What's A “Normal’ Amount Of Time To Spend With Your Teenager?

A mom on Reddit is wondering how much time other parents are spending with their teenagers after she overheard her son on the phone telling a friend he doesn’t interact much with his family.

In her post on the /parenting subreddit, she wrote, “Walking past my son’s room last night and I hear him talking to a girl on the phone and says “I don’t really interact with my family. I just come home, go to my room and then wake up and go to school in the morning”. It really threw me for a loop because I didn’t think of it that way at all,” she admitted.

After thinking about what he said, she started to do the math on his schedule, realizing that he’s right.

“...he leaves for school at 6:30 AM, he has sports until around 5 PM, he’s in the kitchen five times a night to eat, and the rest of the time is spent in his room, talking to girls on FaceTime or playing video games. The most time I get with him alone each week is taking him to the gym on weekends or the 15 minute ride to/from practice,” she continued.

“I think back to when I was a teenager and I suspect the amount of time I spent with my parents was around the same but I never really thought of it as ‘lack of interaction,’ she concluded.

She also mentioned in the comments that having four kids with four different activity schedules, club, sports, varsity, sports, etc, “it’s tough to get everyone in one place and both parents not chauffeuring,” so family dinners rarely occur.

Several Reddit users replied to the OP, sharing how much time they spend with their teens, assuring the OP that this is just a phase.

“My teen is the same. I take it as his time for himself as I'm the same way at times. He has the same schedule as your child, leaving at 6:30 and not getting home until 7p.m. sometimes later. He'll come and sit with me for 15-30 minutes at night and chat about our day. But all he truly wants is his hot homemade meal, a shower, and his warm bed. I've noticed he's cut back significantly on spending that time on the phone. We have mandatory weekend dinners and activities where we spend a few hours together,” one user said.

“Did it hurt your feelings? Don’t feel bad, especially because he probably exaggerated it for the conversation. My son said something similar at 16 when we were on a vacation in a luxury cabin in a national park. He told a girl ‘I have to be here, unfortunately’.. it broke my heart. Now at 19 he made sure he took off of work to go on little trips with us. Last spring he went to the beach with his gf and her mom and couldn't wait to get home. He said, ‘ I just like going places with my family, I dont think I want to go with anywhere with anyone else's family again’. It's just his age,” another assured.

“You might be reading too much into it. I think in a teenager’s mind there’s something cool in appearing alone or independent, especially in front of the girls,” one user wrote.

Some Reddit users offered up tips on how to snag quality time with the little pockets of time we get as parents.

“Sometimes, with that age, I’ll literally just sit next to them scrolling on my phone or whatever and make jokes, just spend time with them. Sometimes the best ‘hang outs’ amongst friends, are when you’re together but you don’t necessarily even have to say a lot, you just enjoy being around each other. Maybe try that and see how he does, he could feel lonely on his own and not know how to ask for attention or maybe he feels like this is the age where parents just stop giving it,” one user said.

Another user suggested finding a common hobby or interest. “This is probably the main way I get quality time with my 15 year old daughter. Shopping/Starbucks, cooking/baking, watching a tv show or movie. This weekend we went camping which always gives us a lot of time together. Sometimes we’ll go on hikes. We’ll play video games together occasionally, but sometimes we’ll just watch each other play. Right now we’re watching stranger things with her younger brother (the three of us have seen it already) and she joins us for most episodes,” they wrote.

Read the full Reddit thread here.