How do you keep young teens occupied - and out of trouble - in the summer holidays?

By Sarah Catherall

When my youngest daughter was 15, I spied an ad for a dog walking job in our neighbourhood. It was early December and the summer holidays stretched ahead. Being the parent of a teenager who is too young to get their full license and a paid summer holiday job is tough: what do we do with them when the endless school-free weeks stretch ahead? How do we keep them off screens and entertained, without feeling like we have to do all the running around, or draining the fridge and our wallet?

As my daughter signed up for the dog walking job, I didn't think through the practical stuff: the dog had to be walked at noon every day, from a house 1.5 km away on a busy, windy road. My daughter wasn't confident enough to bike there, and the return walk - plus the one-hour dog walk - was too much. A couple of days in, I found myself interrupting my working day (fortunately I work from home) to drive her to the dog owner's house, where I waited in the car and worked on my laptop till she finished the walk an hour later. By mid-December, she often had something on at noon, and guess who ended up walking the dog? Me - although I demanded she hand over the $15 dog walking fee in principle.

Parenting expert and neuroscience educator Nathan Wallis says school holidays are a tricky time in the teen years.

"I think every parent struggles with that age group. They're too old for summer programmes and they also need some sort of supervision."

Wallis, himself a father of three and a foster parent, suggests looking for sports camps, such as a rugby training camp or a sailing camp, or an online course.

"If they're going to be on the internet anyway, are there any skills-based courses? It might be in gaming or coding, or something that keeps them entertained for a couple of hours a day? It might cost $60 but they'll do something productive.''

Wallis talks to groups about the teenage brain, and he covers the impact of screens on anxiety and depression rates.

"As long as they're doing screen time and also hanging out with friends, getting outside, playing sport, that's okay.''

When his children were teens, in the holidays they were only allowed to be on a screen for 1.5 hours before he would insist on a break.

"Being sedentary for that long is what the danger is. Even if it's a couple of minutes of star jumps and fresh air, and readjusting the eyes to a three-dimensional world, not just a screen.''

What if your teen wants to do something potentially risky - such as attending a music festival when they're underage, or going camping without adults? Wallis says the teenage brain is wired for risk-taking and teens often act irrationally so need to know an adult could appear at any time.

"If the kids know that there is a plan behind them and they're being supervised, even if parents aren't there, that's good,'' he says.

Ellie Gwilliam works for family charity Parenting Place and has three daughters aged 12, 14 and 16. While she's surrounded by parenting experts, Gwilliam struggles like other parents as the school holidays stretch ahead.

For the teens and tweenies too young to get a paying job, Gwilliam advises harnessing social media to keep them busy and to develop new skills. Her 16-year-old, Johanna, is a keen baker and runs a successful small Instagram business baking and selling cakes which keeps her busy over the summer holidays.

"This is the goal - finding our kids something that will allow them to use their time constructively or to be creative," Gwilliam says.

"The concern is the passivity of sitting around not really being creative or constructive and technology has a bit to answer for there. But technology can also be amazing for our teens if they're creative or they've got an entrepreneurial streak.''

Parents shouldn't bubble wrap their teens but encourage them to take "safe risks'', Gwilliam says.

"There are huge benefits for them for the ability to assess risk and to then manage risk safely. They need to practice so so when they've got to make some decisions themselves, they can practice some risk and even fail a little bit, which is hard.''

Over summer Vivienne Tor encourages her teenage daughters, 15-year-old Freya and 19-year-old Elsa, to go on daily walks near their Whangarei Heads home. Tor gets them to turn the walk into an adventure, like a scavenger hunt. They'll have their phones, so it might be returning with a photograph of something they saw or doing a beach clean-up on the way.

Tor also gives Freya a spring-cleaning list. They've negotiated the payment and the specific jobs: what cleaning products are to be used and the estimated time for each task.

"I've said to her, you have to approach it as if you're working for an employer,'' Tor says.