Hard, back from vacation
“Last summer, Manon was on a cloud, says her mother. The little one was in love, passionate, transformed. The return was only harder. It’s just if she didn’t hold it against us. to come home and resume work, as if nothing had happened The first few days, she was cloistered in her room, scribbling a torrent of papers, and only came out to phone her darling. I didn’t know what to say, or what to do to help him. I hope that the experience of last year will have hardened him … ”
The “post-holiday love” period often transforms separated lovebirds into inconsolate and misunderstood widowers, and parents into basely prosaic torturers, obsessed with their blazing phone bills and the back-to-school season that must be successful. So how can you help the frozen lover to return to earth smoothly?
What the shrink says
At this key period in his life, the adolescent will undoubtedly experience for the first time a real passion in love, with its moments of euphoria and annihilation, explains Dr Sylvain Mimoun. These moments belong to him and are very constructive, including the first heartache. It is often thanks to this story that the child perceives the limits of his feelings. Parents therefore do not have to cry for him or shake him to react to this painful situation. What he is going through helps him to grow up, and to become a man or a woman with his loving dimension. These tears, these sorrows, these tears … he has to live through them to mourn them and start a new story.
What you can do
So that it does not turn into confrontation and the dialogue of the deaf, think in a whisper what you would like to say to him out loud: “Stop behaving a bit, with the vacation that we paid you, you could be a little more grateful. ” Better to shut up, he only thinks about his love story … Be patient, understanding and remember the “roller coasters” you experienced the first times, when you yourself were in love. Be discreet, do not force his secrets even if he seems lost and unhappy. But when he “cracks” or just confides in you, be attentive, or simply available. Much more than specific advice or practical answers, he wants a sympathetic ear. If he has been “let go”, do not denigrate the object of his love too much, but help him to keep confidence in him and to esteem himself: “Adorable as you are, she / he did not deserve you … “No need to tell him about your own wars and romantic disasters, what interests him is his own story. What is the use of relativizing and telling him: “One (s) lost, ten found”, he cannot hear it for the moment. Finally, especially no direct allusion to his sex life. Teens don’t like to interfere in our privacy, nor do they like to be intruded on. But if you feel that the time has come for the next year to send messages of sexual prevention, always stay in the general domain (“Do you know what exactly the pill or the condom is for?”). Mothers should talk to their daughters, fathers to their sons.
To read
– “Teenagers, love and sexuality, girl version”, Dr Irène Borten-Krivine and Dr Diane Winaver, Albin Michel editions.
– “Teenagers, love and sexuality, boy version”, Dr Sylvain Mimoun and Rica Etienne, Albin Michel editions.
