If you are getting divorced with teenage children, you need to be aware of how the divorce process can impact them. This is not to say you cannot end your marriage, and you may have a very good reason to do so, such as spousal abuse. However, you simply need to keep your children’s best interests in mind and learn how you can help them through this process.
For instance, one teen in Ohio said that her mother got divorced three times. One happened before she was born. When she got divorced from that young woman’s father — her second husband — the teen said that her mother really paid very little attention to what it meant to the kids or the impact it had on their lives.
As a result, the young girl:
- Was diagnosed with clinical depression.
- Hid that depression from everyone else in her life.
- Started sleeping far more often than normal, to the point that it prevented her from facing responsibilities.
- Rarely did her homework and saw her grades suffer as a result.
There is still a bit of a disconnect between the mother and daughter, as the mother claims she tried to help and the daughter says she did not think of her children. This underscores how important communication is between family members during a divorce.
Again, this is not to suggest that you cannot get divorced if you have children or that it will always have this impact on them. But you need to keep the kids in mind when looking into your legal options so that you can approach divorce in a way that puts the children’s needs and best interests first.
Source: WYSO, “The Ties That Bind: A Teenager Talks About Marriage And Divorce,” Basim Blunt & Camrin O’Flaherty, accessed May 03, 2018