The teen years can be a challenge, from the physical & personality changes, to the onset of the know-it-all attitude, to the outright age of rebellion. I can’t say I’m prepared for it all or if my teen’s going to go through it all. What I am prepared for is celebrating these years & what better way to start than a few fun Birthday Celebration ideas to ring in the Teenage years!

Video-Game Party or Arcade night

5 Reasons Why Parents Should Share Their Gaming Passion With Their Kids

Like it or not, exposure to the advances in technology & the competitiveness of gaming industry, has somewhat ensured that by age 13, most kids these days are into gaming. While I myself am not particularly comfortable with the idea of encouraging videogaming among teens, I can let down my guard for a day if it means contributing to a memorable birthday experience for my child. The best part is that you can’t really go wrong with this idea because most kids will welcome it.

My husband is a web developer, designer & gamer. My kids, have obviously taken after if with their gaming addiction. He owns most gaming systems from the traditional Atari & NES to the Dreamcast & N64 to the most recent  X-box & PlayStation and we have them at home with all the hook ups, controls & a library of physical and digital games – the perfect set up to have a Video-Game Party right at home. But if you can’t host your own party at home, an outdoor Gaming Arcade or Gaming Museum could be an alternative, albeit more costly.

Going to a Sports Event

Top Summer Activities for All The Family

My boys play soccer and last year, they participated in an all-day Futsal tournament hosted locally by the YMCA in our town. That happened to be on the day of my son’s birthday. We made it up to him later by celebrating in the week, but he surprised us by saying he didn’t feel like he missed out on his birthday because he had so much fun, with his team & friends at the tournament.

Family sports entertainment is trending these days. So, if you’re running out of traditional party ideas, maybe try this one. Buy tickets and plan your party at a sports event – a basketball, volleyball or football game – locally or out of town. The possibilities are endless. If you go with the out of town idea, you get to enjoy a road trip too. Plus think of all the down time you get having to do nothing at the game except cheer on your kid and his favorite team at the game

A day at the Spa

This would be a good mother-daughter activity to ring in her 13^th Birthday. Invite her girlfriends & cousins over & make it a day of pampering & relaxation. Include Nail painting, face scrubs & relaxing baths for starters and then let you imagination & creativity run wild. If you’re the DIY kind & would like to host this at home, the advantage is you’ll have more flexibility & privacy. But if you’re feeling generous or want to take it up a notch, book a Weekend Getaway Spa experience instead. The upside is you won’t have to lift a finger and it’ll be a stress-free experience. Whatever you decide though, your 13-year-old will appreciate you for it and it may end up being the beginning of several mother – daughter mani-pedi dates

Craft Party Workshop

How To Get Your Crafts To Market

If your child is the creative sort that loves to get their hands dirty, a craft party may be your solution to creating a distinctive and exciting experience for their birthday. You can plan this at home if you have the time & arrange for supplies but there are also professional & dedicated vendor services that offer craft workshops who will take care of the whole shebang for you.  From decorating cupcakes , paper art & fabric fun, this is an opportunity to watch your child get creative. As a child and well into my adult years, I’ve always had fun with art & this would create a cherished memory for your teen too!

Weekend Road-Trip – Camping & Sightseeing Adventure

10 Best Family Friendly Road Trip Routes in the U.S.

Who doesn’t love this one? A road-trip is fun at all ages It’s an excellent opportunity for the whole family to get involved. To avoid disappointment, start panning ahead – take suggestions from all family members, giving extra weightage to the birthday boy or gal’s suggestion.  While the road trip itself will be the main experience, It’s not all about the destination; it’s about the journey. Get creative by including sight visits along the way, stopping by your favorite out of the way restaurant & even including a hike or camping trip. The sky’s the limit, just load you travel gear, pack some snacks, hop in the car, prepare a great playlist, and hit the open road.

Celebrate at a Theme Restaurant

Geek Restaurants: Go Forth And Prosper

Dinner out with kids can be a nightmare – they can never get their orders straight, neither can they sit still, asking to be excused to use the restrooms just as dinner’s being served, there’s always a problem with the meal, someone throw’s a fit even at the mention of ‘veggies’ and before you know it you’re asking for the check and haven’t even got through your meal.

Themed Restaurants and Family-Friendly Interactive Dining will assuredly solve most of these problems, by keeping the kids entertained well past dessert and have you feeling like a kid again. While Chuck E. Cheese & Funquest have been traditional options,  there are multiple locations all over the country , especially in New York & Chicago, offering breakfast at an amusement park on a Ferris wheel, miniature golf, watching medieval knights jousting & building your own LEGO figures. The Lemon Tree Kids & Family Restaurant in Los Angeles, CA has mini-train, face painting, and ball pit – he makings of the best party ever!

Every kid should experience this at least once – a birthday celebration is a great opportunity! Such Restaurants have varied themes to choose from- Robots, Medieval Times, Aquariums & jungles, Outer-space & Sci-fi & Old Western Salons & Taverns – but all offering a crazy fun good time while you eat your meal & celebrate your birthday!

Movie Night, Snack Contest & Pajama Party

9 Fun Sleepover Party Food Ideas

I read that aloud to myself & almost want to be a kid again – it sounds like pure fun & literally personifies the phrase ‘going to have fun till the sun goes down’. Lol

My younger son went to his first sleepover at a friend’s recently and thoroughly enjoyed it. They watched movies, ate pizza, played basketball & helped make breakfast the next morning.

Since this a birthday, you can make it exciting by having a movie marathon. Ask the kids in advance if they have any preferences or look up some fun movie ideas for kids yourself. When the kids start getting hungry, introduce a snack contest. Most kids – boys and girls alike – just love getting their hands dirty in the kitchen. The snacks don’t have to be elaborate. There are several fun, easy & healthy snacks that teens can make on their own with minimal supervision.

If the party is going to be indoors, then crafts, board-games, reading time & hide-n-seek are great indoor entertainment options to fill up the evening.  Finally end it all with a pajama party and pancake breakfast the next day!

To sum up….

It should be noted that you may have the best intentions when it comes to celebrating your teen’s birthday but it may be wise to give a thought to the planning process as well. My advice is to brainstorm some of these ideas with friends & certainly run them by your immediate family. Decide if you are going to party at home or elsewhere. Finally, pick a theme or activity, choose a date & make a few calls to check on availability.

If you’re reading this and researching ideas, you’re already doing an awesome job as a parent & on your way to having the best 13th Birthday party ever!

The post 13 going on 30: Fun Birthday Celebration Ideas to Ring in the Teenage Years! appeared first on InstantELLA.

So, keeping this in mind, here are a few critical chores, I believe, are connected to success and if taught to a child early enough, will develop positive & effective habits later on in their adult life. If you can get your kids to do these willingly & correctly on their own by age 12 (if not before), count yourself lucky

Making the Bed: Setting Goals

Here’s what making your bed (or not) reveals about your personality

This is the first opportunity for success every morning. It’s the first task that is presented to the child when he/she wakes up & often signals their response or how they will react towards other activities throughout the day.

I remember teaching & explaining the importance of making the bed to my sons (now age 10 and 12) a few years ago. They share a room and have bunk beds. The older one is on the top bunk. Initially the younger one would forget but eventually has got into the rhythm of making his bed. Every time I asked ‘boys, are your beds made?’ the answer was always ‘yes!’ I thought my job was done. The older one started off strong but I recently discovered he’s been shoving his blanket out of sight, behind a huge body pillow. Since he’s on the top bunk, it’s hard to notice the bed isn’t made the way he was taught and supposed to do it. When questioned, he had no excuse for not making his bed. What possible good did he achieve by not doing the right thing? Was there anything more urgent he needed done instead & why did he not come back later to finish his bed?  Was he also giving his teachers the slip with homework or assignments, was he slipping up elsewhere by taking what he thinks is the easy way out? Was this laziness or slyness? These were questions I had to ask him because I had to make him see that they were not good qualities to have in the world of adults or when he worked his first paid job.

What I realized is that unlike my younger son, the older one for some reason, finds it hard to set goals and rules for himself. He finds it difficult to follow goals others may have laid down too (like making the bed). So, he’ll need more time or guidance. But in the process, I’m hoping that making the bed will teach him to set goals in life because that’s important.

Taking out the Trash – Solving Problems, Starting Anew

What Japan can teach us about cleanliness

My husband & I were watching a few minutes of Jerry Seinfeld’s standup comedy last night where he talked about an object’s journey to becoming junk, how everything in a house is  pre-trash stage, eventually on its way to becoming junk. eBay is a newer concept of people transferring trash from one person to another. And while the jokes made us laugh, it’s also kind of true. Getting rid of trash is necessary & needs to be done routinely. Physical trash if unattended to, causes disease. For me, a messy room is also a messy mind. I cannot concentrate with mess around me. Mess inhibits creativity & so, the process of cleaning up the house, taking out the trash is rejuvenating & cathartic.

For kids, taking out the trash can serve as a lesson i.e. It’s ok to make mistakes & it’s ok when things don’t work out the way you expect, but it’s important to understand that mistakes, like cleaning up trash, can be fixed and that every time you fix something, the possibility of starting a new will always be available! There’s no need to feel bogged down with childish worries and let the trash pile up. Taking out the trash is always the solution

Taking care of the Pet: Love & Responsibility

5 Ways to Help Your Pets Stay Healthy and Strong in 2019

My sons have had hermit crabs as pets for 3 years now. The first pair died & we replaced them. The replaced crabs are still with us and the credit of keeping them alive (this time) goes to my older son. He has a connection with animals. He even feeds & pets the neighborhood cat who’s started to visit us regularly.

Looking after a pet, gives the child a sense of purpose. It has developed nurturing qualities in my son. He loves his pet and knows he plays a big role in keeping them clean, happy & fed. Having a pet, I believe, teaches a child to look beyond themselves and towards other’s needs. The world could use a bit more of that

Doing their Laundry: Planning & Hard work

Cleaning Skills to Teach Your Children

‘Laundry’. My husband shudders at that word and so do I sometimes. Not only is it chaotic, rule-bound, painstaking and time-consuming, but the thought of the number of sweaters that shrunk & ‘whites’ that became off white at their best and discolored at their worst, makes me want to cry.

Now, imagine your kids doing their own laundry.

Why should you create this nightmare for them? Why, when the load is heavy and it involves rules & using chemicals and an electronic washing machine that could get damaged? The answer – to root out laziness and teach your kid about hard work, planning & responsibility.

My kids used to have a gala time switching out clothes throughout the week, like it was a fashion show, with no regard about who took care of doing the laundry, folding their clothes or making sure they had a neatly organized closet. So, at first, I made them only fold their clothes & put them away. And boy did they grumble about that but it taught them, at least, to be more responsible about rotating their clothes & keeping their closet clean. Then I began to notice my younger one getting both mentally & physically lazy, refusing to think logically, and putting up a resistance to do any kind of work (except make his bed). So, I decided to make him responsible for all laundry in his room, including his brother’s. This would involve being aware when to do the laundry, washing, drying, setting timers on the machine, deciding how much detergent & water to load, separating clothes, making sure the machine and laundry room was clean & everything in place when he was done, bringing the laundry up to his room & then folding all the clothes and putting them away. The task truly is exhausting. On a weekday, he’d need to balance his schoolwork and sports and find the time to do all of this.

Skip to 6 months later! My little guy is a pro at laundry, he maintains good grades at school & has a great willingness towards work. No complaints whatsoever. He thinks critically and even plans his day and tasks ahead on his own with little guidance from us. I’m so proud of him, eager to see what he’s capable of. And we owe it all to ‘doing the laundry’. Since he doesn’t seem to be lazy anymore & that issue is resolved, I felt there wasn’t a need for him to continue doing the Laundry .I’m now making his older brother do it and let’s just say, I’m looking forward to the end of another 6 months to see if this experiment takes similar roots!

Putting together a simple meal: Gratitude & Survival

2 Questions You Should Ask Your Kids at Dinner

I can write a book on how ungrateful kids are about homecooked meals. From eating excruciatingly slowly, to wasting their food, to not saying ‘thank you’ when served their meals to comments like ‘I can eat a whole lot at olive garden’ and ‘ why can’t we have more of that ravioli (store bought, frozen or out of a can) like we do at grandmas?”…. these are all signs of the sense of entitlement a child has towards food. It’s common, we may have done it when we were kids and we’ve all heard about the starving children in Africa & Asia and why we shouldn’t waste food. But let’s face it, when we grew up, we very quickly and painfully discovered that life isn’t a buffet and neither are our meals.

Sure, fast-food tastes great but so does every other unhealthy food and Olive Garden is heaven on a plate but isn’t sustainable every day, even on a 6-figure salary!

More importantly, it’s not just irritating for the parents but every time a child acts difficult with meals, he/she is unnecessarily obsessing about the food, making himself/herself a slave to it and preventing himself/ herself from moving on to other more creative thoughts and activities. At no rate would I ever encourage a child’s ranting about meals.

So, it boils down to being grateful for what you have and if you’re not happy with it at least learn to fix it on your own, like a little adult. And here’s where my suggestion of a child learning to  put together a simple meal comes in. Example – boiling/ frying eggs, cooking rice, brewing tea/ coffee, cutting veggies, tossing a salad, learning how to operate an oven so you can grill/ bake fish & veggies on a try. I taught my kids to do it all last summer with the intention that one day in the week, they prepare a homecooked, healthy dinner for the family & their father & I will eat it without grumbling. That is yet to happen but on a daily basis, they do put together their own lunches to take to school – PB or ham sandwiches, cut fruit, crackers & other snacks.

There’s always a post its reminder on the cabinet door in case they may forget how to do lunch, but I relieved to confidently know if ever my husband or I leave the kids on their own, they will not starve or wait to get the next meal served to them. Often, they ask if they can help with dinner & I take that as a sign that they are beginning to understand & appreciate the love & work that goes into preparing a meal.

Choosing their outfits: Awareness

4 Reasons Why Your Kids Should Pick Out Their Own Clothes

How you dress may say something about who you are, but how you carry yourself speaks volumes! That’s something I learnt as a little girl studying in a convent. We had a uniform but there were other standards governing how we did our hair, wore our socks, polished our shoes and managed our fingernails. Times have changed, true, but that discipline has stayed with me till this day. It’s something I’ve tried to instill in my boys.

By encouraging them to choose their own outfits for school, I’m teaching them that they are responsible for how they want to represent themselves to others. Not only are they enjoying discovering their own styles, they also know that different occasions call for different attire. Casual sporty school clothes & sneakers are not appropriate for a more reverent occasion like attending Sunday Mass. The clothes they wear also serve as a physical cue or awareness as to where they are and how to behave.

This will prepare them for how to get on in the real work environment.

Doing the Dishes: Service & Discipline

Dear Kids: Do Your Own Damn Dishes

Like taking out trash, washing the dishes and cleaning up after meals is a necessary activity. There’s no escaping it in the adult world, so kids might as well get a head start. This chore is especially helpful to solve the problem of children who are slow eaters – the last one who finishes eating gets to clean up. And while they are ‘cleaning up’ perhaps they could do a little introspection to see how they can improve themselves to avoid a repeated episode of dish-washing. The truth is, like I said at the start, it’s not something that can be avoided as an adult.

An easy childhood, without chores, accountability or responsibility may be fun in the short term, but could lead to a more difficult & challenging life as an adult. My point to this litany of chores and why kids should do them is this: Learning how to cope!

Life is a juggling act. It’s all about coping & multitasking. The more self-reliant you are, the less you have to depend on people and situations. You can better control the outcome and you have a better grip on life. That’s when you stop coping and start living successfully and what parent doesn’t want that for their kid.. So, while other members of the family may dote on your child, it’s your primary job as a parent to teach your child to cope, to become self-reliant as quick as possible!

The post Raising Success – 7 Chores You Kids Should Be Doing & Why appeared first on InstantELLA.

Securing Housing

Moving out of the house and into your own place is exciting and a little nerve-wracking. The new freedom is exciting but living on your own can also be intimidating. There’s a lot of things to consider when looking into where to live: location, price, private or shared room, amenities, and even the social atmosphere. 

As a freshman, it’s a good idea to consider student housing. There’s always the option of just renting a traditional apartment, but student housing is convenient and sensible while in college. When renting an apartment, the lease won’t necessarily begin at the beginning of the school year. Student housing is more likely to become available at the right time. If you want a more social college experience, student housing will be full of students your age. Apartments could be filled with people that are a range of different ages.

Choosing Roommates

College is the perfect time to break out and form new relationships, but that doesn’t mean you have to drop all of your old childhood friends. It can be nice to room with old friends – just be careful to establish some expectations on how you live. Try to find roommates who have similar lifestyles as you. Do you both want to throw parties all the time? Are you both morning people? How clean do you like to keep your apartment? These are important conversations to have with your friends before deciding if you can room together.

Picking Classes

Choosing College Classes: Important Tips For Incoming Freshmen

Freshman year most of your classes will be generals. Use your university catalog to find what classes you need to take. Unlike in high school, there will be hundreds of classes to choose from. Choose a class load that will be challenging and fun. You are going to college to learn, so don’t just take all the fun recreational classes. But also remember that college is about experiencing new things so if you want to go ahead and try out that scuba diving class.

Selecting Professors

Choosing Your Professors and Keeping Those Ties

Professors can make or break your class experience. Talk with people who have taken your classes and ask which professors they had. Use websites like ratemyprofessors.com to see what people have to say about your professors. You won’t find the perfect professor for every class, but you probably can find a professor that is a fair grader and engaging to listen to.

Buying Textbooks

Textbooks are expensive. Probably more expensive than you expect. Honestly, there’s no need to go and buy a brand new textbook for each of your classes – especially while you are taking generals. Look for used and less expensive textbooks at your university’s bookstore. Compare your university bookstore’s prices with prices on Amazon or other websites that sell textbooks. Many universities even have Facebook pages dedicated to buying and selling textbooks. Look around before you buy that brand new textbook you only need for one semester.

Freshman year is an exciting time and you’re bound to make a lot of fun memories. Just remember to sort out some of the logistics, like housing and professors, before you get to campus this fall.

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