Providing emotional support to your children to help guide them through your divorce can be challenging. Even though you may no longer get along so well, you and your co-parent need to co-operate to support your kids and be people they know they can always talk to, no matter the situation. Your teenage children are no longer young and small anymore, and they should be able to fully understand what divorce means and express their feelings and thoughts on it with you.
Discover more in our guide to providing support to your teenage children through your divorce:
Communicate with Your Children Respectfully
As teenagers, your children are no longer babies, and you should treat them with respect when discussing your divorce. Try not to patronise them and insult their intelligence by not engaging and sitting down to talk about your divorce with them.
Try to communicate with your children in a reasonable tone and vaguely discuss with them the reasons why you and your co-parent are getting divorced. You don’t have to discuss all the precise private ins and outs behind why you are getting divorced, but it’s good to provide your teenage children with a basic explanation to help them understand the situation a little better, so they aren’t left in the dark. However, you may go here to hire a legal attorney to help with child custody. But before that, don’t forget to discuss with your teens who they want to be with after your divorce.
Avoid Shouting Matches and Enjoy Quality Time Together
Aimlessly losing your temper and shouting in rage at your children is certainly not a productive way of supporting your teenage children through your divorce. Regularly yelling at your kids is a poor way to communicate and converse with them and will only lead to you pushing your children away and damaging your relationship.
So, try and remain positive and do your best to stay polite and civil when supporting your teenage children through your divorce. Spend time doing activities you enjoy doing together. Do your teenage kids love baking or playing baseball with you? Then go and enjoy some quality time baking or playing baseball together so you can all take your minds away from the divorce and stay upbeat and optimistic.
Clearly Explain the Impact of Your Divorce on their Lives
Your teenage child has the right to want to know how their parents’ divorce will affect their life. Your child will want to know where they stand and feel a sense of stability and security in their life.
Ensuring you use a divorce attorney from a reputable family law firm is essential, so that the custody arrangements are laid out as clearly as possible, and your teenage children can understand where they will be living.
Don’t Use Your Kids as Weapons
You and your co-parent should never use your kids as weapons in arguments and disagreements between yourselves. After getting divorced, you need to focus on co-parenting as a team and agreeing on the big stuff to provide your children with consistent rules and boundaries.
Your kids and their needs should be your number one priority, and not the fact you don’t get along with your co-parent. Providing support to your teenage children during your divorce requires patience, communicating with them appropriately and respectfully, co-operating with your co-parent in parenting matters, and much more. Parents are rocks that teenage children need to know they can always rely on.