How are your teens doing? How can we help them stay connected with friends?

[MadamFlutterby]

Just this, really.

This time round my teen is struggling - I'm looking for ideas to suggest how he can stay connected with his pals.

Fleetingly thinking about one of those online escape rooms where they can collaborate together via zooms or something. Has anyone tried this?

Any other ideas welcome just so I can gently support him and give suggestions.

DS games with his friends and runs an online youth group. The youth group have a lot of quizzes. So he speaks to them every day still and they are doing an activity together.

He is playing a lot but says once lockdown is over he will go back to hardly ever gaming, it’s just something to do. We also game together sometimes.

Same really, DS(16) and his mates game a lot, but often things like Pictionary or chess rather than the usual shoot 'em up or racing games. They do also meet regularly online to chat, but one of the mums is a teacher and I think has been very proactive in encouraging this as I'm sure they wouldn't have independently organised it.

He still has Explorers via Zoom and has his guitar lessons via Skype. He's not physically seen any of his friends since a couple of weeks before Christmas when he had to go into self isolation.

It's hard but we talk a lot about once this is over. We have a big holiday planned, and aside from that I've made it clear that we are happy for him not to be in the house at all over the summer holidays. He will have two summers worth of stuff to do and we expect him to get on with it and make up for lost time.