How to Help Your Teenage Daughter Get Over a Bad Breakup

Getting over a bad breakup is never an easy thing to do no matter how old you are, but when you are a teenager, it can be even more difficult. If your daughter is going through a bad breakup, she needs your love and support, although not necessarily your guidance.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Receive the news in all its details. If your daughter is trying to talk to you about a fight she had with her boyfriend, or telling you that they are going to break up, listen to her. Stop what you are doing and give her your attention. Practice good active listening skills, encourage her to keep talking by asking open-ended questions when she stops talking. Communicate to her with your words and your body language that you understand her feelings and are here to support her.
2. Ask her why they are going to break up if the answer doesn't seem to clear to you. She could be over reacting to a small argument with her boyfriend. Remember, relationships, and the drama that sometimes goes with them, is new to your teenage daughter.
3. Discuss her options with her. If the reason she gives for breaking up does not sound like a good one to you, do not try to talk her out of her decision. It is your role as her mother to lead the conversation to help her discover her choices. If her boyfriend is breaking up with her, she might not have the choice of staying in the relationship, but she always has choices on how she handles the breakup.
4. Assure her that there are many boys who would like to date her. Remind her that most girls date many boys before they find the one boy that they want to stay with forever. Give her of examples of people you know who have gotten divorced or broken up with boyfriends before finding their true love.
5. Tell her how much you love her, and that if you could take the pain of breakups away from her you would. Then tell her that is important we learn how to go through pain without being permanently injured or scarred. That learning to live with pain is a part of growing up. Let her know it is all right to let herself feel the pain, but then she must also learn to let the pain go and welcome healing.
6. Make yourself available to your daughter while she is going through the breakup. Listen if she wants to talk, give her a hug when she looks like she needs it, and offer to go out for a girls' night of a movie and dinner. Support her like you would your best friend if she were going through a breakup.

Tips & Warnings

• It is your role to support and help her through this period, but it is no longer your role to shelter her from life experiences or make all of her decisions for her.