Keeping family together in the teen years

My DD will be 13 in a few weeks. As I noted in another thread, things
seem to have changed overnight. Looks like we've arrived at that age
where peers are more important than family.

I barely saw my DD this weekend as she preferred to spend most of the
time with her new best friend. Half the weekend she had her friend over
here. The other half, she spent at her friend's house. When not around
her friend and supposedly hanging with her family, the cell phone rang
incessantly every 5 minutes.

I do welcome this stage and see it as important and necessary in a
child's development, but I have to admit I'm finding it a challenge to
adjust to the sudden change, especially juggling the social calendar
and driving all around for pickups and drop-offs. :-)

I also have to say I'm missing my DD and the strong connection we've
always had until now. She doesn't even want me tucking her in at night
anymore (gave that up last year).

I would like to ask the group:

Those of you who survived this stage or are in it now, how did/do you
carve out family time with a teen? How do you manage to keep the family
connected and together, when peers started dragging your child's
attention away, and the child is naturally driven to want her own
privacy?

Perhaps you have family rituals, such as dinner each night or attending
church on Sundays? Or perhaps you have family policies, like no
playdates on Sunday or phone calls between certain hours?

Realizing that all families are different, I am looking for any and all
creative suggestions!

jen

shinypenny wrote:

Those of you who survived this stage or are in it now, how did/do you
carve out family time with a teen? How do you manage to keep the family
connected and together, when peers started dragging your child's
attention away, and the child is naturally driven to want her own
privacy?

Perhaps you have family rituals, such as dinner each night or attending
church on Sundays? Or perhaps you have family policies, like no
playdates on Sunday or phone calls between certain hours?

My kids are not quite at that stage yet (my oldest
is 10.5), but when I was a teen, we were very tight as a
family (and still are). I certainly had friends, though
I wasn't a complete social butterfly, and I had lots of
activities. Nevertheless, we almost *always* ate together
as a family. Excessive (as defined by my parents) phone
calls were not allowed. No phone calls were allowed during
dinner or before or after reasonable hours. Family obligations
(both chores and family events) came first. And we *did* have
family events, whether they were trips or just an afternoon
out to visit someplace or go to a show or something.
We did certainly have the sense that family
always came first. Friends were great, but time with
friends was fit into a structure defined by family, not
the other way around. My parents weren't terribly
restrictive about time with friends. It wasn't like
their goal was to minimze my time with friends. They
were happy to work with me to get time with my friends
once school and family obligations were met. I would
have known better than to ignore family too much, though.
Even as a college student home for the summer, I had
an obligation to spend enough time with family that they
didn't feel they were just a convenient roof over my
head.
Personally, I hope to do much the same. I want
my kids to have an active social life, but I still expect
to see them for dinner most nights and I still expect
them to spend time with their parents and siblings.
I have friends who have a lot of success with establishing
a "family night" where they don't answer the phone or
have any outside commitments and they all do something
as a family together. I think that's certainly one
way to approach it, though I'm a bit squeamish about
declaring a particular night off limits all the time.
I think that teens' social life is important, but it
is equally important for them to learn to prioritize
and balance, so I don't see any need to bend over
backwards to enable them to socialize to the exclusion
of family time. Even if *they* feel their friends are
more important at that time (which is pretty natural),
they have to at least learn to fake it so that family
feel like they're important too ;-)

Best wishes,
Ericka

Ericka Kammerer wrote:

Personally, I hope to do much the same. I want
my kids to have an active social life, but I still expect
to see them for dinner most nights and I still expect
them to spend time with their parents and siblings.

Yep, that's what I did this Sunday; it went like this:

DD calls from her friends house, "They've invited me to dinner - can I
stay until 8 or 9?"

(looking at the lasagna I'd slaved to make) "Well, I made this huge
lasagna.... "

"Oh. That sounds good! (covers cell phone and I hear muffled talking)
Can I invite my girlfriends over to help us eat it?"

"Um. No. It's Sunday night. I haven't seen you all day. I'm glad you're
having a great time with your friends, but I'd like to eat dinner
together as a family tonight, okay?"

jen

In article .com, shinypenny
says...


Ericka Kammerer wrote:

Personally, I hope to do much the same. I want
my kids to have an active social life, but I still expect
to see them for dinner most nights and I still expect
them to spend time with their parents and siblings.

Yep, that's what I did this Sunday; it went like this:

DD calls from her friends house, "They've invited me to dinner - can I
stay until 8 or 9?"

(looking at the lasagna I'd slaved to make) "Well, I made this huge
lasagna.... "

"Oh. That sounds good! (covers cell phone and I hear muffled talking)
Can I invite my girlfriends over to help us eat it?"

"Um. No. It's Sunday night. I haven't seen you all day. I'm glad you're
having a great time with your friends, but I'd like to eat dinner
together as a family tonight, okay

It would be good to have more of a policy understood that a certain set of
family-related things are of first priority. Doing it piecemeal and reactively
like this when things come up will feel to her like hassling/whining. Instead,
be proactive and make it explicit and general - separate from any specific
little instance. List the things on that priority one list (I like Ericka's
list). Then, let her be free to work around the family priority items as she
wants. Then you'll have it both ways - she'll feel some freedom; you'll have
the priorities set.

Banty

In article .com, shinypenny
says...

My DD will be 13 in a few weeks. As I noted in another thread, things
seem to have changed overnight. Looks like we've arrived at that age
where peers are more important than family.

I barely saw my DD this weekend as she preferred to spend most of the
time with her new best friend. Half the weekend she had her friend over
here. The other half, she spent at her friend's house. When not around
her friend and supposedly hanging with her family, the cell phone rang
incessantly every 5 minutes.

I do welcome this stage and see it as important and necessary in a
child's development, but I have to admit I'm finding it a challenge to
adjust to the sudden change, especially juggling the social calendar
and driving all around for pickups and drop-offs. :-)

I also have to say I'm missing my DD and the strong connection we've
always had until now. She doesn't even want me tucking her in at night
anymore (gave that up last year).

Yeah my almost - 13 year old son started turning that away a couple of years
ago. Although he still snuggles up while I sit on the couch.


I would like to ask the group:

Those of you who survived this stage or are in it now, how did/do you
carve out family time with a teen? How do you manage to keep the family
connected and together, when peers started dragging your child's
attention away, and the child is naturally driven to want her own
privacy?

Perhaps you have family rituals, such as dinner each night or attending
church on Sundays? Or perhaps you have family policies, like no
playdates on Sunday or phone calls between certain hours?

Realizing that all families are different, I am looking for any and all
creative suggestions!

We haven't had all the phone stuff. He seems content to have his friends be
mostly a school/scouts thing, although we do get together with his best friend's
family a fair amount. So we haven't (at least so far) had the peer vs. family
thing.

My son is really into building models as a hobby. We've joined a local hobby
club together, mostly so that he can have the benefits of the hobby club (it's
adults). I do some modeling, too, I was the one that introduced him to it a
long time ago, because my brother and I used to do a lot of it together. My
model building rate is orders of magnitude below his, though

Banty

In article .com,
"shinypenny" wrote:

Those of you who survived this stage or are in it now, how did/do you
carve out family time with a teen? How do you manage to keep the family
connected and together, when peers started dragging your child's
attention away, and the child is naturally driven to want her own
privacy?

The only thing I insisted on was that everyone who was in the house when
dinner was served had to sit down to dinner together. That included my
kids' friends. As they moved through their teens, some of their friends
thought this was decidedly weird.

Note that I never insisted anyone eat -- this was not about being fed,
it was about being together and connecting. I was clear that this was a
time for conversation. For the most part, the kids accepted this.

Even this no longer works, as my kids' jobs take them out of the house
in the evenings -- but my kids are almost not even teenagers any more.
We seem to have a decent relationship these days; my 23 yo, who does
not live at home, goes out of her way to find time to spend with me and
her dad, one of the 19 yos will come and curl up with her head on my lap
for a few minutes when she comes home from work (if I'm still up!) to
tell me about her day, and the other sits to talk to me about what's
going on in his life at least once a week.

Perhaps you have family rituals, such as dinner each night or attending
church on Sundays? Or perhaps you have family policies, like no
playdates on Sunday or phone calls between certain hours?

Church was mandatory until they got jobs that kept them from being able
to go, though they could choose what they did once we got there (one
hated both the worship service and Sunday School; she either worked in
the nursery or helped get coffee hour ready -- she has reconnected with
the church now, and is paid staff in the nursery, but has good on-going
relationships with many members of the congregation.) However, that
didn't really help with their connection with ME, since I worked for a
different church and could only attend with them once a month.

I did insist on no phone calls during dinner -- or at least, keeping
them brief.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

In article .com,
"shinypenny" wrote:

Ericka Kammerer wrote:

Personally, I hope to do much the same. I want
my kids to have an active social life, but I still expect
to see them for dinner most nights and I still expect
them to spend time with their parents and siblings.

Yep, that's what I did this Sunday; it went like this:

DD calls from her friends house, "They've invited me to dinner - can I
stay until 8 or 9?"

(looking at the lasagna I'd slaved to make) "Well, I made this huge
lasagna.... "

"Oh. That sounds good! (covers cell phone and I hear muffled talking)
Can I invite my girlfriends over to help us eat it?"

"Um. No. It's Sunday night. I haven't seen you all day. I'm glad you're
having a great time with your friends, but I'd like to eat dinner
together as a family tonight, okay?"

jen


I know each family is different. However, MY response to the second
question would have been yes -- I found that, by getting to know my
kids' friends, by having them AT our family dinner table, I was better
able to keep in touch with their lives.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

dragonlady wrote:
I know each family is different. However, MY response to the second
question would have been yes -- I found that, by getting to know my
kids' friends, by having them AT our family dinner table, I was better
able to keep in touch with their lives.


Probably would've said yes, except that I felt like we'd already seen
too much of her friends this weekend. :-0

Her friend slept over here on Friday, then we took her friends out with
us Saturday night to see a dance performance. I was a bit burned out
and craving quiet family-only time.

jen

Banty wrote:
We haven't had all the phone stuff. He seems content to have his friends be
mostly a school/scouts thing, although we do get together with his best friend's
family a fair amount. So we haven't (at least so far) had the peer vs. family
thing.

Yep, DD11, who's always been a social butterfly, has not quite hit this
stage yet. She does see her friends a fair amount, but it's different.
She's not on the phone with them in the between times, for example.
When she's here with us, she's here. It's like DD-nearly-13 is sorta
here in body only, but in mind, she's still with her friends. If that
makes sense?

My son is really into building models as a hobby. We've joined a local hobby
club together, mostly so that he can have the benefits of the hobby club (it's
adults). I do some modeling, too, I was the one that introduced him to it a
long time ago, because my brother and I used to do a lot of it together. My
model building rate is orders of magnitude below his, though


Yeah, I've always said that when the girls are old enough to take
aerobic classes at our Y (they have to be 14), I would love to take
classes with them. Otherwise, I can still bank on my DD's sharing my
love of clothes shopping. Hee hee. For that, they will usually come
with me with or without their friends.

Except this weekend they both turned down an offer to take them
shopping with me. They chose to hang out at home and "recharge" as they
put it. Because they were tired from running around all week with their
friends! I suppose I shoulda stayed home and vegged along with them,
but I had errands I had to run that couldn't wait.

jen

In article . com,
"shinypenny" wrote:

It's like DD-nearly-13 is sorta
here in body only, but in mind, she's still with her friends. If that
makes sense?

Yes -- there's a phrase in a book about moral development by Robert
Keegan where he describes this phase. He says it's not so much that
they are defined by their peer group, as that it takes their peer group
to bring them into existance at all!
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care