7 Tips For Entertaining Teenagers

Our teenager of the house had a big weekend of being awarded a “superior” rating his piano festival and by attending his first ever Sadie Hawkins dance. Prior to the dance, we invited his date and her brother and his date over to enjoy some food and fun. We were officially entertaining teens.

From this experience, we gained a handful tips on entertaining teenagers and keeping the peace around the house while doing it.

Here are our top seven tips and take aways…

1. Let the teen pick out his own clothes with some broad guidelines. It helps to have strong men alongside the teen the can influence and encourage. 

Under my once daily suit and tie wearing husband’s guidance, our teen had a new purple shirt and tie that he picked out and I coordinated the gray pants to match. But he wanted khaki pants. The gray pants were ironed. The khaki pants were not. I learned we won’t sweat gray or khaki pants again. Ironed or not. He chose non-ironed khaki pants. He was happy. Khaki pants keep the peace.

2. Make spinach dip when entertaining teens. 

I used to make this five gallon pails when I was in my year of working at a grocery store bakery and deli. What I learned this weekend is that teens don’t eat much spinach dip and then the adults get to eat it all to themselves. I can definitely share my simple and go-to spinach dip recipe sometime soon.

3. Have your mom come to visit to help you chop, dice and prepare to entertain teens. 

My dear mother managed through decades of entertaining teens and keeping the peace. God bless her. She is also very good with a knife in the kitchen.

 4.  When entertaining teens, prepare and serve plenty of meat.

For our taco bar, it was three pounds of grilled chicken and five pounds of ground beef. I cooked up the meat ahead of time and then pulled it from the fridge to get it warmed up after the piano festival and in time for supper. This also fed us for supper with leftovers but I was surprised at the dent that our teen alone can make into eight pounds of meat.

 5. A taco bar qualifies as “cool” food according to our teen. My first suggestion of lasagna was “not cool”.

We set up a separate teen staging area in the basement for them to eat buffet style ahead of attending the dance which also met the “cool” standard versus sitting in the dining room potentially near little sisters and adults.

 6. Gourmet teen food can include a purchased chocolate mint frozen pie put into your own pie plate along with Welch’s Sparkling Red Grape Juice. Don’t sweat details because their favorite food of the night might just be your not-so-homemade pie.

7. Bask in the glow when you have a smiling, happy teen. Especially if and when he tells you the next day “you were a kinda cool mom last night…okay you were super cool”. 

Interested in seeing pictures of our teen and his Sadie Hawkins date, Miss Grace?

My family will be interested to know that Miss Grace has a family connection. Her dad, Dr. Dan, is our local veterinarian and once was my uncle Dave’s roommate for years through undergraduate and vet school. 

Miss Grace also has babysat our girls. She is a gem (note: more teenage girls should be like her). Hop over to see her blog with pictures and please feel free to leave a comment for her. 

Saturday night was the first of many nights we will have at our house of entertaining teens. Part of my motive to entertain teens in our home is just that…they are in our home. The other part is that it all goes so quickly that I don’t want to miss it. The more fun they can have that we can be a part of from the outside looking in…the more memories. 

Whether you have a teen or not, we all were once teens.
Do you have any other tips on entertaining teenagers?
I am sure I could one or two or a few.