Our 13-year-old is at that very shy and awkward stage but desperately wants to meet other teenagers. What’s the best way of getting teens to mix on holiday?
Teenagers’ moods can make or break a family holiday, so choose a resort or hotel with plenty of activities. Striking up a conversation while doing an activity is easier than sitting by a swimming pool trying to pluck up the courage to speak to someone.
For parents, it’s not advisable to put too much pressure on teenagers to socialise. It can have the opposite effect, and you can easily get to the stage where you become that dreaded thing – the embarrassing parent. We always find that doing group activities really helps teenagers, even painfully shy ones, to come out of their shells and socialise. A number of Scott Dunn hotels have teens’ clubs, with activities they can dip in and out of. Scott Dunn Explorers’ oldest age group is called Pioneers (for eight- to 13-year-olds), and offers sporting activities like basketball, football, tennis and golf. Or they might spend the day at the beach trying watersports like windsurfing or paddle boarding. The good thing about these activities, we find, is that generally the children are all learning them from scratch, so there isn’t the competitiveness there might be with sports they’re more familiar with.
If your teenager isn’t sporty, there are other group activities such as quizzes, go-karting and cookery, along with evening events, and things like trips to water parks where they can hang out with new friends.
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