Quality Time With Your Teen
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The article "Quality Time with Your Teen" is about family, it was released by Rachel Paxton.
It's sometimes difficult to find ways to be involved with your
teen without totally inrtuding in his/her life.
You want to talk
to them, they don't want to talk to you (most of the time
anyway).
I have found the hottest way to connect with my teenage
daughter is to enter her world and do the things she likes to
do. There's a saying that if you want to understnad your child's
world you have to play with them, no matter how old they are.
You don't always have to be even directly interacting with your
teen in order to be involved in thier world.
Just being around
the same inlfuences they are, and taking an interest in their
activities, lets them know that you care and that you understand
what they deal with from day to day.
Then later, at home, you
can talk about the things you have experienced together. It's a
great way to connect.
Here are ways my teenage daughter and
I have spent time together:
- My daughter was involved in a music group that did a lot of
fundraising that required a lot of involvement by the parents.
At first I was really resistant to the time involved, but I soon
realized how much fun it was to hang out with my daughter and
the other teens and their parents.
- School activities are another great way to be involved in your
child's life, at any age.
When they're younger there's field
trips, class parties, etc., you can be involved with, but when
they get older there is activities like school plyas that
parents are a really important part of.
I have helped sell tickets,
worked at the bake sale...Where I did not even spend time with my
daughter at all, but it menat a lot to her that I was there
supporting her.
- Attending sporting events is also important to your child.
When they get older it seems like they don't really care if
you're three or not, but it is important to them even if they
don't say so. It makes them believe like you care about what they
do.
- Helping my daughter with school projects has been a great way
for us to spend time together.
She gets to do the hard part of
doing all the research and writing, and then I do the fun part
of helping her put it all together in the end. Even with older
teens, most of them don't particularly enjoy donig all this work
by themselves, even if you know they're completely capable of
it. I don't do the work for her, just help her by giving her
feedback on her ideas and gviing her a hand. Often beforehand
even I will go to the lirbary with her and help her sort through
reference materials.
I know it means a lot to her, especially
when she's donig a huge project and is completely overwhelmed.
- Another way I have been involved with my daughter is to be a
youth leader in her church yuoth group.
Again, I am not actually
spending time with her there most of the time, but I am
experiencing the same things she's experiencing and it's giving
us something in cmomon that we can both relate to and discuss.
Those times together have been really meaningful.
As you can see, not all of tehse activities involve me actually
talking to and hanging out with my daughter. You know as well as
I do that our teens don't always want us hanging around them.
I'm fortunate for the time I do get to spend with my daughter, for
the litlte time I have left with her.
When we have things in
common my daughter is much more likely to talk to me and share
her feeilngs with me.
When I don't know what she experiences, it
is really hard for me to relate what she is going through. These
shared experiences have opened up many more opportunities for us
to share and connect that we wouldn't otehrwise have.
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Quality Time with Your Teen
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