How Divorce Affects Teens

Video Transcript

"Pick your sides. What team are you on? How does divorce effect teens? This is Dr. Paul author of Boomer Girls, a boomer woman's guide to men and dating. And host of Ask Dr. Paul. When I said pick your sides that's what teens do and the parents of the opposite sex is the one that either teen identifies with. The daughter identifies with the husband and the son identifies with the mother. And the lines are drawn and it is super poor reasation. And why is that? Because teens think that way. They have their teams at school etc and now they're on a team which ever team it may be, and it's all dads fault if you're a son and it's all moms fault if you're a daughter. And the reason it is, is because we know the conflict between mother and daughter and the conflict between father, and son. It's a loose loose. It affects them from day one. It probably affected them before the divorce occurred because there was a dysfunctional family already. Now there's only one solution or that and that is to get counseling. You need to do that. You are not going to fix it yourself and if you do yourselves a disservice of using those teens, ultimately you're going to defeat yourselves with those children at some later point in life because they're going to realize what you did. So don't go there. It's easy to do and everybody wants to do it, and I hate you and he loves me, and etc etc. Don't go there. It isn't worth it. You will pay the price later and that price is not worth it. I know you're going to have counselors tell you otherwise, well maybe not counselors but you're going to have many well meaning friends and maybe some people who are relationship consultants. Don't go there. Get professional help right up front because those teenagers are going to be effected traumatically by it. This is Dr. Paul. May your fantasies of today be your realities of tomorrow."