You did not sign up to be anybody’s therapist

The thing that is most likely to actually cost you something

It is not the divorce. It is this: one of your parents starts telling you things that are not yours to hold.

What the other one did. What the money situation really is. Who they are angry at and why. What they are afraid of. Sometimes it arrives as crying. Sometimes it arrives as a conversation that starts you’re old enough to understand this now.

And it feels good. That is the part nobody mentions. Being trusted with adult information at fourteen feels like being promoted. It feels like finally being taken seriously by someone who spent years not telling you anything.

Here is why it is still a problem. Once you are the person one of your parents leans on, that job does not end when the divorce does. People who were given it at fourteen are still doing it at twenty-eight. They describe it, later, as the thing that actually got them — more than the separation, more than the moving, more than the arguments.

How to hand it back without a fight

You do not have to be harsh and you do not have to explain yourself. Things that work:

• “I don’t want to know that about him.” Short. Not an accusation.
• “Can you tell someone who isn’t me?” Said kindly, this lands better than it reads.
• “I can’t be the one you talk to about this.” The strongest one, for when it has been going on a while.
• Leaving the room. Not dramatically. You are allowed to have homework.

Being asked to choose, in all the ways it does not look like being asked

Almost nobody says pick one of us. It shows up sideways:

• Asking how it was over there, every single time, and listening very carefully
• Being visibly hurt when you want to be at the other house
• Telling you what they gave up for you
• Being the fun one, on purpose, right after the other one enforced a rule
• Asking what you would say if a judge asked you

You do not have to pick, and you do not have to pretend you do not notice. You also do not have to call it out. Mostly you just do not have to play along: the answer to “how was it over there” can be “fine”, forever, and that is not lying, it is declining to file a report.

Playing them off each other — why it works, and what it costs

You will work out quickly that there are now two separate authorities who are not speaking, and that a no from one can sometimes be turned into a yes from the other.

This is not evil and pretty much everybody tries it. It is also worth understanding what it actually costs, because it is not what you would guess. It is not getting caught. It is that the two of them start communicating through the gaps in what you told each of them, which means the conflict now runs through you — which is the exact thing that does the damage. You end up more in the middle, not less.

The other cost is smaller and more annoying: it gets you a looser house and a stricter house, and you will end up living mostly in the looser one whether or not that is the one you actually want to be in.

Your own stuff is still happening

This is the part that gets lost. You were already in the middle of a fairly large project — becoming a person who is not mainly defined by their parents. Friendships, what you are into, what you are good at, who you might like. Then the divorce landed on top of it and now every mood you have gets read as being about the divorce.

Two things follow from that, and they pull in opposite directions.

Some of what you are feeling this year is not about the divorce. Being fourteen is genuinely hard on its own. You are allowed to be in a bad mood about something completely unrelated, and you do not owe anyone an explanation that ties it back.

And some of it is, and it is worth not talking yourself out of that either. If you are sleeping badly, or you have stopped doing something you used to like, or school has gone sideways, that is worth telling somebody — not because you are broken, but because those are the specific things that are easier to fix early.

If someone from the court wants to talk to you

It might happen. The person could be called a guardian ad litem, or an evaluator, or a family court counselor. Sometimes it is the judge, usually in an office rather than a courtroom. Their job is to work out what arrangement will actually work.

Things worth knowing before it happens:

• It is not a test and there is no right answer. You cannot fail it.
• Nothing you say decides it on its own. Adults decide. That is not them ignoring you; it is them not putting it on you.
• They will probably ask about ordinary things — school, dinner, bedtime, who drives you where. Not who you love more.
• You are allowed to say you do not want to answer something. Out loud, in those words. That is a real option and it is not rude.
• You can say if you are scared of somebody. This is the one thing on this page worth saying even if it is hard.

Things that are reasonable to ask for, at your age