How to Help Your Teen Deal With a Breakup (10 Helpful Tips) |

Breakups are hard for everyone, but they can be especially difficult for teens. As parents, it’s important to know how to help your teen through a breakup.

Your teen’s first love can be a painful experience, but it’s far from the end of the world.

In this post, we’ll discuss the best ways to support your teen through a breakup and help them move on with their lives.

Let’s get started.

How to Help Your Teen With a Breakup

1. Encourage Your Teen to Be Honest About Their Feelings

The first thing you should do is encourage your teen to be honest about their feelings. They may be embarrassed or ashamed about what happened and may try to hide their emotions from you. It’s important that you don’t let them do this.

Instead, ask them how they’re feeling and make sure you listen when they answer. This can prevent problems later on down the road when they don’t feel like they have someone they can talk to about their problems.

2. Listen Without Judgment

When your teen opens up about their feelings, try not to judge them or tell them what they should or shouldn’t do because of what happened in their relationship with another person (even if it seems obvious).

Instead, just listen without judgment so that your teen feels comfortable talking about what happened between him/her and his/her ex-partner.

3. Don’t Make Your Teen Feel Guilty About the Breakup

Even if he or she did something wrong, try not to blame them for the end of the relationship — but instead focus on discussing how they can improve their behavior in future relationships and friendships.

4. Don’t Get Upset

Instead of getting upset with your teen for making a bad decision, try focusing on the positive — their time spent with this person has given them a chance to grow as a person (and experience heartbreak, which also helps!).

Help your teen see that they’re stronger than they think they are and remind them that you believe in them. They will get through this tough time, and they’ll learn to make better decisions in the future.

5. Spend More Time With Your Teen

It’s important for teens to have an adult in their life who listens to them and lets them talk about what they’re going through. If your child is having trouble dealing with a breakup, spend more time together doing activities you both enjoy (like going out for ice cream or reading together).

By spending more time together, you’ll be able to show your teen that he or she matters and that you want to be there for him or her during this difficult time.

6. Ask if He or She Wants Help Creating a New Social Network

If your child feels lonely after the breakup, offer suggestions for making new friends such as joining an activity at school or participating in community service projects together.

7. Encourage Him or Her to Find New Interests and Hobbies

Help your child find other things that bring them joy, such as sports, music or art classes. You might even consider signing them up for an after-school activity or volunteer opportunity so they have something else to focus on during the day.

This will help keep his or her mind off of the breakup and give them something new to talk about with friends when they get home from school each night.

8. Get Him/Her Gifts

If your kid is like most people, he/she will be feeling down after a breakup. To cheer him/her up, get him/her small presents, like flowers or chocolates. This will make your kid feel loved and appreciated by you.

9. Take Him/Her Out for Dinner

Another way to help your teen cope with a break-up is by taking him/her out for dinner at a nice restaurant. Just having him/her over for dinner is enough; don’t feel obligated to have sex with him/her if he/she wants it!

Just having your company can be very comforting to someone who is going through something tough right now.

10. Give Him/Her Space to Grieve

If your teen doesn’t want to talk about it at all or doesn’t seem like they’re opening up at all, it’s okay to ask how things are going from time to time in order to let them know that you care and are available if they ever need someone to talk to when things get tough.

Bottom Line

Breakups are hard. It’s common for teens to go through a breakup at some point. The good news is that most of them get over it and learn from the experience.

Your teen may be upset and heartbroken, but she can bounce back if you give her the right support.