How to Cope with Your Parents' Divorce

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Everyone benefits from positive coping strategies when dealing with divorce — learn how.

Step 1: Stay in touch with both parents
Stay in regular contact with both parents. Call, send text messages, or e-mail to ease feelings of missing each other.

Step 2: Develop a plan for special events
Develop an attendance plan for special events like games, meets, recitals, and concerts. If it isn’t comfortable to have them both there, alternate their attendance.

Step 3: Talk to people you can trust
Talk to people you can trust to sort out your feelings about the divorce.

Tip
Seek out a movie about a divorcing family. Watching a movie with characters you can relate to will help you work through your own feelings.

Step 4: Talk to your parents about your feelings
Talk to your parents about any concerns, such as money, activities, or visitations.

Step 5: Participate in activities
Continue to participate in as many day-to-day activities as possible. Extracurricular events will help you stay focused on your own priorities.

Tip
Often teens find that relationships with parents improve after a divorce because each parent is happier.

Step 6: Draw support from family
Stay close to, and draw support from, your siblings or other relatives. Stronger bonds may form among family members when parents separate.

Did You Know?
Did you know? According to the 2003 National Vital Statistics Report, over half of all American marriages end in divorce.