 Tips for Parents
- Be available to listen. Don’t be both parents. To be yourself is the best way to help your teenager.
- You have to tell your child that divorce is not their fault. It is important to repeat them this fact often.
- Your child is not an indirect form of communication with your x-spouse. Do not use your teen as such. Even though it is easier to have your child tell your x-spouse that they can’t pick them up at the specified time, for example, don’t do this. It may cause a stress in your child. Use only direct communication between you and your x-spouse.
- Try to minimize the changes your teenager will have to go through after a divorce. It is better not to change the school or take away activities that they are used to doing.
- Establish consistent discipline in your home.
- Come up with a plan between you and your x-spouse in order to use consistent discipline in both homes.
- Every teen whose family is going through a divorce has feeling of anxiety and anger, even if they are not showing these feelings. They may hide them so as not to add to the conflict around them. It is very rare for a teen of divorcing parents not to have such feelings. Find them help in dealing with these feelings.
- Support the relationships they have in their life. Your child is their own person, with different relationships with the people who surrounded your family. You have to not only allow them to keep the relationships with their grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc., but also to promote them. Explain that even though their family structure has changed, family is still important.
- Become an informed parent. Many times teens of divorce will cork up most of their feelings about the divorce. It will come out in acting-out behavior. Consider what your teenager faces in their daily lives so you can be on top of any pitfalls they may come to.
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