Ideas for Planning a Teen Summer
Explore Local Opportunities, Mentorships and New Interests
May 15, 2007
Middle school moms everywhere are faced with the challenge of finding engaging activities for their unengaged tweens (preteens). Summer camps were fun last year, but tweens are “too old” for those kid camps this summer. Here are a few ideas for keeping your tween off the couch and out of your hair for a few months.
Identify interests. Schedule a trip to the local book store in the coming weeks.
- Give your tween the opportunity to pick out 2-3 magazines.
- Return 2-3 times in the following weeks and offer the same opportunity with one caveat.
- He must pick out a different magazine each time your visit.
- Eventually the selection within a certain category runs out and he will need to explore another interest. When summer hits your tween will have a bounty of information to explore, including a few new interests.
Connect interests with action. Put your bookstore dollars to use by having your tween send an email, write a letter or call someone from the magazine. Most articles include contact information for either the writer or the person featured in the article. These initial inquiries can lead to incredible opportunities. One tween’s passion for running and initial letter resulted in an invitation from a featured runner to attend an upcoming event. She registered for the junior division and met the professional runner afterwards for lunch. From that moment on her summer was a race to learn as much as she could about running before the upcoming fall track season.
Take a day trip.
- Community centers and church organizations regularly schedule day trips to nearby amusement parks and sporting events.
- In exchange for mentoring of a younger group of children your tween can typically participate for free.
- Day trips break up the monotony of a summer routine and can be just the thing to spark an interest in community service work.
Explore local opportunities. This idea requires some lead work on your part before your tween gets involved.
- Visit a handful of the local businesses within a two-mile radius of your home. Identify potential opportunities for part time work, internships or volunteering.
- Tweens with less flexibility in their schedule might be better suited for volunteering where the commitment is less demanding than a part time job might be.
- When you have a few promising leads, present them to your tween as options for the coming summer months.
- Most high schools and now some middle schools require community service hours in order to graduate. Staying local has the added benefit of teaching your tween how to be responsible for arriving on time to his commitments. Remind him of the connection between responsibility and independence.
Read more about engaging teens during the summer here.
