You may be concerned about your teenage children and want to spend some time with them. Perhaps you want to get them involved in activities that interest them and at the same time teach them some responsibility. Teen years are emotionally hard and helping them can help you connect with them and develop better parenting skills. Here are some activities you can do with your kids.

Gardening or Working in the Yard

Plan a garden and involve your teens in the process. Try to grow vegetables or herbs, as teens love to eat. Buy plants from a local grower or garden center and plant them together. Teach teens to care for the plants, watering, weeding, and pest control.

When your teens are busy with other activities, plant vegetables and herbs in containers. They are easy to care for and do not take up much time to water or weed weekly. Use your vegetables and herbs in your daily meals. Give them a section of the garden to be responsible for.

Let them help you with yard work. It is good exercise and a way to spend time with them. In the spring, rake leaves, trim bushes, wash windows, mow the lawn, and weed the garden. Show them how to do the job and assign them a regular task. It will help them learn new skills and responsibilities. This will improve your parenting skills.

Many consumers use a lawn or landscaping service but still need to do yard work. Businesswire reports about 78% of U.S. adults use a lawn or landscaping service. Some homeowners still mow the lawn, trim the bushes, and maintain their gardens.

Regular Exercise

Teens want to be independent and may not want to exercise with you. Encourage your teens to find an exercise that they are interested in because then they will more likely stick with it. If they are sociable, encourage them to participate in a team sport at school or in the community.

Did you know the average walking pace is four miles per hour? This means you don’t have to worry about keeping up with your kids on a walk. When they prefer to exercise alone, encourage them to walk, bike, run, swim, exercise at home, perform yoga or walk the dog. Plan an occasional family hiking trip, trip to the beach or state park, or skating rink that everyone can participate in.

Cooking or Baking at Home

Let your teens help with preparing your daily meals at home. You can find recipes in cookbooks and online, and shop and prepare meals together. Let them help wash and chop vegetables, and learn to make soup, salads, stew, broil or grill meats, poultry, and seafood. This teaches them real-life skills and gives them a sense of independence while developing your parenting skills at the same time.

Baking is a fun activity and requires following a recipe precisely. Start small with simple recipes by baking cookies, muffins, cornbread, and no-baked pies and desserts. Try to interest them in a healthy dessert with less sugar. Cooking and baking with teens will help you connect with them in a positive way.

Develop a Hobby

Trying to help your teen develop a hobby or interest in their leisure time is good parenting. It can be a creative craft or skill that they can do at home collage, art, painting, drawing, scrapbooking, sewing, crocheting, quilting, reading, journaling, working out, video games, or writing. They can take a class, join a group, or attend a program at the local library to learn more. Do not forget about outdoor hobbies, which can be rock climbing, photography, running, sports, fishing, surfing, or working on cars.

Plan a Day Trip and Encourage Outdoor Activity

Plan some interesting day trips with your teens, shopping, and lunch, visiting a museum or touring a factory, going to the movies or theater, a day trip to the beach or hiking, or visiting some botanical gardens. Make your outdoor yard conducive to outdoor activity for teens. Power washes your deck, patio, or outdoor kitchen, so teens will want to spend time outdoors. Power washing is an effective way to clean the outside and sanitize it. In fact, the global power washing market is projected to grow from 2.5 million in 2021 to 3.0 billion in 2026, showing how popular this project is.

These are ways you can improve your parenting skills and connect with your teens. Helping them develop hobbies and giving them responsibility helps with teen development.