DON’T
1. Assume your teen only wants to be with friends.
Amazingly enough, the current generation of teens actually enjoy spending time with their parents. Last summer, MTV and the Associated Press did a survey of 1,200 teens and found that 73% of them feel happiest when they have close relationships with their parents. So it’s up to us to start developing those!
What could you plan to do together? You could decide to learn how to cook a variety of new foods – and share the shopping and preparation. You could learn a language; you could sign a buddy contract and get fit together. You could volunteer together for a neighborhood clean-up. Or what about a family reading club, where everyone reads the same book and then sits down to discuss.
2. Think they enjoy doing nothing.
Even for a teen, it’s pretty hard to stay excited about all those hours spent on TV, computer, or Wii. After a week or so, they’ll be pretty stale. Convince your teen to take a walk around the neighborhood and see how much there is to do. What about starting a community garden or setting up a multi-family yard sale or maybe a film night for your aspiring director, where she gets to hook up a borrowed projector to her laptop and invite the neighbors to screen her masterpiece on your back wall?
3. Let days pass without checking in.
Make sure you check in with a phone call in the middle of the day from the office, or if you’re around, come over to admire what they’re doing.
4. Change plans mid-stream.
If they’ve got focus, you need focus. If planting the shrubbery is going great guns, don’t switch them to painting the house because you just realized you’d rather have that done. One of the best ways to cultivate stick-to-it-iveness is to get them to complete one entire job before moving onto the next. Although multi-tasking is the prevalent mode in our society, encourage your teens to finish one project before tackling another.
5. Nag!
Hard as it is not to…you will really get them more motivated if you give praise about what’s been done and say you’re looking forward to the outcome. Your teens will undoubtedly make a lot more progress on this project than you ever would have. So within reason, leave them alone.
And by the way, let’s not forget that teens should have a lot of play time too… because remember, school is just around the corner.
For more ideas about summertime activities for the family, read School's Out, What Now?.
Cheryl Crane 07/22/08
There are some great ideas here - Thanks! I'm definitely going to get my son involved in some of those projects we never get around to here. Another idea I've suggested -- and my son is interested in -- is volunteering to work for a presidential candidate. Never too young to get involved in the process!
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