My first teen crush not only broke my heart. She also broke my kneecap.
Ah, Grace. She had big brown eyes, porcelain skin and was way out of my league.
I was a geeky freshman at an all-boys Catholic high school. Grace and other girls who attended two sister schools rode the bus with us boys.
I became smitten with Grace during those rides, when I prayed the bus would break down so I could drink in more of her angelic presence.
One afternoon, while getting off the bus at my stop after school, I turned to wave goodbye to Grace, who was sitting in the back. She waved back.
Flummoxed, I missed a step on the bus and went tumbling to the street, books flying everywhere.
I landed on the asphalt on my left kneecap and fractured it. I was in a cast for several weeks.
My leg eventually healed, but my smoldering crush on Grace took longer to flame out. Teen heartbreak s – sometimes in places on the body one normally wouldn’t expect.
Julie Orris, a Newport Beach therapist who specializes in treatment for adolescents, says painful teen breakups give parents a chance to help their children make sense of a bad experience to help them do better next time.
You won’t be able to prevent your teen from his or her first crush – nor should you, Orris said. “I always tell my parents the fastest way to get your child to have a boyfriend or girlfriend is to say, ‘Don’t see him (or her).’”
What to say, what not to say
You never would tell an adult friend going through a breakup or divorce, “He wasn’t good for you” or “You’ll get over it; there are lots of fish in the sea.”
Similarly, when dealing with a heartbroken teen, it’s important to respect her feelings and talk to her as if she were an adult, Orris said.
“Kids are no different (than adults) when it comes to feeling very strongly about someone,” she said.
Validate your child’s sadness and feelings, Orris advised.
Say things like: “It must be so hard to experience such a loss” or “I know how much you cared for him/her.”
Ask them questions such as: “What went wrong? What did you like/not like about him/her?”
Then, Orris advised, “Be very curious and nonjudgmental.”
Lesson learned
Wendy Garcia, an Irvine mother of two teenagers and a self-employed human resources consultant, recently dealt with the heartache of her son, Jake.
Jake was finishing his senior year in high school and preparing to head off to a college far from Orange County in the fall.
At his birthday celebration, Jake met a new girl in town – a junior who recently had transferred to his high school from New Jersey.
“They hit it off,” Garcia recalled. “But he didn’t want a girlfriend because he was heading off to college.”
But as we all know, the heart often doesn’t follow the head. Jake spent several happy months with his new girlfriend, Tamara, even though both knew the end was coming.
In July, the day Tamara left to return home for a month, Jake drove her to the airport. Then he spent nearly the entire day in bed crying and sleeping, his mother recalls.
“I felt really sorry for him,” Garcia said. “I didn’t want to dismiss his feelings, but I also didn’t want him to stay in bed all day.”
She walked into his room and said, “Are you OK, Jake? It’s 2 p.m. You’ve got to get up.”
Jake told his mother he and Tamara decided to break up at the airport.
“Did I do the right thing?” Jake asked her. She assured him that he had.
Garcia validated her son’s feelings and reassured him that his imminent departure for college would have ended the relationship anyway.
Tamara returned to Orange County three days before Jake left for college. “They kind of had another mini-breakup,” Garcia recalled.
Luckily, the worst was over, but when a teen is in the throes of anguish because of a breakup, seeing beyond the next day – let alone the next minute or second – is nearly impossible.
Let your teen feel sad, experts say, but be wary of danger signs. Prolonged anxiety, depression or other emotional issues could be a sign your teen needs to see a professional counselor, or that he or she is in an abusive relationship.
“Instill values in them and try to keep them safe,” Orris said. “Let them make mistakes, but safety should always be the benchmark.”
Social media
The age of Instagram and Snapchat adds new wrinkles to teen breakups. A Pew Research Study found that aside from flirting, most teens express romantic interest through social media.
Another study by Pew reported that 59 percent of teens say they feel more connected with their romantic partner’s life through social media.
But that connectedness may come at a price if the couple breaks up. Orris and other experts suggest that young couples avoid each other on social media to help them get through the pain.
Orris tells her teen clients to have no contact with the other person for six months.
“It certainly doesn’t help someone hurting emotionally to see their ex post a picture of their new boyfriend or girlfriend online,” Orris notes.
Grace
Yeah, that’s the name of the beauty who broke my heart and also (kind of) broke my kneecap. It’s also a great quality, along with empathy, to exhibit when dealing with your heartbroken teen.
These are effective things to say to a teen wracked by a breakup:
“I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”
“I can see you are hurting right now.”
“It hurts to lose someone you love.”
Pop star Taylor Swift earned kudos in People magazine for personally responding to a fan who had asked the megastar on social media for advice on how to deal with a nasty breakup.
The girl felt “crumbled” because her boyfriend had dumped her and was “calling her names” on social media – more evidence of the importance of ending all contact with an ex after a fresh breakup.
Swift showed great empathy: “It’s so devastating to come to terms with speaking of someone in past tense when you used to see them as your present and your future,” the singer tweeted to the girl, 15.
Then Swift offered this advice, which can be useful to all of us: “There is nothing wrong with avoiding people who hurt you,” Swift wrote. “You fell in love, no games. Now you’re saying goodbye with no games. Protect yourself, please. I’m so sorry this happened.”
Now that’s showing compassion.
And grace (not you, Grace. I’m over you).
