For two years now, we’ve done a stay-cation so we could save our vacation dollars to do a strategic family vacation. When we floated the idea to our kids last year, they agreed with our plans & definitely enjoyed the strategic family vacation we took earlier this year.
In the meantime, we are on year two of our stay-cation & it’s an interesting journey to stay-cate with teenagers, attempting to limit screen time & maximize family time. Teenagers are wonderful people with strong opinions & developing individualities, so doing a stay-cation with them, aiming for happy campers, is challenging.
Here are some things we’ve done that are somewhat helpful:
- get everyone’s input with at least 3 realistic ideas of things they’d like to do with the family
- populate everyone’s ideas throughout the stay-cation, giving validation to each individual’s input
- communicate the stay-cation schedule / events to everyone, giving them a chance to coach their own attitudes before participating in another’s suggestion that might be unappealing
- communicate budget parameters when soliciting the ideas for activities
- give ample space / time for individuality to balance family events with individual breathing room
- pray alot 🙂
Vacationing with teenagers can be fun & challenging. Most of all, it affords me the opportunity to lean into Holy Spirit to help me coach my internal narratives & attitudes 🙂
