Help Your Teenager Deal With Heartache

Do you feel totally inadequate when your teenage son or daughter is heartbroken? It’s not an easy thing for parents or children to go through, but here are some tips that may make it a bit easier. Text by Lee Horn

As countless love songs have told us, breaking up is never easy – and watching your teen go through it for the first time will waken your own bittersweet memories. It will also waken your deepest parental instincts to protect your child from pain. In a way, it’s a rite of passage for both of you.

“This is a great opportunity to get a relationship going with your teen, so use it wisely,” says couples counsellor Marlene Wasserman of the Cape Town Medi-Clinic Sexual Health Centre and author of Dr Eve’s Teenage Sex Book. “Make yourself available even if your teen doesn’t immediately approach you or seem approachable. But mostly remember this is about your teen’s break-up, not yours, so practice skills of listening and sharing well.” If you handle it right, you can help ease your youngster into an adulthood of healthy relationships, and take your own relationship with them to a rewarding new level. 

Show Them Respect
Breaking up can feel incredibly intense, especially when your teen’s hormones are in adolescent flood. From where you stand as an adult, you know they will get over it in time, but don’t be tempted to dismiss or downplay their drama – it’s all too real to them.

Think back to your own early disappointments, and what would most have helped you: respect, sympathy, empathy, and loving support. Don’t rush in with advice: teenagers are busy asserting their independence, and lecturing or patronising them will provoke hostility or withdrawal.

Share your own teenage heartbreaks with your child, so they know they’re not alone. Whatever you do, resist the temptation to bad-mouth their ex. Your adolescent will often feel ambivalent towards them, and may even begin to defend them. Who knows, they could end up together again. And more to the point: what are you teaching them about handling a divorce (heaven forbid!) some day?
 
Help Channel Their Emotions
Let your teen know that anger, and the hurt, frustration, fear and despair behind it are natural emotions, but that they need to channel them constructively. It’s best to start while they’re still very young, teaching them that there are acceptable ways to blow off steam, from retreating to your room and hitting a pillow or wringing a towel, to talking out feelings or writing them in a journal, or going for a walk or run.

At the same time, be on the watch for serious depression. Encourage them to beat this by venting or laughing (hire some comedy videos or take them to a movie), playing sport or music, writing lyrics or poetry, drawing, taking photographs or whatever else may interest them. But if they feel extremely sad, hopeless or worthless, take to their beds for more than a day or two, or threaten to harm themselves or anyone else, get professional help through FAMSA (031) 202 8987; (021) 447 7951 or (041) 585 9393; the Family Life Centre (011) 788 4784/5 or the SA Depression and Anxiety Group (011) 783 1474.
 
Encourage Them To Bounce Back
Your child’s best tool in recovering from break-up is healthy self-esteem, says Marlene Wasserman. “Your teen may have chosen an inappropriate partner because he or she has low self-esteem and poor body image, so working at this is essential.” Again, you should start building it from the earliest age, but it’s never too late.
 
Crash-Course In Teen Break-Ups

1. Read the signs, guys and girls: brace up for a break-up if the object of your affections starts acting distant (or their friends do); or, is suddenly always busy; or, you’re only getting their answering machine; or you’re quarrelling about little things; or you can’t seem to do anything right.
2. If you’re dumped, don’t assume there’s something wrong with you, or that the person doesn’t care for you – they just don’t want a relationship with you. Plenty of other people will!
3. Don’t try to guilt-trip them into staying with you – it leads to resentment, frustration and more pain further down the line.
4. Know that it’s normal to hurt, cry and get mad when you break-up, and again when your ex starts seeing someone else – even when you think you’re over it.
5. Don’t act out your anger and embarrassment by spreading rumours about your ex (or their new love) or betraying their secrets – you’ll look bad and eventually feel even worse.
6. Stop worrying so much about how you’ll look to others – even movie stars and models get dumped (think Jennifer Aniston).
7. Bowing out graciously and wishing them well is classy – and in any case, the best revenge!
8. Finally, if you’ve fallen out of love and you’re the one who needs to do the dumping, do it well – quickly, directly, but with kindness and respect. Do it in person (not by cellphone or e-mail!), when you’re alone, and keep it simple. Say you’ve had some great times together, but that the relationship isn’t working for you and you want to move on. Listen properly to any counter-arguments, then gently but firmly repeat that you’ve made up your mind. Dragging out a pointless relationship is much more cruel than ending it quickly.