What have you done with your teens this summer?

[user1483390742]

Apart from our family holiday and bowling a couple of times, i feel as though i have not done anything with them! When they were younger i was Supermum- picnics, parks, swimming, meet ups with friends etc. The only thing they want to do with me now is go shopping in London £££££, which we have done once.
I know it's natural that they should love their phones and xboxes more than me at this stage, but i'd love to do some cheapish stuff before they head back to school.
Any ideas???

I share your frustration.

We've done very little together, other than a couple of cinema trips and a day's bike hire. They want to hang out with their mates, and when we're at home I'm surplus to requirements

Tween and teen here

Two weeks abroad
Outdoor swimming pool when it was sunny
Outdoor cinema
London park with friends (inc picnic and shopping)
Sleepovers inc them food shopping then cooking for us
Indoor cinema
They’ve met up with friends without me a bit - for mooching, watching sport etc

Some things DH has done with DS (13 yrs old) this summer
I suppose if your teenagers are older, some these won't be suitable and to be honest it is hard to find cheap things that appeal to teenagers

What DH does at the beginning of every summer is make a list of 'family' things that we could do over the summer and DS goes through the list saying what he is interested in. Then the list lives on the fridges and we sort of pick things to go with whatever else whe have planned for the day. I have done less with DS as I have been home less (DH has more leave left and can work from home a lot more)

We do however have a lot of 'doing nothing/lounging around days"'

Things that cost more

• Video Games day (this was a 10-3pm paid for thing for DS only with other 13-17 year olds)
• Visit to museum of computing (half a day with DH)

• Air rifle session (with DH)
• A couple of shopping trips *(mostly with me)
• Karting - with DH
• Ten pin bowling

Things that cost (a bit) less
-Cinema trip- to see Ant man (with me)- Mondays is quite cheap at my local (£4.00 each but obviously costs more with more children)

• Crazy golf - locally (with DH)

• Vist to local rainforest centre with DH (This was sweet as DS suggested it, he remembered enjoying it in primary school but the visit only lasted an hour or so as DS said it was much smaller than he remembered. We told him, it was him who had gotten bigger!!)

-Making an animation film (DS and DH do this together quite often)

• Playing hide and seek around the local neighbourhood in the rain (DS and DH did this at DS's suggestion). They were out for about an hour!!

• Visit his grandmother in her care home and take her out for a walk and tea and cake etc (all three of us - just the once in the summer as not exactly fun for DS, I visit every week on my own)

-Vist local gaming shop and play with DH

• Visit local free modern art museum (DS loves weird things and modern art comes under that heading for him)

We had a week away in the UK, visiting family not the most exciting holiday but DS went sailing with DH and his uncle so enjoyed that on one day. We are also about to visit Amsterdam on the train for 4 days.

DS has also had to do some maths homework every day and writing practice every day as his handwriting is so poor(Mon to Fri). He had to pick three English tasks set for over the summer, one of which was read a book and watch the film and then explain what the diffferences were and which was better etc. We decided to do that as a family so we all read the book and watched the fimm together and then talked about it. DS got to pick the book/film ('Do Androids dream of electric sheep' and 'Blade Runner')