how do you stop them becoming one of the teens who hang around town centres looking bored and a bit menacing

[Notmyidea]

Older dd seems drawn to this form of spending her time this half term:(

I get I'm putting her off being at home, it's where she gets nagged about homework told she needs to turn the telly off. (I've provided activities and had her friends over, too.)
Any ideas?

(cough) OKAY THEN curlew

And the door slamming, the eye rolling and the endless dramas, usually lived out through FB or via their phone which is now permanently welded to their hand - "he said, and she said, and I was like, and she was like, and I was like, and oh my god I can't believe you just did that".

Sometimes I challenge my teens to have a conversation without the word 'like' (unless referring to something that they actually like). They can't do it.

Yeah and at least when you're out with your mates your parents aren't around to cramp your style or embarrass you.

Elongation is the right word motherinferior. Like pulled plasticine strands.

Lurch is a good word too. My son has two modes: lurch and parkour. Lurch is what he does most of the time, especially when required to move his exhausted limbs by the unreasonable demands of his parents. Parkour is what still happens when he gets near to anything that can be climbed or swung off or jumped from.

DD likes shopping with her friends. They usually go to the cinema then get a drink. Their favorite activity though is trying on clothes in Top Shop etc and taking selfies. It all seems very innocent, I don't have a problem with it.

If she were doing anything as purposeful as windowshopping I don't think I'd mind, it's the standing around hoping the delinquent older boys notice them, and the resultant showing off I mind. I had a lady in church tell me dd was swearing loudly the other day which I'm not impressed with.

I am currently having the house painted and the decorators offered to put dustsheets over DS1 and DS2 while they lay in their beds, and just carry on.

I despair, I really do.

I've just shared that with DS, and he says it makes complete sense.
Did they get draped?

And/or turn over, huffing at how UNFAIR this is as the sheet settled over them?

I think when they are hanging out and you spoke to them they would all be ever so polite like Kevin the teenager when he meets Perry's parents.

lurch and parkour? Dustsheets over inert bodies?

absolutely love both concepts. Fantastic.

don't forget the fascination with their feet when there is anything constructive to be done.

as long as they are chatting not shrieking, talking not swearing and not dropping litter, seems harmless. Very Adrian Mole and Baz's gang..

The teenagers round here are total failures on the 'looking menacing' front - I have to restrain myself from giggling when these massive gangly teenage boys lurch up to my big hairy dog with crys of "He's soo cuuuute" and start cuddling him . . .

DS(12) goes round to see his friend on his bike, both he and DD sometimes play out with friends in our road. They recently enjoyed an evening of trick or treating whilst we were staying at DGPs for half-term, which made a nice change for them and seems neighbours were very friendly and generous. I think that's all good and part of living in a community - but wouldn't want to feel they were regularly hanging about on street corners. Maybe it depends how you look at these things a bit ?

I quite liked deliquent boys when i was 13 maybe that isnt what the op needs to hear

My eldest DS wasn't keen on having friends over to our house and went through a bit of a hanging around phase. I only latterly realised he was embarrassed by his apparently 'babyish' bedroom (not babysish to my eyes but whatever). We overhauled it very cheaply (new duvet cover, dartboard, removed all toy type clutter to the loft) and he has had lots of friends over since and less going out to sit on the flower beds outside Lidl! Not that I minded him doing that as long as he wasn't bothering anyone, he's a good lad.

I also buy lots of frozen cheapy pizza and chips or garlic bread which I pretty much stick in the oven as soon as teenage boys troop through the door. I think the offer of free hot food at all hours attracts them! And then at least I know where he is and what he's up to!

What's wrong with teens in shopping centres? Teens shop too!
If she's at home in half term why can't she watch tv? Half term is her holiday time off. I think she should be able to spend it as she wishes.

When I was a teen we discovered that my mate's place was the best place to hang out (after a year hanging about on street corners) because his mum made us nachos every time we went. She probably got sick of making nachos but at least she knew where we all were...

Is hanging around city centres with their friends really that different from me asking a friend over for a bit of aimless socialising or gossiping with a neighbour on the street corner. I have a whole house that is mine to entertain in, on my terms; they haven't.

If everything they do has to have a purpose, then it seems fair that everything I do should have a purpose too- and I'm not entirely sure I could cope with that.

So I allow socialising, aka aimless hanging around.

I used to hang around in shopping malls. I went to an all girls school and we had a group of friends from the boys school we met up with. It was all entirely innocent stuff and was the only place we could all meet together - no parent was going to invite a mixed group of 10 round every Saturday and give them privacy to chat. Kids have to hang out somewhere. Don't see the harm at all.

What did you say to the woman from church, op? 'There goes my chances of ever becoming an elder, then'?

Swearing in pubic is difficult, but you just havevto point out that the people walking past and hearing them could be who they face at their next/first job interview and some people remember this kind of thing. I have an ongoing debate with one DC who maintains that her appearance and public behavious is not 'social'. If she isn't talking to someone who walks past and hears her swear, or if someone judges a person based on tattoos or piercings and spacers, then the judgey pants is the one in the wrong...Until she started wanting a job.

A mum from dd's primary phoned me up to broach the delicate subject that dd had used the "f" word on facebook and as she and her dh were monitoring their dd's use of such an audacious social network she felt a responsibility to let me know because she and her dh would want to know. . I didn't have the heart to say yes, thanks, I already know that and didn't think it was too big a deal.

I did manage to tell dd though that could she refrain in future because I really didn't need to talk to x's mum more often than I had to and had spent years avoiding her at the gate . It tickled me though that her daughter was locked in a rather more than passionate public embrace behind Nat West last time I saw her and the time before was being rather loud and unpleasant with about 10 others outside Starbucks.

They all do it in one way or another - I've a quiet one who tends not to because she likes to hang out with just one or two close friends and is a bit scared of big groups who do tend to show off a bit. I've also a very social one and dread to think what he might have got up to if he hadn't had such a bunch of very nice friends. Luck I think.

I have cringed at a few reports back of DD swaggering about a bit in town but I consider all that stuff a rite of passage really.

On a slightly different note can anyone tell me when that nasty, acrid sort of smell that overpowers me in the morning when I open DSs door will stop ? He is almost 17 and an avid shower taker so its not personal hygiene !

Also when does the extreme exhaustion from doing precisely nothing end ?

Whats wrong with hanging around in town ? I hate the way any yoof with a hoody is demonised by our society.

My ds 17 was abused horribly by a woman for smoking a spliff with his friend in the road at night. The justification being that all the neighbours were afraid they might be robbed by these two young men...

Fair enough to complain or be uncomfortable if they're doing something illegal though, and smoking dope is currently a crime.

Teenagers 'hang around in town' basically because they would get tutted at by lots of the people on this thread if they went into cafes, taking up all the seats, and having a three hour chat over one drink like I do, and they're too young yet to go to a pub. Only 'sad' teens would dream of congregating at home with parents likely to be around. Now, a free house - that's a different matter altogether!

It's all quite normal. Don't worry