“He wants to communicate with his father, who left me…”

“You broke up with your husband in a very difficult situation: he left, leaving you with a child in her arms. And you made a firm decision to raise your son or daughter on your own, in the hope that someday the father will greatly regret the absence of a child in his life. It is not surprising that you feel acute injustice and even pain when a 14-16-year-old teenager takes an interest in an absent father. He is attracted by the halo of mystery around this unfamiliar person. He quite reasonably begins to perceive his father as part of himself and in search of answers to the questions “who am I?”, “What am I?”, “What am I capable of?” hopes that communication with a person close by blood will help him better understand his roots, character, individuality.

Another equally important reason that pushes a teenager to look for a father is associated with attempts to restructure previous family relationships, where he was assigned the role of a ward child. He is going through a period of soul-searching and is looking for new authorities outside his own family. What was previously perceived with a minus sign suddenly becomes interesting, intriguing. A father who lives outside the family, according to the mother, is not the most worthy example. But this is the opinion of the mother. A teenager wants to make decisions on his own.

As difficult as it may be, recognize the child’s right to his own feelings and actions. Tell your teenager (if you haven’t already) about his birth, about his father, about how you loved each other before the divorce. The surviving photographs will help tell the story of this love, even if it had a dramatic end. Children like to feel like characters in dizzying events. So you will tie a new thread of relations between him and yourself: after all, you managed to understand him, trust him and, moreover, presented him with a gift: it turns out that his birth was so unusual … «