Movie Weekend, Another Way To Be Friend With Your Teen

My son and my husband, watching paleontology documentary in our small room in a company housing

Having teenager in the house is different than having kid. Kid like to play with parent, they like to involving parent to their daily activities. Teenager like to do his activities alone or with friend, they tend to let their parent alone. Parent who does not have daily activities outside the house often feel lonely abandoned by their teenagers.

To avoid loneliness, parent can schedule activities together with their teenagers. This activities should be interesting and fun for the whole family member, so that they will always waiting for the time to come.

My family have a weekend movie as our activities together. As a teenager, our son want to have his private time with his friends, if we don’t have our weekly schedule, we won’t have time together. Yes, we have daily time together when breakfast, lunch, dinner, and schooling time. But we want more fun activities together!

We have one same hobby: watching movie! We choose Saturday night to watch movie together. We were not going to theatre, we live in a remote area, no theatre around here. We watch movie via projector in my room.

It has been three months we watch movie together every Saturday, and we enjoy so much. My son will happily join us every Saturday in his parent’s room. Although it takes only 2 until 3 hours togetherness, but we are so happy spending our time together.

Why he is so happy joining us? Why he did not resist and did not get bored?

First, I always prepare some snack for us. Food are always uniting family.

Second, my husband and I never brought any discussion of issues that are not favored our son, but we always open our mind if my son ask us to discuss about anything.

Third, we always choose the movie together, whether the movie is a paleontology documentary or Mickey Mouse.

Fourth, make jokes!

Fifth, we also like to ask our son’s daily activities and problems, if he did not want to discuss, we didn’t push him. But we always encourage him to discuss his problem with us while watching movie.

Sixth, get involved wholeheartedly. We never did our work while watching movie. We enjoy our togetherness wholeheartedly.

Those are six tips to have quality and fun time with family, especially with teenager. Being close with our teenager will open up solution to their problems and make their future living out of troubles. We do want our kids to be happy and successful, their success and happiness begins from family.