January 5, 2010
Five fun ways to win back your tween
Bust through the “I’m-too-cool-for-you” exterior and reconnect with your budding teenager
Here are a few ideas to get ya started:
1. A family that blogs together …
Teens love to be online, so use their tech-savvy tendencies for good. Encourage your kids to post funny family stories, favorite artwork or photos and tales of life in Tween-ville. Nothing is off limits, but you get final editorial approval. There are several sites where you can quickly create a web-log for free (Blogger.com and wordpress.com are two of my favorites).
2. Hire them as your personal stylist (for a day).
Invite your budding fashion icon into your closet for an episode of your very own reality series titled: “Make My Mom Hip.” Ask them to help you sort through and pitch the out-of-style stuff and then create cool outfits with what’s left.
3. Form a rock band.
We recently received Rock Band for our gaming system and it’s been life-changing. You gotta dig a video game that allows you to unabashedly rock-out with your whole family. And my 12-year-old thinks I do “epic vocals” on Taylor Swift’s “Love Story.”
4. Instead of Facebook, stick your faces-in-a-book.
If you don’t have time for a full-fledged parent/child book club, create a club for two. Choose a book your tween is dying to read, go to the library and get a couple copies and read it simultaneously. Discuss as you go and/or have a special end-of-book meeting when you’ve both finished. (Check out Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech for girls and The Diamond Brother series by Anthony Horowitz for boys.)
5. Take your girls to the spa without leaving home.
My friend Suzanne, who has three teenaged girls, says they LOVE it when she sets up a mani/pedi/facial spa in their own home. She sets aside a few hours and serves up spa treatments and mother/daughter bonding with a smile.
Anybody else out there in Teenville have anything to add?
In 10 short months my little dude moves from tween to teen, and I’m stocking up all the info. I can now. Kinda like we did with powdered milk and gas masks in 1999.
*This article was reprinted from January’s Chicago Parent Magazine.
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Honey, enjoy him while you can, cause mine just turned 13 and with it became this other unrecognizable creature with smelly feet and grizzly creature-like habits and moods. There are only small glimmers of the 12 year old in there when he lets his guard down.
Oh HEAVENS!!
think I’ll start praying nightly now for God’s amazing grace.
It is SO pay-back for what we did to your folks at that age….you reap what you sow huh?
PRAY very hard:)
Payback for sure! I remember nightly telling my mom that dinner was “gross” and I didn’t even mean it or realize I was doing it until she mentioned it (not so nicely).
girl…you look WAY too young to have a tween!! my mom was soooo uncool when i was 13-14. Max wins! i love the book club idea and am going to do that NOW with chloe. we can be like oil and water sometimes so that would be perfect. do you think she’d like wuthering heights?