Helping Your Teen Through Heartbreak

When your teenager experiences their first breakup it can be difficult to know what to say. Here’s advice on what you can do to help them cope

- Pieter Van Zyl

IT’S a rite of passage that happens sooner or later – your teen going through their first breakup. They’re heartbroken, and you feel entirely helpless as you struggle to comfort them.

They might feel as if their world has ended and it doesn’t matter what you say or do, they feel like they’ve lost the love of their life.

You may not be able to help feeling some anger towards the guy or girl who broke your child’s heart, and if you could, you’d give them a piece of your mind.

But there are better ways to help your child cope with their first romantic heartache.

The recent story of a mother who took matters into her own hands when her daughter’s boyfriend broke things off is a case in point. Her 13-year-old daughter’s boyfriend had ended things to start a relationship with another girl.

The mother couldn’t bear to see her child in pain and so, one morning in June, she snapped – and dropped letters at her daughter’s primary school in Potchefstroom in which she slandered the boy’s new girlfriend.

She now bitterly regrets her decision, she says. She learned a painful lesson: that there should be limits to what a parent does to ease their child’s hurt.

“Parents need to be aware of their own emotional reaction when something like that happens to their child,” says Dr Elize Morkel, a psychologist from Somerset West in the Western Cape.

“Acknowledge your disappointment, anger and sadness, but remind yourself that your child learns and grows through disappointment – and life is rife with disappointment.”

A parent’s role is to provide support and a healthy perspective, says Gielie Hoffman, a leadership consultant who specialises in young people.