Ungrateful Teens on Florida holiday

[WatermelonWaveclub]

I brought my 3 teens (18, 16 and 13) to Florida to celebrate my eldest's 18th. Honestly it has been a nightmare. Every morning they refuse to get up. We end up leaving for the day's activity hours late. At least one usually refuses to come. Then we end up rushing around with the youngest upset we don't have time to do everything they want. When we get home late and I just want to sleep I am expected to sort food for whoever stayed back at the hotel. Then they stay up late keeping me awake. I'm exhausted!

The main thing they seem to want to do is stay in bed on their phones! Noone seems to worry about wasting a lot of money on activities they don't attend or any thought to making the most of a holiday they are very lucky to be on! No care about me missing out on things I'd like to do or their sibling would like to do. They were fully aware of what the holiday would involve and said they would like to go on the holiday. For example they knew there would be a lot of swimming. One has point blank refused to swim and the other 2 will swim hypothetically but have not once been in the hotel pool with me in almost a week and both just layed on sunloungers on their phones at the water park yesterday.

How would you deal with this situation?

Also to add to my post (been thinking of you as I know how hard it is). You could use this as a chance to teach them compromise.

Have a conversation about the fact you planned a holiday based on the assumption they would be up by x o clock. Tell them it's become clear that they need more time in bed but that you are a family and need to find a happy medium. Ask them to commit to a time they will be up and dressed by and tell them the consequences if they aren't. Make it clear you're meeting in the middle. Secretly allow a least an extra 30 min on top of this.

As for the swimming, my teenagers often find swimming pools quite overwhelming and feel pretty self conscious. Remember they are probably struggling with body image and not really knowing how to act in a pool as they aren't yet full adults but also don't want to look silly jumping around in the pool like young children. I'd just let them be with that one personally.

If phones are a big issue, how about enforcing a 'screen free afternoon' for everyone, no shaming or calling people out. Just say you want to try as feel they can be very distracting.

YABU for taking them out of school/college for a holiday they aren't interested in.

My friend took her two teenage girls on an expensive two week holiday to Mauritius. She said they moped and looked at their phones all day. They were miserable. No sooner had they got home they rushed out - she passed them in her car, sitting on the wall outside The CoOp smiling and laughing with friends. That was the happiest they had been since the beginning of the holiday. She learnt a valuable lesson that day.

When you fly East to West the jet lag gets you up at silly o'clock. They should be queuing an hour before the attractions open if it's jet lag to blame.

I remember one family holiday when my sister was a teen and all she wanted to do was stay in the room and read or phone her girlfriend. I wasn’t a normal teen so I wanted to do all the activities and make the most of it. My parents were very peed odd that she missed most of an expensive holiday and it led so some major rowing and resentment, but ultimately people just want to do different things on hol. My sister wanted to relax and read and chat, we all wanted to do things. So we did! We also went skiing one year and on day 1 she decided she hated skiing and took all her hire stuff back and stayed in the room reading. Eventually she explained it to me really well - it would be like her taking me on a golf holiday, I wud hate it and never like golf no matter how many times she made me go. Then I got it and I was like You Do You sister. And she does! Just go with ur youngest next time, the others are old enough to be left at home.

Well, first of all they shouldn't be on holiday, they should be in school.
Secondly, remove their phones - lock them in the safe, and don't disclose the code.
Thirdly, you are the parent, so impose a few rules.
Finally, never take them on holiday again!

Make them stay at home next year and take me instead

Sounds like a standard holiday with late teens, TBH! All very familiar. We gave up on the idea of staying in one place as when we got nice villas or went to an all inclusive hotel they just turned sort of turned lethargic and bored and stuck their head in screens all day.

The most successful holidays we had at that age was a California road trip. We HAD to be up and out early each day, we had an itinerary to follow, places to be. They could go on their phones when we were travelling between places if they wanted but mostly they chose to watch out the window, as often there was stuff worth seeing.

I got them involved in planning the itinerary before we went so they were invested in it.

If you want to go on an all inclusive/nice villa/sun, sea and swim type of holiday then I think when they're late teens you're going to either have to do separatete holidays where they go with their mates and you go just with the youngest two.

If you insist on still all going on those type of holidays, then the only thing you can do is just state what the plan is for anyy trips out. eg "We are leaving at 9am in the morning for the boat trip/to explore the nearest town/whatever". If you're not up and ready by then I'll take it you don't want to come and I'll just go with DD."

Why do they ‘have’ to go swimming?

I thought that!

Shouldn't they be at school, college etc?

i don’t have teens but everyone who does who have been away this year have said the same thing!

Why are people obsessing about "they should be in school" - they could be home educated and/or the 16 and 18 year olds could have actually finished school.
Forget about that part and actually give the OP some advice.

”obsessing” 😆

We are all ears @Needmorelego

Oh my god op this was us last year and has led to the breakdown of our marriage- dh wanted to go places and do stuff because holiday of a lifetime, we’ve been saving so long for this, we’ll never go again etc etc. I was saying well why don’t we spend some days lounging, others doing the Disney, Florida thing. Cue the family pretty much splitting and non stop arguments. I came home and chatted to friends who had gone to Florida and all said it was a non stop argument, everyone too hot, too tired, grumpy etc etc.
I had so much respect for one of my friends who said she just let them off a number of times, so they’d stay back as long as they did something with her another day. I wish we’d all been mature enough to do that!!!

My advice was to leave them to it and go off and enjoy herself.

Well every other post seems to be "why aren't they in school" 😂😂
It's not relevant.

If they were my kids I’d have launched the phones into the lake with the alligators 🐊

I've known almost 20 year old go on family holidays to Florida and love it so not sure that's the issue..

What did you expect???

If they have phones, yes, they'll be on them???

Op, there is loads of stuff to do in the evenings in Florida (assuming Orlando, area?). Why don’t you try to adjust to their time zone and get up later and stay up later?
if there are things you and youngest want to do early on, then crack on and come back for the older 2 later on.
We did a few ‘split days’ in Florida, just to avoid the hottest part of the day. theme park/ water park in the morning, back for a few hours to rest and recharge and then out for the late afternoon/evening.

”every other post” 😆

Leave them to it and do your own thing. Let them sort out their own food, they are old enough. One day they will realize how lucky they are and will regret their behavior.

Lucky devils OP. Feel free to take me next time 😅are they not much into the coasters / theming? Either way I think you’re fine to give them a short swift bollocking reminding them you’re a human and confining the phones to the safe for at least 5 hours a day. They’ll cringe at their behaviour in the future.