry will explore one emotion in-depth including a kid friendly definition, related emotion words, opposites and examples to help parents and other adults talk to kids about each emotion.  Additionally, emotions are grouped by age to give parents and other adults a way of gauging a particular child’s progress in understanding and naming emotions.

If you are interested in receiving a link to this resource when it is available, please fill out the short form below. This is not a “give something away free – then inundate you with emails” scheme. We simply want to make sure that if you are interested in the resource now, we get it to you when it finally comes available.

Continue reading

Thanksgiving is now a memory and Christmas looms before us. For some kids Christmas is an exciting time of the year. For many kids Christmas may mean staying up late, no school, visits with relatives, presents and candy. As people who work with kids, we want them to find the true meaning of Christmas. The emotions of Christmas in a child of divorce may be very different than what you are used to.

Most of you will go overboard trying to relay the story of the baby Jesus and his humble birth with special lessons and activities. There will be special Christmas musicals; special holiday parties or celebrations; perhaps even caroling events also.

We want kids to come to church and enjoy the “specialness” of this time of year. That’s why I want to start early this year asking you to prepare yourself for the child of divorce. If it is a child’s first Christmas after the separation or divorce of their parents, you might want to be prepared for a variety of feelings to be exhibited. Depending on how recent the divorce was, the child may appear to be in shock, or the child may be confused not sure of what their feelings are.

If it has been several months, and the child has begun to process the divorce, you may find some anger feelings emerging in your classes. If the child feels safe with you, then don’t be surprised if a lot of anger comes out. Some children will hold their anger in when they are around their parents. They don’t want to upset their already stressed and/or angry parents. But, when they get to a safe place and if you have developed a relationship with them, then they will let their guard down and express themselves.

Continue reading

These Super Simple Feelings Management Technique Activity Cards are based on Hope 4 Hurting Kids’ Super Simple Feelings Management Technique to help with emotional understanding and regulation. They are designed to be used with a variety of emotions listings of games (see a partial list above) to help young people master the five skills involved in the  Super Simple Feelings Management Technique:

1. See It!
2. Say It!
3. Feel It!
4. Mimic It!
5. Talk About It!

There are nine cards for each of the five components that will help young people to better recognize, understand and talk about their emotions. The pdf file also includes a set of blank cards if you wish to add your own activities to the pile.

How To Play

Continue reading

The Emotion Mix Up Game is a fun way to really get kids and young people thinking about emotion by having them imagine what it would look like to have a less obvious emotion in reaction to a particular circumstance. Although it is similar to the Feelings Ball Toss game, it adds a fun twist that will get kids thinking about their emotions and the scenarios that cause them.

Here’s What You Need:

• Last week we looked at the Feelings Ball Toss / Emotions Sorting activity. You’ll use the colored bowls and the balls from that game.
• You will use a set of the Scenario Cards (I Feel) sorted by color. The colors will hopefully match the color of the bowls. If not, you can improvise.

Here’s How To Play:

Continue reading

About the Book

Emotional Monster is fun little book for introducing the youngest of kids to the idea of emotions. It also introduces the concept of breathing as a means for dealing with growing emotions.

Who Is This Book For?

This book is aimed primarily at toddler and pre-school aged children. It is bright and colorful and meant to be read to children.

Our Synopsis of the Book

Continue reading

Feelings Ball Toss is a fun activity to play with kids to help them understand different emotions. The great part about the game is that it can be played a number of different ways.

Here’s How To Set It Up

• Get a series of bowls or tubs. We used the different colored bowls shown about that we got at Dollar Tree for a buck a piece.
• Label each bowl with a different emotions. You can write the emotion or draw a picture using marker, but we opted to print various emojis and tape them inside the bowls.
• Get some sort of soft ball or object that can be tossed into the bowls. We bought a set of 12 puffer balls on amazon that we use for the game. In addition to not bouncing and rolling as much as regular balls, they’re also a nice stress reliever for the kids.
• Set the bowls on one side of the room (up against a wall works well as a makeshift backboard).
• Have the kids stand at the other side of the room with a ball.

Here’s How to Play

Continue reading

Emotion Color Swatches are a cheap and easy way to teach kids different words for emotions and different degrees of emotions.

Here’s how to make them:

• Go to your local hardware store or pain store and get a variety of paint samples that show three or four different intensities of a color on one sheet (we used samples that showed four colors).
• On each sample, write words that represent varying degrees of emotions going from least intense (lightest color) to most intense (darkest color).
• You can make up your own groupings or use the ones we’ve developed which are shown below (you can access a printable copy of by clicking on the worksheet below). We grouped our emotions as well (e.g., red samples related to emotions in the “anger” category, yellow was “joyous” emotions, blue for emotions related to “sad” as so on).
• Once all of our samples were done, we bound them using a metal ring.

Here’s how to use them:

There are a number of ways you can use the Emotions Color Swatches to help teach kids about emotions: Continue reading

Welcome to the second installment in a line of new resources from Hope 4 Hurting Kids called Scenario Cards (I Feel). Last week, we introduced Emotion Scenario Cards (Anger).

These Scenario Cards present scenarios to teens and kids that can be used in a variety of ways in our comprehensive emotions management plan known as Jump In! Stand Strong! Rise Up! This particular set of cards presents kids with a range of scenarios that might elicit a variety of different emotions. These cards can be used in a variety of ways:

1. Talk to the child or teen about what emotion each particular scenario might elicit and why. [This accomplishes the Talk About It component of The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique.]
2. Using the index from the My Feelings Workbook, have the child sort of the cards into stacks based on what emotion they would feel for each scenario. [This accomplishes the Feel It and Talk About It components of The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique.]
3. Talk to the child about what emotion they would feel in these circumstances and what coping techniques they could use to deal with the situation. [This accomplishes the Talk About It component of The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique and also helps children to review the various coping mechanisms in the Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff collection of coping skills.]

You can access a downloadable pdf file with the complete set of scenario cards by clicking on the picture above.

Continue reading