Aibu for saying dd14 has to have a hobby

I think a lot of of these ‘leave her alone!’ posts come from people without teens, with no concept of the absolute pandemic of phone addiction and the losing battle to preserve kids’ attention, brain function and mental health.

It’s horrifying, honestly, the amount of time teens spend alone on their phones or proximate to other teens on their phones. A 14 year old needs rules and boundaries. Sure she can quit her hobby but OP insists she finds another of her choice so it’s productive, phone free time. It’s also one afternoon a week (leaving four, plus a whole weekend!!)

If she was simply going to waft around the house bored (like pre-internet we’d have had to) it would be fair enough to say let her find ways to amuse herself (art, reading, whatever). Or if she was obsessed with coding and building her own software or something with her internet access, even. But that won’t happen based on the addictive and mindless behaviour around the phone OP describes.

I feel so sorrt for your kid. How the hell is she going to be able to explore her interests and find something she is actually passionate about, when her energy and time is going into having to manage your expectations and keepong you happy? You're directing her effort into the wrong direction entirely. You're controlling her enjoyment, even. You're making enjoyment pressured and anxiety inducing.

Let her discover for herself and stop putting down weird ass rules about it.

I am constantly grateful that the teens in my wider family have a range of hobbies - dance & netball, coding & hockey & playing trumpet, piano & chess etc
Its taken a decent slug of parental encouragement along the way to get them to that point but now they commit and choose to practise. I think it helps if they start young (by age 8) and just stick with 2 or 3 things that they build to a decent standard rather than dipping into anything and everything without acquiring proficiency at any

Being forced to do something isn't a hobby. If you want her to have a hobby, and I agree it's good for teens to have one, then you need to go to serious effort to help her find one. I have a pretty strict rule that my son has to have a physical hobby and he's yet to find a team sport he enjoys. (I say yet, but obviously he might never.) But he's very physical, I got us membership of a gym with a pool, so he can go swimming a few times a week. We skate together, do wall climbing, long bike rides and are training to do a 5km, with a sub 30minute goal, in the autumn. He loves all of those things. He recently left a hobby, because he didn't like the culture of the group, which is fair enough. If I pushed him to do any activity after he stopped enjoying it, he'd come to resent it and that resentment would lead to other things.

But because I not just put the effort into finding things he enjoys, but also do them with him, I'm hoping that we might find something that sticks for the two of us, that we can share into his adulthood.

God I'd want at least one. You have correctly identified that the kids who have few/no hobbies do often spend all their time scrolling.

Reduce the screen time. Just get family link in her phone and limit it so she simply can't be on it constantly. 3 hours a day max

I would agree that they need something outside of school and the home but I do think if they don't like the current one they should be able to swap.
My 14yr old son currently has Jiu Jitsu, Rugby and Keyboard lessons. These mainly stop over the summer so I have also got him gym membership to use over the holidays.
I'm starting to think he's ND and have noticed that when he doesn't leave the house the weekend he struggles to regulate his emotions and gets really upset/angry by Sunday night. He used his gym membership for the first time last Sunday and Sunday night was more peaceful. I have found over the years that a bad day at school can sometime be made better by a good session at whatevery hobby the child does.

No - teen years are a time for kids to have space not parents insisting on non essential things

I worked a couple of hours in the week, Saturdays and holidays and I had a very time consuming hobby during sixth form. My Mum insisted that I was always ‘doing’.

I was permanently shattered or ill. Ended up with okay A level grades but not great. I could have done much better if I had time to recover/concentrate on school work. Turns out I’m an introverted autistic so definitely needed downtime.

I totally agree with you. I yearned die a dog at that age and I was a rather rebellious child at 14. My mum persuaded my (non dog loving dad) to allow me a dog to maybe 'calm me down' and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I loved nature from being 3 but my mother seemed blissfully ignorant to this until I became 'difficult' due to hanging out with the wrong people at school. If she'd nurtured me differently, instead of forcing me to go to Guides, which I just used to nick off from, I'd probably be an animal behaviourist or a vet now 🙁

One thing that sticks out to me is that she argues with her coaches and can’t take feedback. This could be a sign of fragile self esteem…or an arsey attitude, like she has with you. Coaches shouldn’t shout at her for sure, but if she’s argumentative and won’t listen I can see why they’d get frustrated with her.

Competitive activities build resilience (you can’t always win and need to get comfortable with this) and should also teach the importance of practice to get improvement. If she’s refusing to engage she’s not even giving it a chance to be enjoyable. She may be self sabotaging so you let her quit.

Her behaviour doesn’t sound great in general, and you are very forgiving.

I know you've said she left Guides, but would she consider volunteering at a younger group (Brownies/Rainbows)? Only 1 evening a week, and can be very fun and low pressure. I volunteer at a Brownie unit and we have several Young Leaders (14-18). The Brownies really look up to them, so might be a nice self esteem boost too, she'd be a really positive role model for them.

In terms of ideas, we have had:

Beavers/Cubs/scouts/explorers
Music lessons
Badminton (v popular)
Pokémon
Riding
Gymnastics
Rowing
Climbing
Sailing

The ones that have stuck:

DD (14, nearly 15): rowing. She now trains 5 days out of 7 and is normally at the gym the other days, so has dropped most others. Plus competing at weekends. Used to sail a few times a week and play netball, but rowing consumes her now.

DS (13): rowing, 3 nights a week with a competition on the weekend at the time of year. When no competition, climbing. I suspect the latter will be his 'thing' long term and his weekends will move towards that more, but he has rowing commitments this year.

Also, badminton with school friends, they meet every week and through the holidays. DH often plays with him too. He likes music as well, but only wants in school lessons at the mo.

DS (7): Beavers, cricket (over the summer) and is trying his best to do karate. He's quite an anxious chap and is determined to do it, so for 6 weeks or so we have sat at the side of the class watching and waiting for him to feel confident enough to have a go!

Scouting. (Explorers).

really enjoys the independence they offer, and the friendship group she’s made there.

They tried a LOT of things, many were just for a few weeks because they were taster courses kind of thing.

School clubs, Guides/Scouts/Explorers, climbing wall, trampolining, archery, art club at the local library (sketching and watercolours) badminton, youth drama group, coding club, tabletop games group, volunteering at Rainbows/Beavers/Forest School, zine making course at local art centre, animation class, 3 month film making course, sewing class, volunteering at food bank collections, helping at a community garden project, DofE, dog walking.

It’s not. It’s this not making kids do anything attitude that’s helped to create the epidemic of mental health problems we see in teenagers.

I think life is so different now from when we were kids. The option to sit in your room scrolling was not there when we were young and it is an absolute menace.

I agree with your approach OP. I'd also look at doing stuff together within the home that is a practical life skill (eg teaching her to cook, iron, DIY) and some in home exercise on youtube like yoga or pilates.

Do you have somewhere you could set up a jigsaw puzzle and perhaps entice her to put a few pieces in from time to time.

You say she likes art. Can you find a pottery class or similar and go to that together. Keep her going with the existing hobby but also look for other opportunities to encourage her to try new things.

Of course. Doing nothing can recharge you.

Doomscrolling does not recharge you.

By "nothing" I meant not having a strict schedule of "hobbies" to do.
If that makes sense.

Seems like you're setting her up for a life of doing neither. She's not going to suddenly start loving the things you force her to do and she's not going to magically start pushing herself to do more when she leaves home if you've spent years nagging her to.

By demonising her chilling at home you are pushing her towards it.

She sounds completely overwhelmed and burnt out. Can I suggest you look at some better coping strategies for ADHD before adding more pressure.

I'm 51 and only just recently diagnosed, looks back my teenage years were the worst, The combination of hormones and the constant noise in my head drove me crazy. I was permanently overwhelmed which would make me paralysed, causing procrastination. It was worse after pregnancy, before my period and latterly menopause. I have always struggled with keeping the house tidy, I really find it ridiculously difficult and don't know where to start. I also struggle with competitive hobbies. It takes me a long time to learn something new as it's difficult to concentrate, I just feel stupid and being shouted at or ribbed by friends just makes me feel rejected.

Have a good look into how you can help her. Learn how ADHD affects girls. She's not doing it on purpose.

And for what it's worth I do understand why you don't want her hanging out in the park, she will be very vulnerable and likely to be a people pleaser just to fit in. Peer pressure is difficult enough at this age without the added minefield of ADHD.

Good Luck 💐

I cannot see the comment from you about ADHD but please be mindful that a child / teenager with this can actually be overwhelmed and parents think they are lazy !
My son that I referred to in recent post has ADHD . Too much stimulation,regardless of his intelligence was too much for him as a teenager.
You have said you have ADHD but everyone regardless of their diagnosis are all different .

2 hours free from screen time is NOT enough. She needs a limit of say an hour on it per day.

Doing nothing is one thing. Endlessly scrolling is another - it actively stops you doing anything.

Totally with you OP and not unreasonable to insist she has one thing that gives her routine and gets her out. I think that’s pretty important for anyone to be honest.