Smart Parenting: Special Needs of Teens

Helpful Tips for Co-Parenting Teens

Here are some other suggestions for co-parents who are trying to create fewer problems in their teens.

• Work with your co-parent to keep track of your teen. Teens will often let you think they are with the co-parent instead of out partying with their friends. If you communicate with the co-parent, this is one slick move you can nip in the bud.
• Offer to host. Whenever you can, allow your teen to hang around with friends at your home, where you can keep track of potential troublemakers and see who is influencing your child.
• Know that your teen will be supervised when she goes out. Do not be so quick to permit your teen to disappear to a friend's house for a few days unless you know for sure what kind of supervision there is there. If you have been a single parent for a long time, you can get used to your children not being around for periods of time. You will also welcome a break in your parenting chores and an opportunity to socialize or get things done. But letting your child hang out at a friend's house is not like letting her go to the co-parent's for visitation. Stay on top of the details and check up on your kid.
• Encourage your child to maintain a relationship with your co-parent. Teens can easily lose track of their relationship with their mother or father. Kids distancing themselves from their parents can happen at any age, but it is particularly problematic during the teen years, when hormones and dramatic thinking can rule their behavior. If your teen decides to cut off his relationship with your co-parent, you must really challenge yourself to push for a reconciliation unless circumstances are extreme. When children align themselves with one parent and reject the other, it can be comforting and validating for the parent the child becomes closer to, but that does not necessarily make it better or healthier for the teen.

Take the case of a father whose teenaged daughter decided never to speak with him again after it was leaked to her that the reason for the divorce was because he was having an affair. While this might be cause for the mother not having a relationship with the child's father, is it a justifiable reason for the daughter not to have one?

One of my observations of children who are going through high-conflict divorces is that they see parents disavowing one another and splitting off from one another on bad terms. This can present a model or example for that behavior. Generally speaking, it is better to have a relationship with an imperfect parent than to have no relationship at all.

Quick Tip

While it is true that teens are strongly influenced by their peers, parental influence doesn't evaporate. Work hard to keep lines of communication open. They are listening, even when they don't seem to be.