Time spent with your teen over the summer can be time well spent. Fun should be a focus for time spent together. Your teen and you can bond by engaging in fun activities. And fun can be a great tool for learning valuable lessons.
Look around your community - many agencies sponsor recreational and educational activities all summer. Our local community in Fort Worth has a wealth of activities such as summer plays, concerts in the garden, and museum displays. All of these activities are enjoyable and educational as well.
Your teen can learn how to have fun at home and learn how to manage the financial aspects of fun as well. Many activities are free - summer plays provided by schools being one example - or are low cost. Develop a budget with your teen and let him or her find activities to enjoy with you. Your teen can begin to learn how to stretch his money in a productive way and still have a good time.
How else should summer count? We have talked about fun and time spent together. Service is another important way to make summer count. Help your teen find a volunteer opportunity and help him develop a plan as to how he will help others through this activity. Local hospitals, churches, and charity organizations are good places to start.
And one other thought... Summer is a great time to help your teen learn practical life skills. I am talking laundry, cooking, cleaning, and yard work. Encourage them to learn how to manage these skills as preparation to be self-sufficient when they graduate from high school. Believe it or not, I encounter college freshmen every year who don't know how to operate a washing machine.
One of our jobs as a parent is to help our teen learn how to balance fun, learning, and self-sufficiency. And summer is a great time for us to take on those tasks with our teens.
Debra Atkisson Kowalski, M.D.
The time you spend at the office may be the most stressful part of your day, but it doesn't have to be. You have a greater ability to shape your office environment than you may realize.
Posted by: coach sale | 06/24/2010 at 09:57 PM
I always save junk VCR's, vacuum cleaners, broken lawn mowers, etc. My sons & I have had many happy hours, while I was overhauling the lawnmower, and they used their own tool kit to take all the screws, nuts, switches, etc, out of their own "project" in order to salvage parts. The joy was redoubled when I later needed a screw, and they said, "Dad, I think I have one of those screws in my kit." Those were the times when we had our conversations that led to deep, character building talks, and developing trust in one another, as well as teaching practical skills and teaching how the machines worked.
Posted by: C. Dwayne Shafer, MD, PhD | 07/04/2010 at 08:53 PM