How Does Divorce Affect Teenagers?

All I can say is that this divorce definitely played havoc on my entire family. My ex-wife Amy and I had our struggles during the 12 years we were married. At the end we were fighting more than we were talking.

We tried married counseling but came to a mutual agreement that divorce was the best option for us. It sounds pretty simple when you read it but our daughter Sarah had a really hard time understanding what was going on and why it had to happen.

She was always active in her school drama club and had a few close friends that she talked to on a regular basis. Her world was really disrupted when we told them about the divorce.

[pullquote]Our divorce has forced us all to change in many ways. Our oldest daughter now has more chores around the house to help out her mother who now works full time to support herself as a single mom. At one point she was feeling so overwhelmed she sent me a message that she didn’t want to live there any more.  We chatted back and forth for quite some time. I told Sarah that I would speak to her mother about what we could do to help her. With a little effort it all worked out in the end.[/pullquote] When I moved out and into my apartment, which is two hours away from Sarah and her brothers, she felt as if I had abandoned her.

I wanted to her to see that I really wanted to be a part of her life still so I had her teach me to use the computer. She taught me to pay bills online and how to chat and send messages. We talk a lot on the computer because I cannot be there every day to hear about her life and what is going on. As we talked I realized that she had some other feelings that I had never thought of.

Sarah felt like she suddenly had to be the other parent, or the adult, since she only had her mom living with her then. She felt like she had to care for her younger brother and pick up extra chores around the house. It was a really unfair situation that she was put in. I spoke with her mom and we worked out a plan that would allow her to have a little more freedom with her friends and time away from the house. This really seemed to help as she felt like she could be a kid still, and that was very important.