With summer plans cancelled, what on earth will my 15 yo do all summer?

[MadWinter]

My DS is in a private school, so will have 9! weeks of summer holiday. We both work, and can take about 3 weeks off. So planning to go camping or similar in the UK. However, still 6 weeks left.

He was supposed to be on scout camp, school camp, so we had it all covered. All have been cancelled and unlikely to come back on.

He only has a couple of friends, who don't live nearby, so he typically spends a lot of time on the play station with them. Family live abroad.

From what I understand at 15 they are not allowed to volunteer or work.

So far we have been able to take him metal detecting (which he loves) and on bike rides. But that won't keep us going all summer. Also it's just not healthy a teenage boy on his own with mum and dad for such a long period.

Any ideas?

We are in a similar position but I work PT from home and DH will probably still be working from home all summer, we also have an 11 year old
We normally go abroad for 2 weeks at the beginning of the holidays and 1 week/10 days at the end with maybe a UK weekend in the middle too but obviously that’s out. I hope DD will be able to meet friends but a certain amount of ferrying about will be needed and I will be trying to encourage DS off Fortnite too! Unfortunately the DC don’t have a lot of interests in common so I can’t rely on them to entertain eachother at all.
I usually love the Summer holidays and am sad to see them go back but I don’t think that will be the case this year

Everyone will be doing what they have mostly been doing for the last 3 months.

9 weeks We would usually have a holiday and the kids would do a couple of hobby based camps plus loads of days out with friends. Last year dd volunteered but I'm guessing that won't be happening. My answer is I have absolutely no idea. Kids are 15 and 13. It will be a loooong holidays at this rate. I think it's quite a tricky age.

Same problem here but 6 weeks. It's desperate with an only. Mine will be on screens or arguing about them all day. Tbh that's probably what he would have been doing otherwise with the exception of two weeks holiday. Mine literally won't leave the house especially not with us - metal detecting sounds a good start. Maybe he'll come up with something himself?

It will be hard for my d's as usually he visits his dad's family over the school hols for a week in London. He was also due to enjoy a ten day camping trip with army cadets. Now as an only child he will just have 6 weeks of gadgets at home plus mixing with his local schoolfriends. Plus coping with his boring mum lol. I think it will be hard for most children and families unless they are going away to an inland holiday in the event a few hotels start opening.

You need to get him to accept it will be like no other holiday and to set himself a few challenging goals to achieve during it that he can tell his family about.

• Read a million words
• Run 500 miles over 9 weeks
• New skills he can learn independently
• Find recipes to try, get ingredients, cook/bake by himself twice a week. Healthy or indulgent. And tidy up after himself.
• Learn to code/design a web page
• Learn photography and go out and photograph nature or lockdown (buy a proper camera with the money saved from trips)
• Give him part of the garden to grow something/veg
• Teach him DIY - Paint the fence, a room, gloss etc.

I second decorating - if you’re ok with it he could redesign his room, repaint/paper, order himself some complicated flat pack to assemble. A great project, my dd regularly repaints and can put together furniture.

Btw, a note about screens - I think in these strange times it’s especially important for only children to be allowed pretty much open access to their friends online. I also went to a school a long distance from my home and had few (no) local friends. Summers were very lonely, they don’t need to be now.

Also it's just not healthy a teenage boy on his own with mum and dad for such a long period

What's unhealthy about it?

Why don't you do what my parents did when I was young in the olden days and leave him to find stuff to do. I won't be micro-managing my DD15.

For mine at least he won’t do any of the ‘projects’ I could think of. He’d rather zone out with netflix. And when there’s been no real contact with other people for months already it doesn’t feel right to just leave him be til September. I really fear for the socialisation- teen boys can be so isolated.

Same here but it's 6 months! DCs in Y11 and Y13 so no exams, no lessons, nothing to do until nearly October whatever happens with school opening.
DD(16) will be doing art A levels so I've let her loose on her walls with the acrylic paints. She's done some beautiful wall art, she's really quite talented.
DS(18) is doing CompSci so he has some coding projects on the go.
They have both gone pretty much nocturnal, eat too much freezer food and not enough veg, and have too much screen time but it's ok.
These are strange times, let them do what gets them through. They'll actually get bored of watching YouTube nonsense or playing COD eventually, and learn how to move past those "quick fix" activities to something better.
DD actually asked if she can have first dibs on the garden veg when it's cropping 😱.

9 weeks isn't really that long, especially if you split it with a camping trip. Most European countries and the US get that every year.

My DD has already been off for 10 weeks and is likely to be off for another 13.

I'm learning not to nag.

If he likes metal detecting, would he enjoy geo-caching? Or even pokemon hunting if it gets him out and about?

Perhaps your son will relish the idea of having some quality time with his parents instead of being away from you both. His lifestyle seems so 'remote' from you ... are you sure you're not secretly worried about actually having to be the parent. Love him... give him your time ... let him talk to you ... be a parent!

At 15 he can work or volunteer, he will just be limited by the amount of hours he can do and times of day here can do them.
He could do 'unoffical' volunteer work - ie offering to mow the lawn of elderly neighbours or something.

Sounds like a lot of people’s childhoods in the 80s/90s!
Get rid of electronics, keep the TV and see what he gets up to. He can:
Go in bike rides.
Cooking.
Musical instrument.
Go running/do exercise.
Paint.
Read.
Help decorate the house.

There’s loads of stuff, it’s a good stage for him to learn to be independent.

'Get rid of the electronics' ! do you have a teenager?

Similar situation here, we had a brilliant post GCSE summer planned.

9 weeks wouldnt be so bad if we hadnt already had three months. Six months with no focus is very difficult.
My son does have a paper round at the weekends, thats all that's left of his old 'normal'. I'm working so havent got masses of time to spend with him.
He goes for a run or a cycle every day and we have set up a mini gym in the shed.
Now he can meet a friend they go on a cycling trip once a week. He comes down to the allotment once a week with me and he's started to take on some more household tasks.
Once a week we go out somewhere local for a walk/picnic.
He does spend a lot of time on PS4 but his scout pack go online twice a week to do some role play game and he joins a church youth group once a week.
I bought him some books related to the college course he is doing and he does an hour a day. Last week his college sent him a project to do.
I've tried to give him some structure in the week, and let him do what he wants at the weekend after his paperound.
We have two separate weeks in Wales bookec which we are hopeful for as its self contained accommodation.
I do worry about him, he is very up and down in his spirits. He is desparate to see his my mum and dad, but even when the rules are relaxed, it will be difficult as they are a three hour trip away.

Comments about parenting your child are unfair, most teenagers don't want to spend time with their parents and if you are working your time is limited anyway. They can't just roam and find stuff to do like 'we ' did when we were teens- there are still too many restrictions. My son would quite happily go swimming, play basketball, go to the cinema, bouldering, bowling etc etc but none of these things are open to him.

can he invite a friend over to camp in the garden for a couple of nights? and then go back to the friend's garden for a few nights too?

Such lovely comments on here. Nice to hear I am not the only one worried about this.

Doing stuff with friends would be good, but he only has a very few and those happen to be difficult to arrange things with for a host of reasons. We are always super flexible and drive him anywhere, but others aren't always like that...

Happy to 'parent' but as OP said, he really doesn't want to do stuff with mum anymore. It has improved a bit as he has no one else at the moment. So we have a badminton competition going in the garden and evenings (when my work is done) we do board games and more recently riddles (black stories, I can recommend!).

I have considered just leaving him to it. And have sort of tried over Easter and now half term. However, he gets grumpier and grumpier from just lounging in front of a screen clicking through from one YouTube clip to the next. It's clearly not making him happy.

I do like the idea of having a conversation about it with him. How this is unlike any other holiday. And trying to help him find a challenge.

It's definitely completely unlike me growing up in the 80s. I would typically only have 6 weeks of holiday. I would go 3 weeks with my parents and sisters, then 1 week on summer camp (which - unlike my son - I loved!), and then would take my bike and bike to the beach with my sisters. Or we would go and get the dinghy out and take it on the canal. Or I would cycle to the yard and go horse riding. I always had stuff to do! Friends lived far away, but I was hardly ever on my own with 3 sisters. If I had been on my own holidays would have been boring, and I would certainly not have done projects like cycling to the beach or inflating the dinghy. How is that fun on your own?

Also I always had loads of ideas, but my son seems to have very little...

But I do like the idea of just leaving him to it. He may actually find himself something to do after 4 weeks. That could be a skill for life...!

At 15 he should be able to entertain himself he’s not a baby . A week or two on a camping trip with his parents should be more than enough for most of the teenagers.

You sound like you had a lovely childhood, horses, beach, boats etc. I just said it was like a lot of 80s childhoods of people I knew I suppose. My siblings were ten years younger than me and there weren’t any electronics, bar telly and I lived far from friends so I guess I was bored a lot or found something to do. I don’t know the answer then, I guess you either leave him to it and he plays a lot of games or you see if he develops some interests. I would imagine there’s a difficult adjustment phase before finding things to do.

Reading with interest in the hope I can find something I can persuade 15yo DS to do during his 9 weeks of holiday!

Normally I try to give structure with outings/trips/holidays (especially with other families). Plus scout and cadet camps. I think this is a peak age for structured activities with other teenagers, rather than boring parents. He just interacts more and has a better time when he's on camp and some other, cooler authority figure is telling him what to do. But this year is going to be really problematic.

Plus he has ASD and it's hard to get him out of his room and interacting with the world at the best of times. He wants to hibernate and I worry that a lockdown or semi-lockdown summer will be very bad for him. He needs activities, but doesn't (initially) want to do any, particularly not any that I provide.

Sorry, just needed to vent there!

I have a year 11, so we've already had 2 months of this.

I can confirm that boredom eventually kicks in and they start doing something a bit more constructive than staring a screen all day.

At least they should be able to meet with friends, albeit in a socially distanced way (allegedly).

Yes same problem here. Ds is 11 and an only one. He will also have 9 weeks holiday. He would normally be abroad for two weeks with us, then a drama camp for a week, then a PGL activity holiday. But not this year obviously - it’s going to be a long summer!!