yes to some degree.

DD is 13 and she finds all kinds of ways to entertain herself without a screen. She bakes she does crafts, she does nails and hair and fashion related stuff, etc

DS is 12 and he still loves Lego so he does play with that quite a bit. He also loves sports statistics so he has lots of books on sport stats that he pours over. In the non winter weather he is outside riding his bike quite a bit and he and his friends play on the trampoline. He hates the cold/snow though so in the winter he is mostly inside and on the computer / video games / tv during his down time if not doing Lego/Sport stats.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but we keep running out of Kleenex.

...thanks! I'll be here all week.

I feel like your joke got lost in the thread. I just wanted you to know that I appreciated it!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do any of your kids just go............outside........and....play?

I would LOVE my kids to go out and play but no one is ever home because parents put their kids in 5 activities a week. I agree about boredom. If only tiger moms would stop over scheduling their kids and helicopter moms would let their tween/teens outside on their own. We are depriving our kids of so much by scheduling their every move or screens in their face. Seriously. Kids need more autonomy and free time.

My sons are in "5 activites a week" and they always play outside. They play manhunt, basketball, street hockey, soccer, go to the creek, fish at the local pond. The original question was what do they do to "entertain themselves" and I would only say my son will walk the dog and read a magazine or the sports page. But "play out side" all the time.

Most kids that do sports are home by 8pm ... except hockey (teens get the later ice time), they are teens so they are out and about until 10 or 11 on the weekend. I think 8-11 with friends is enough hang out time.

Anonymous wrote:Why is it so hard for so many of you to just say no to screen time, at all?

I do say no. Every now and then, I declare the day is a screen-free day. And we have no screen use at dinner, or on family vacations (with some exceptions)

But aside from that, why should I limit my teen's screen time? He goes to school from 8:30 (bus arrives) to 5 PM (bus drops off) 5 days a week, comes home and does homework for about an hour, eats dinner for 30 minutes, and attends 4 before or after school activities.

Weekends he does outings with Boy Scouts, plays in a sport, does more homework.

So for free time.... he uses his laptop. He plays interactive games like Minecraft or some other games; lately he's been watching YouTube videos to learn magic tricks with cards; he watches Netflix movies with me and his sister; he Skypes with his team mates on one of the after school projects he's working on; he taught himself how to use Photoshop; and he's teaching himself how to build a website for his Boy Scout troop.

Why should I limit this?

Why is it so hard for so many of you to just say no to screen time, at all?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do any of your kids just go............outside........and....play?

I would LOVE my kids to go out and play but no one is ever home because parents put their kids in 5 activities a week. I agree about boredom. If only tiger moms would stop over scheduling their kids and helicopter moms would let their tween/teens outside on their own. We are depriving our kids of so much by scheduling their every move or screens in their face. Seriously. Kids need more autonomy and free time.

Well, my kid and I went on an unscheduled bike ride today. We passed a few teens he knew hanging out and playing ball in the street (no traffic here, so fine). We rode past a park and there were more teens on the b-ball courts. I happen to know that the boys in question are in a few scheduled activities a week and that their parents are not the driving force behind signing them up.

And, FYI: never use the word "play" with tweens and older. They "hang out"

OP, our neighborhood is a ghost town. I have my daughter bring home a friend from school at least 2-3x a week to just hang out. I also welcome sleepovers all the time. The reason is twofold. The girls play games, go to the park, play basketball, etc... And I get to know her friends.

Maybe think about having a friend come home on the bus with him a few times a week and offer to bring them him home by dinner.

I'm the OP. To address a PP, my DS is welcome to go outside and play at will, which he often does. But that is often limited to playing with a significantly younger brother, as neighborhood kids are all girls, most *much* younger. My original question really came from the frustration of him having been cooped up in the house one day, and not really doing anything that didn't involve wanting to watch TV, play video games, or Skype his friends. He has limited screen time on a normal basis, but I'm beginning to wonder whether he's capable of entertaining himself in 'old-fashioned' ways during times when he can't have access. His younger brother seems able to, so I was curious about others--is it his age, his personality, or a combination? Seems to be a bit of both. He's not much of a reader, in spite of being a good student. We play games as a family a lot, but that doesn't help when he's on his own, bored.

Anyway, thank you to everyone for posting what your kids are like. I wasn't really looking for advice, just wondering what others' experiences were.

Anonymous wrote:Do any of your kids just go............outside........and....play?

I'm the "wrestle with the dog" poster above.

The question was, what does your 13 year old do to entertain themselves . . . at home.

My kid certainly does things outside, but then he's outside, he's not "at home".

Having said that, this is the age when there are 3 major shifts in how most kids spend their time. The first is that most teenagers do fewer things more intensively than younger kids. They start to figure out what interests them, and put a lot of time into a handful of things. My son, for example, has moved from dabbling in a bunch of sports to playing or training for 1 sport year round. The same is true with his involvement in the arts and community service, he is involved in fewer things, but the things he does do take up more of his time.

The second is that there's a shift from a lot of time spent on "play" to activities that are more goal directed, like studying, helping with housework, working out for a sport, taking care of a pet, volunteering, preparing for a play or a performance, earning money at a job etc . . . There's less down time where kids are "entertaining themselves", and more time when they're "working", even if the things they're working on are things they selected and enjoy.

Finally, this is the age when kids become very peer focused. If my son does have downtime, his first choice is to spend it with his friends, whether that's hanging out in the park or our local "downtown" area, or meeting up online to play video games.

Anonymous wrote:Do any of your kids just go............outside........and....play?

I would LOVE my kids to go out and play but no one is ever home because parents put their kids in 5 activities a week. I agree about boredom. If only tiger moms would stop over scheduling their kids and helicopter moms would let their tween/teens outside on their own. We are depriving our kids of so much by scheduling their every move or screens in their face. Seriously. Kids need more autonomy and free time.

My 14 yr old will go to the park with a friend but never by himself. At home his first choice is always screens but when he's used up his allotted time he will build something with Lego Mindstorms robotics.

Do any of your kids just go............outside........and....play?

Don't yet have a 13 year old but my tween is constantly reading books if he's not on the screen. We limit screen time to 2 hours/day on weekends and none during the school week (helps immensely with his behavior). He also likes to play board games with a sibling or parents and still builds stuff (legos, model airplanes, erector sets) and when it's warm likes to play ball or ride his bike outside. Hoping this lasts when he does hit his teen years. I'd be really sad if my kids grew up and never read on their own.

Agree with previous poster that being bored is not a bad thing as long as it doesn't lead to destructiveness. Most psychologists will agree - kids need to learn to deal with boredom. Also, boredom can lead to creativity.

Being "bored" isn't a bad thing so long as they're not finding destructive ways to end the boredom. So, if he's complaining of boredom when there's no tv/electrons around just look at him and say "I'm positive you can find some way of entertaining yourself" and leave it at that.