I have learned that connecting with your teenager can be a lot easier than you may expect. As one teen told me once during a focus group, “I don’t really care what my parents and I do together, as long as it’s something we can both have fun doing.”
That sounds deceptively simple. But is it?
If you don’t happen already to know what things both you and your teen enjoy doing, how will you figure it out? Depending on your teen’s temperament, asking could either produce a long wishlist and a link to her Pinterest board, or it might just as easily produce a one-syllable grunt. I love one-on-one time with my teenagers and have learned that the best days typically emerge when I’m brave enough to leave the day relatively unscripted.
My strategy has always been to leave it up to serendipity, and while I understand that’s not a safe strategy with every teen personality, some of my favorite days with my teenaged children have been days when I simply scheduled a block of one-on-one time, and made sure we left the house with enough cash we could stop for food (*this is an essential element of connecting with your teenager, so be sure you don’t leave it out).
I can show you better than I can tell you:
Connecting With Your Teenager: a Tutorial (kind of)
Several years ago, my youngest daughter and I tagged along when my husband went to a business conference. The weather in Portland that day was cloudy and rainy, so our plan to visit a local botanical garden was short-circuited. Instead, we found a pamphlet advertising tours for a historic home, the Pittock Mansion. 
Unable to maintain the estate after its original owners died, family members put the mansion on the market in 1958, and it was heavily damaged during a hurricane in 1962. Two years later, community members raised enough funds to convince the city of Portland to purchase and restore the historic home to save it from being razed to build a subdivision. My daughter, who is a musician, especially loved walking through the music room and imagining what it might have been like to grow up in a home like this one.
One of my favorite rooms was the ornate domed ceiling in the “Turkish Smoking Room.” I’m a humanities major, so I loved pointing out some of the architectural details to my daughter. It might have been the first time she’d ever had someone mention that something like “architecture” even exists.
And since museum gift shops are often more interesting to young people than the museum itself is, we made a stop there. Sure enough, one of the first things she noticed was a men’s necktie with fabric made to mimic the pattern of the Turkish Smoking Room ceiling. I would never have noticed it.
Museum = a Limited Time Engagement
The museum was fun for an hour but was clearly not what she wanted to do all day. What would we do with the rest of the afternoon in an unfamiliar city on a rainy day? Putting our trust in the GPS, we started driving in circles, looking for a neighborhood with some interesting shopping, or at least a good bagel or ice cream cone. If we were looking for a sign, we soon found one:
There it was. Parked right against the curb as if it was as unremarkable as every other car in the neighborhood. We were totally unprepared to know how to process this kind of museum. We doubled-back and circled the block, then parked and took a closer look. Every inch of this purple vehicle was covered with an incredible menagerie of weirdness.
From the purple telephone on the dashboard to the kitchen timer glued to the hood of the car, this had to be one of the craziest things either of us had ever seen–even in a city where smoking pot is legal, and in a state that hosts one-quarter of the world’s llama population.
It was like a 3-D “I Spy” game. From the mannequin foot protruding from the ceiling to the rubber spider just above the driver’s door handle, there was something completely otherworldly about it. Nearly every surface, including the interior, was covered with an odd collection of unicorns, trolls, multi-colored-illustrations, beads, plastic soldiers, glass bottles, machine springs, old cell phone parts, decapitated dolls’ heads and oh so much more. There was no way to get context or question the owner, so all we could do was sit back and absorb it, then giggle with wonder.
And then the rain picked up, and so did the wind. Now how would we have fun? Even window shopping–another thing we both like to do–was going to be unpleasant in this weather. Glancing around, I spied a french bakery and we decided we would go inside to warm up for a minute. We decided we’d order at least one thing from the menu she had never tried. The happy result of that experiment: French Onion Soup! (with two spoons).
Next, she insisted it was my turn, so we ordered a second course.
And a third. When in France…if the rain still hasn’t let up, there’s always a crepe for dessert!
If I were pressed, I probably could not identify what it was about the day that made it memorable. While we were on vacation, there was nothing about the day (with the possible exception of a visit to a museum) that you would have found recommended by a travel website. The weather was nasty, the photos turned out to be a bit blurry, and even as I sit here now, I can’t remember the name of the French bakery to save my life. I can’t even remember what that incredibly delicious second course was called or what kind of cheese was in the filling.
Years later, we still remark about what a fun day it was for both of us. It was one of those days when common experiences nestled into our brains so agreeably that if you ask either of us to name a favorite “comfort” food today, French onion soup will likely be on the list. I make it for her at Christmastime every year just because.
Connecting with your teenager isn’t expensive, or overly time-consuming, or even particularly difficult, but it does take an open mind, a sense of adventure, and some consistency. And maybe a French Bakery.
