Teen Friendship Breakup: How to Help With the Trauma
The end of an era. Friendships come and go, as adults know all too well. We’ve been through those ups and downs and growings-apart more than we care to admit. We know the drill. But our children don’t. So when the best friend since Kindergarten drops a bombshell, it feels like World War Three in our child’s life. When friends break up, we need to help our teens cope.
“I don’t want to be friends anymore.”
Those seven words.
And then she walked away.
Not a great beginning to high school. When I think back to my 9th-grade year, that breakup with my elementary and middle school bestie is the first memory that comes to mind. Even decades later. There wasn’t a “growing apart” that I recall, just the anvil of words she blind-sighted me with between class periods.
I was crushed. A new school. New classes. Bigger expectations. And my best friend in the world unceremoniously dumped me. I know I’m not alone, in that by high school graduation most of us have lost touch and common ground with certain grade school friends. But no matter how gradually or quickly it happens, the loss of a good friend is tough.
Loss equals grief
The teen years are emotional and confusing. It’s a time when friendships trump family relationships any old day, so losing a close friend is especially traumatic. And when our teen is devastated in this way, we need to be there for her, whether she believes it or not.
Any form of loss triggers grief, and losing a friendship is no different. It’s important that we give our child the space and time to have the emotions that go along with the grieving process. Give her feelings a name: Grief. Reassure her that she gets to be confused, angry and sad about what has occurred. And allow her to have them in a supportive, loving environment.
Everyone knows nothing and no one have anything on a Mama or Papa Bear, Cocaine Bear included. But this is not the time to prove that. Suppress the urge to take sides or share your own anger with your child. As tough as it is to restrain ourselves when our child is hurting, trade your ire for compassion and open ears. As a dear friend of mine with 8 children says:
Just love ’em.
Restraint is important and timing is everything.
As if the strength to not retaliate seems impossible, waiting to “fix it” takes superhuman ability. We want to take away the pain and hurt as quickly as possible, and say all the right things right away to speed the healing process along. But here again, it’s important to check our own pulse first before attending to our child’s heart.
We know our kids well. And understand everyone grieves and processes loss in their own time and way. Once we give our child the opportunity to feel the feels, we can have that heart-to-heart discuss about her loss.
What to talk about.
- Validate how your child feels.
- Help her limit social media.
- Reassure her that the end of her friendship is not a character flaw or a sign of failure. When someone breaks up with us, it’s about them and what they are going through and rarely about the person on the receiving end.
- Ask your child about her positive qualities and how she shares those qualities with others.
- Talk about what she thinks is a good friend and how she can be one.
- Reinforce good character.
- Share your experience with friendship loss. (“It happens to a lot of us.”)
- Plan some fun to look forward to…as a family or even better, with some of her other friends.
Model a trusting relationship.
What is trust? Trust is defined as “a positive belief in the good within people and the world” and includes qualities like integrity, good character, honesty and authenticity.
Your child will struggle with trust after losing a good friend. She depended on that friend to be there for her, and then, in a flash, he or she was gone. When expectations of safety, closeness and predictability are breached, trust goes right out the door. I know mine did when my once-dear friend ended our friendship.
To earn someone’s trust, we need to be good listeners, truthful and dependable. As parents, we need to model these characteristics every day so our children know they can trust us, learn how to be trustworthy themselves, and know how to seek relationships with others whom they can count on.
If your child is really struggling…
She may need to talk to a counselor to help work through the confusion and anger. Consider a meeting with a school guidance counselor or a behavioral therapist. Both can assist your child in learning coping mechanisms as well as in developing tools for interacting with peers and making friends.
The nugget I was hesitant to include.
It seems a little harsh but the more I thought about it, this opinion rings true.
From the blog carolinemaguireauthor.com:
Often toxic friends are the ones that break up with us.
Think about those characteristics of trust. If someone doesn’t embody those, they are toxic people. If untrustworthy and toxic behavior go hand-in-hand, peers with those qualities aren’t friendship material. Full. Stop.
And in the end, we are better off when they walk away.
But it’s best to hold off sharing this with our wounded child until we’ve let her feel her feelings first.
There were warning signs.
Of course I didn’t see the warning signs because I trusted my friend. What sticks out in my mind now is this: one of the last times she invited me to hang out she spent most of the time locked in her bathroom, getting ready to see a boy she liked later that evening. Talk about awkward, sitting in her kitchen with her mom, brief exchanges puncuated by longer silences, when I thought my friend wanted to spend time with me. Like we had done so many times before, for so many years in a row.
I see now how my friend was becoming undependable and untrustworthy, and it makes sense…she was getting ready to cut me loose.
Friends don’t treat friends that way.
Teenage friendships are critical at a time when kids are trying to find their identity in the eye of the adolescent storm. Acceptance in a peer group is paramount. Sadly, it’s not a matter of “if” but a matter of when our child goes through a friendship breakup. Having a strategy to help them cope is an important part of parenting. If we show them we are trustworthy in having their backs, our kids will still have faith in trust after a friendship ends.
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