Monday, November 24, 2008

Leaving "love" behind

Auto Week is saying that Mitsubishi is pulling out of the Detroit Auto Show.

So many people here in Michigan are pulling up stakes and moving to another part of the country to start over. How do you cope with the move and still help your teen deal with the loss of friends and possibly what they believe is "the love of their life?"

In the stress of a move, it can be very easy to discount or even overlook the importance of lost relationships for your children. Even though you might see this relationship as "one OF a million," your teen might see it as "one IN a million." Help them to transition keep these questions in mind:
1. Are you letting them talk about it without feeling the need to fix, change or negate their emotions?
2. Do you ask open ended questions about the loss instead of telling them what they "need to" or "should" do?
3. Have you allow them to not only grieve the loss but to experience the emotions without judgment?

We may think we know the outcome but we have hindsight, they don't. We might believe there will be another "love" down the road but for them, but today is their reality. What can we do to let them learn from this in their own way, not ours?

Thoughts?
Lisa Jander

1 comment:

Sarah said...

GREAT blog, Lisa.

This is very wise. My grandparents tried to tell my mother how to feel about an older man she met at school, who was her teacher, and a European. They were wiser, more experienced, had plenty of "hindsight" to guide them, knew it was a phase and she'd be over him once she went to college -- she was young, naive, and kept saying he was "the one." They knew better, and tried to tell her so.

Turns out they were wrong. She married him, had two rather beautiful children (if I do say so myself) and had a long, happy, committed marriage that remains the standard for me in what "happy" looks like.

So, best to let them express their feelings without our judgment, and wait and see what Life has in store for them.

Sarah