Getting Yourself Together When Your Family Comes Apart: Coping with Family Changes

Family changes often present difficult challenges for children. Separation, divorce, incarceration, death, re-marriage and relocation through moving or military deployment are a few of the life events that change families and often create puzzling feelings for the children involved.

Getting Yourself Together When Your Family Comes Apart focuses on the five familiar stages of grief often experienced by children when their family structure changes. This resource offers a student survey, read-aloud story and 21 reproducible student activities designed to help children move through the grief process and adjust to their new circumstances. Helpful parent articles and reference material complete this "must have" book for all helpers of children.

Janet M Bender, M.Ed. is a retired elementary school teacher and counselor with 30 years' experience in public education. She received her bachelor's degree from Winthrop University and her graduate degree from The Citadel in Charleston, SC. As one of the "pioneer" elementary counselors in her SC school district, she assisted in writing the job description and evaluation system for counselors, as well as launching a developmental guidance and counseling program for grades K-6. Mrs. Bender's contributions to the counseling profession include mentoring new counselors, consulting in multiple school districts, presenting Developmental Guidance and School to Work programs to educational organizations across the United States, and authoring eight other educational resources for working with children and parents.