How to keep teens engaged and productive during summer break

As summer break stretches on, many parents face the same challenge: how to keep their teens busy, engaged, and out of a cycle of late nights and long sleep-ins.

ReMerge Oklahoma CEO Erin Engelke joined the News 9 team on Monday to offer some practical advice for parents battling summer boredom and seeking structure for their teens.

Q: Kids get out of school and think there is no more structure, but you do have to have something, right?

A: You absolutely do, and despite what they tell you, that they don't want structure and they want to be able to do whatever they want to do all day long. Part of that is true, but they also really do hunger for some form of structure and routine. At the end of the day, we all crave that. We do work better if we know what's expected of us. This is a challenging time if you're a working parent, especially, and you've got teens that are twiddling their thumbs at home, maybe still sleeping right now. Let's be honest, I'm sure that mine are, it's hard to be able to navigate that as a mom and feel like you're giving them something productive to do without ruining their summer.

Q: When my son was a teenager, he would want to stay up till all hours of the night. I would be getting up early to go to work, and he's still up, and I'd get home, and then he'd want to sleep all day. This is a bad cycle to start early in the summer. 

A: Again, I think it's having a really frank conversation with your children, at the end of the day, especially if they're teens, they're trying to figure out their own identity. They want to have some freedom and flexibility. So, sitting down and talking through as a family, what works best, let's talk about it, is it staying up a couple of nights a week? If that works for you, we can manage that. But on these days, I need you to get up, and these are what is expected of you as a participant in this family,

Q: You also said let them have a say in some of these choices. What does that look like? 

A: Teens want independence. They want to be able to feel like they have some sense of control over their lives, and so sit down and just have a conversation about "What does summer look like to you? What would you like to do this summer?" It could be getting the job, it could be volunteering. To be honest, my kids are really good at finding jobs. My oldest daughter works, and my youngest daughter wants to work. She's applying to Braum's, and she's 14, and they won't answer her back. But one thing that our family did several years ago that we put into place in the summer was that I required each child per week to make dinner. This meant I gave them a budget, I gave them the cash or my card or whatever it was, and said, "This is your budget, you research, you figure out what you want to make, you go to the grocery store by yourself. I will drop you off and you go and navigate the grocery store. Come home, you prepare it all. I'm not going to help you, but I will guide you."

Q: What about when they choose to sleep in?

A: They're doing the sleep-in. Don't go to bed till 3, 4, 5 or 6, and then it affects our schedule later that day when we're trying to do something as a family. So, pick the days that you want to sleep in. The other days, I need you to do this, and on the days when you have a commitment as a family, you can say if you want to stay up until 4 a.m., get it, but I need you to be ready by 1 p.m. because as a family we're gonna go do this.