| What's your plan for your child's summer? | July 22, 1998 |
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The high schools are out for the summer. A great, unsupervised stretch of time for many teens began about four weeks ago. Do you know where your adolescents are and what they're doing this summer? They're planning to hang out, swim, sun, drive, smoke, attend and host parties, and, if they can talk you into it, go camping with friends. That's their plan. What's yours? Are you able to keep track of them? Will they join you on family vacation? Are they working for you or someone else? Rising before noon? Sleeping before dawn? Attending summer school or camp? School is a wonderful assistant in structuring time and monitoring activity. You and your children are without this support for the summer. You will have to create your own structure. You will also have to monitor its effectiveness. How would you like your summer to be? What do you need your children to provide so your summer is relaxed, fun, safe and stress-free? What are the criteria for membership in your family this summer? Parents have the ability to create a plan for the entire family for the summer. You can map out each member's responsibilities, duties, free time, and rewards for contributing toward family enjoyment. If taking charge of your home for the summer is a new activity for you, you may encounter some resistance from your adolescent. The best approach may be to begin with a meeting of all family members. As a family map, out the highlights of the time before school starts again to get some idea about each family member's priorities. All families have baseline events upon which to build a summer schedule: summer school, scheduled vacations, family reunions and unplanned time. Families with cottages may seem to have a built-in plan. However, many parents who feel the cottage is a safe getaway for the entire family could spend the summer getting to know the local police or explaining their teen's behaviour to previously congenial neighbours. Be sure to monitor the beer, the boats and the new friends. Many adolescents feel they worked hard at school and deserve some leisure. They do. Adding structure to vacation and activities doesn't prevent enjoyment and can even add to the goal of making the most of the summer. Once you have a workable schedule in place, move on to phase two: monitoring the interpretation of the schedule and their responsibilities. "I'm sleeping over at Beth's" should be followed up with a call to Beth's parents. "I'm going camping with Sam and his dad," means a call to his parents to find out about cost sharing, itinerary and time frame. "We're going into Toronto for a concert" requires eyeballing tickets, reviewing arrangements for rides and setting a reasonable curfew. If your question "Where are you going?' is met with 'We're just going to hang out', hold them to a time frame of two hours. If they're spending a lot of time 'hanging out' and getting in really late, take a walk around your neighbourhood with other parents. Look for possible party spots such as dense areas of bush or woods and overpasses. Adolescents like to go out at night. It's more exciting, you can conceal more behaviour and it reduces the number of witnesses. When you're under 19 it also takes most of the evening to plan and to procure booze or dope and transportation. A familiar complaint parents hear is 'I can't have a midnight curfew, things are just getting started by then.' A reasonable curfew should allow two hours for movie or hanging out and another two hours of drifting home or an impromptu gathering at someone's house. Also don't fall for the 'I've been home all day with you, now I need time to spend with my friends', especially if they've awakened at noon and been secluded in their room until 7:30 p.m. They do need to spend time with their friends but it needs to be balanced with interactive family time, including eye contact, household chores and attendance at meals. You may be tempted to leave your adolescents alone or in the 'capable' hands of a young adult or older sibling while you vacation. This can be a recipe for trouble should a young adult see nothing wrong with sharing booze or drugs with a minor. It's also a good idea to determine what consequences parents will bring to bear when their children or others use drugs in their home. It may help to think back to your teenage years. What prevented you from having an 'endless summer': fear of being broke, inability to live independently, or the understanding that leisure is not a right but a reward?  Back to the articles menu
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