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[quote=Anonymous]OP, is your teen a freshman this school year? New to high school? If so, have you talked with her about what her homework entails?

I do totally understand how you feel, OP. My own DD (sophomore) also vanishes and is vanished much of the weekend as well. I know she's working on schoolwork most of the time (someone likely will post along the lines of "ha, she's not working!" but I know what her homework load is like, and she has an extracurricular that takes a lot of time after school three days a week plus much of Saturday, so she has to spend much of the rest of her time on homework as she takes some pretty rigorous classes.).

We miss our DD during the week as well! I can picture exactly what you mean. But I hope you can see why it is probably impractical and inefficient for your DD to do homework while also "keeping you company" in the kitchen or another "public" space at home. The stuff teens are expected to do is tougher than we remember -- there are a lot of projects, and in my DD's program there are almost daily quizzes in one class, frequent projects in another, the math is not her strength so that requires a lot of focus, there's a lot of writing of essays and research papers, etc. It's a whole different world from middle school. I can't see my DD doing the writing she has to do, for instance, with the distraction of my being there making dinner or a sibling asking her "What are you doing?" etc. Chat with your DD -- at a time she's not doing homework -- and ask her about the day to day assignment load. I know -- it seems easy to have her just doing at least some homework in the kitchen or whatever, but maybe she feels that would be too busy for her to focus.

As for finding time with her, does she have activities to which you're driving her? I find that drives to and from DD's main extracurricular are a huge help in allowing me to check in with her and see how her day has gone. She's usually pretty chatty in the car. If you're not driving your DD places much during the week, can you make that happen more? On weekends, if she's not doing an extracurricular, can you and your spouse and other child create a family night on Fridays, maybe, where each week one kid picks the movie or a game to play? We sometimes just designate things like "This Friday we're going to watch X together and picnic in front of the movie" or "Sunday we'll make dinner together." It may take you a little more planning and scheduling of things that seem to you like they should be happening casually instead. But if your DD is doing well in school with the schedule she now sets for herself, I wouldn't advocate pressing her to work where the rest of the family is busy and talking. [/quote]

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