Times sure have changed. I wasn't really bored in the summer as a tween or a teen. Especially as a tween, I was still full on running around playing with my friends. I just saw a new piece on board they are in the summer and how hard it is for parents to keep them occupied. Not at all what I experienced growing up.

My 14 year old is home. We spent one week visiting family, one week a family vacation, and two weeks of visiting grandparents. The rest of the time she'll occasionally go out on her own, but she's not in touch with friends, and lots of them are away for part/most of summer anyway. She has done some cooking, some shopping, and goes to the gym every so often. Too much screen time. But she's not as miserable as during the school year.

My kid pretty much did -

CIT or other resume building volunteering,
Travel abroad,
Chill days,
Scholastic and EC competitions
academic classes, sports classe and being tutored for next year, 1st quarter.

Swimming, restaurants, movies were build into most weeks.

I think the prob is it's either online all day or nothing. My kids are 12 and 14 and this is the first summer I've not really scheduled them full. They have 3 day camps each, we did a lot of traveling but for the most part they have 5 weeks of nothing. A couple PT sports sessions for younger and a couple tutoring sessions for older and I managed to find volunteer work for them for 1/2 a wk but beyond that their friends aren't around and we don't have a pool membership.

I don't regret it in that I don't want to spend the money for camps every week but I do think it's hard when private schools allow for 13 weeks of summer to fill! I mean you can only organize food pantries for so many days in volunteering

Next summer I'd really like to find maybe more structured volunteering activities for them. For us, summer is hard as the boredom is pretty bad - I mean unless I just let them be on screens 10 hours every day!

Anonymous wrote:Yup, that's how my kids were at that age. They had some sports camps here and there, but those were mainly in the evening.

But that said, nothing wrong with the CIT and volunteering. My kids -- now 17 and 20, still try to convince me that their friends aren't doing what we "make" them do. They both have summer jobs, but then we expect help on the weekends and here and there around our house and yard and apparently none of their friends have to do that!

*I should add that neither of their summer jobs are 40 hour work weeks, more like 20-25 hours a week.

Yup, that's how my kids were at that age. They had some sports camps here and there, but those were mainly in the evening.

But that said, nothing wrong with the CIT and volunteering. My kids -- now 17 and 20, still try to convince me that their friends aren't doing what we "make" them do. They both have summer jobs, but then we expect help on the weekends and here and there around our house and yard and apparently none of their friends have to do that!

I'm really surprised that it seems like so many kids don't live anywhere where they have easy access to friends/others kids. I could see how that might get a little boring.

It's a really hard age. I really wanted my 14 year old to find a job or volunteer, but those options are extremely slim to none. She does get herself up each morning and rides her bike to swim team, where she has practice and then junior coaches for 2 hours. She's also taking an online HS course (let's say she spends 1-2 hours on that daily) to knock out some credits before she starts high school.

Beyond that, she watches tv and complains about being bored (and also having no money).

If anyone knows of good volunteer opps, that would be great to know. Most things we looked into really required kids to be at least 18.

As an only child I just remember counting the seconds until I'd be left home alone. I'd then be on a mission to enjoy "me" time as often as possible, break my record for number of sessions, experiment with all sorts of interesting household items, and do it in every room of the house, especially my parent's jacuzzi tub with the jets. Women in this forum know what I'm talking about because they did it too. So I was very much not doing nothing. I was in fact quite busy. And if I wasn't "busy" I'd be eagerly anticipating when I'd be busy again. The more time between sessions, the more hormonal and angsty I got in ways only a tween girl can.

My 15 year old has three weeks of sleep away camp, two weeks of vacation and then HS fall sports start. The few days between camp and vacation have been down time.

I’m not a pushy tiger mom who ever over scheduled hot kids, but I’d say my kids are happiest when they are busy, especially my oldest. Remember they are kids of the pandemic - my oldest was in 7th grade at the height of that and it was basically a year or more of forced nothing or close to nothing. She was pretty miserable.

My kids do wander the neighborhood with friends but it’s not like when we were kids and you would run with whatever neighbor kids who were out. I wish it was still like that. Structured activities are often with my 14 yo friends and then they plan social stuff around it.

My kids don’t do a lot. They are too old for camp and too young to work.

They hang out with friends and go to the pool.

They do swim team so they swim in the morning and in the afternoon. They volunteer on the team.

They enjoy these lazy summer days. I WFH and go to the pool with them sometimes and we have pizza or go out for lunch or ice cream. We’ve gone to the movies or go to the mall.

They are enjoying their summer. It goes by really fast.