5 Things Your Preteens will Love

I have five fun ideas that your preteens and teens are sure to love!  

The are simple and always a hit with my older kids.

1. Let them give you tips and advice.

Try their products.  Let them talk to you about skincare.  They'll be thrilled to get a chance to be the expert.  Olive has been reading my blog lately and is quick to help me with edits when she sees a mistake.  Sometimes I'll ask for help with my outfits or accessories.  Olive usually says my clothes are too loud, but she likes to talk through outfits with me.  And I've noticed that if I model asking her for help, it helps her to feel more comfortable coming to me for help with outfits and other things.

2. Love what they love.  

Pay attention to their playlists, their current favorite songs and listen to what they listen to.  I don't always love the songs they love, but they are so excited to have a kid playlist for our drives together.  Some days it's my spotify list and some days it's theirs.  Either way it's fun to know what we are all listening (teens: and dancing) to.  The same thing goes for sports or shows or movies.  Find out what they are loving and enjoy it with them.  Olive loves picking out our shows and Fletcher gets so excited for someone to be interested in the games he's playing.

3. Walk around the mall or their favorite stores.

They loves to try samples, try on clothes that they might think they would like, try on popular shoe trends and try out sports equipment.  

4. Try new food together and find new favorite foods.

This can mean cooking together, grocery shopping together or picking out recipes online.  The kids have gotten so much joy out of sampling all the things at the Costco cafe.  They are ranking foods and making plans to try everything on the menu.  The same is true for trying Crumbl flavors of the week or maybe trying a new restaurant on Door Dash.

5. Buy the silly things that they want.

We were standing in line at Old Navy and Fletcher was so excited to see this package of Pickle Roulette sour candies.  He loves pickles and this sounded like so much fun to him.  I said yes and we got a lot of laughs out of him trying pickle candy.  Olive likes to add things to my Walmart cart and it's fun to surprise her with them - press on nails, shampoo, new socks, etc.

I hope this little list gives you some new ideas on how you can love your teens a little extra this week!