Link

Click here to download the board game. (http://www.chatfirst.com.au/pdf/boardgame.pdf)

Unfortunately, this game is no longer available from the original source. We are leaving this page up in hopes that it will be available again at some point in the future.

Background

CHaT First is a website from the Children and Families in Transition Project a partnership between the Centre for Peace, Conflict and Mediation, Hawke research Institute, University of South Australia and Centacare Catholic Family Services (SA), with generous support from the Telstra Foundation.  It is full of information for children and teens whose parents have separated or divorced. One of the best resources is a printable board game called the CHaT First Board game.

How It Works

The CHaT First Board Game is a question and answer board game that encourages kids and teens to answer questions from one of four decks of cards. Players take turns rolling the dice and moving along the board. This game is not about winners and losers but about the experience shared together.

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Emotion wheels can be great tools for helping you to figure out what your feeling, introduce you to new emotions and help you to figure out what emotions might be underlying why you’re feeling.

This first wheel was created by Dr. Gloria Wilcox who is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in St Petersburg, Florida. It is a great tool for identifying emotions you might be feeling following the dissolution of your parents’ relationship. Emotions are grouped into six broad categories including Sad, Mad, Scared, Peaceful, Joyful and Powerful.

This second wheel is not quite as colorful but includes even more emotion words to broaden your emotion vocabulary. We found it originally on http://makalaonlife.tumblr.com.

Divorce is stressful.  It is stressful for parents, and it is stressful for kids.  One of the best things you can do to reduce stress and other intense emotions (like anger) is to learn some simple activities and breathing techniques.  The website consciousdiscipline.com offers this great resource which includes four simple techniques to help you deal with your high levels of stress and calm down.  Although the “reminder” graphics were developed for kids, these exercises work great for people of any age!

LINK TO RESOURCE PAGE:

http://consciousdiscipline.com/resources/safe_place_breathing_icons.asp

LINK TO PDF FILE:

http://consciousdiscipline.com/downloads/resources/Safe_Place_Breathing_Icons.pdf

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Here at I Am A Child of Divorce, we are pleased to announce the release the newest version of the My Feelings Workbook. Now published in conjunction with Hope 4 Hurting Kids, this book is designed to help kids, teens and adults to name the emotions they are feeling, and recognize what they are feeling.

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Donald Harting is a child of divorce.  His parents separated when he was eight years old and divorced when he was 15.  He knows what it is like to lose an intact family and deal with the repercussions of divorce.  As a way to honor his parents, he has built a living memorial to them in the form of free books to help other children of divorced parents. You can find the program here.

And, the program does not offer just any books.  They have researched the best books available for preschool aged, elementary aged, middle school aged and teenaged children of divorce and picked the best book for each category.  As a result of their research they offer the following books for each category of children:

Preschool/Kindergarten

Using watercolor illustrations and gentle explanations, Mama and Daddy Bears Divorce discusses changes (like Daddy moving out), but reassures little ones that important things will stay the same. As Dinah learns, “her daddy would always be her daddy, and her mama would always be her mama.” (Description from FSCC).

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Research shows that divorce impacts children well into their adult years.  In fact Judith Wallerstein and her colleagues identified a “sleeper effect” where many children of divorce don’t even experience the full impact of the their parents’ divorce until years later as they become adults themselves.  That said, there are very few resources available designed specifically for adult children of divorce.   Chained No More is one of the very few resources written specifically to address the issues experienced by adult children of divorce.

After years of working with younger children of divorce and teen children of divorce, Robyn Besemann felt led to develop a program:

“…for the adult children of divorce to help them explore and address the issues connected with the divorce of their parents and other childhood brokenness.”

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