Anyone who knows me would not call me a musically inclined person. I am the epitome of the idiom, “He can’t carry a tune in a bucket.” That said, I do like music. There are periods in my life which are marked by a particular song or set of songs, and when I hear those songs I am transported back to that time in my life. Following my adoption into God’s family, I have found that He works through music to readjust my attitude, encourage me or challenge me. The perfect song at the perfect time and place – I do not believe that to be coincidence. Once of my favorite singer/songwriters is Matthew West.

So, as God was really beginning to lay children of divorce on my heart, it was only fitting that Matthew West released his fourth studio album called “The Story of Your Life” in October 2010. For this album, Matthew West collected stories from thousands of fans and wrote songs reflecting those stories. One of the songs really captured heart. As I have travelled down this road of ministering to children of divorce, I have come back consistently to this song. The song is titled “Two Houses” and gives a child’s point of view on his parents’ divorce and ultimately in the healing that comes through a relationship with Christ. I would encourage anyone who is divorced, knows children whose parents are divorced or works kids to watch the video of this song

You can also watch the story behind the making of the video

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When working with the child of divorce many people make the mistake of thinking these children are always sad, angry or confused. We forget that they are still children who want to laugh, run, jump, play and laugh. We tend to forget they need normal childhood activities.

Children will grieve in spurts, and they will take breaks in the grieving process. Divorce is a long grieving process, and for some children research shows it make take up to ten years to truly process the divorce of their parents. There are many things we can do to help these children during the shock part of the process and also during the longer grieving period.

One idea is to use music to help these children. We know from the many popular praise and worship songs that many people truly worship through music. Sometimes a tune or melody can remind us of happier times in our life. Or it can help us get through rough patches. For years I have said that music has the ability to soothe the soul. This is never truer than when working with the child of divorce.

Because most of these children live high stress lives, music can be used to lessen or relieve some of that stress. Music can have a positive impact on a person’s mood, and it can actually alleviate depression in some people.

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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:

1. Use a set of emotion cards, an emotion chart or just your own imagination to throw out an emotion to another player.
2. The player must hum the song Row Row Row your boat sounding like the emotion given.
3. Laugh and have fun.

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!

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