As your teen grows and gains more independence, connecting with them during the holiday break may look different than it did in the past. With many teens focused on socializing with friends, technology, and their own interests, it can be easy to feel distant from them. However, this season also presents a unique opportunity to foster a deeper bond with your teen. When they have some time and space from their regular routine, from school, after-school activities, and homework, they not only have more available hours to spend with you but extra mental and emotional energy to spare. This, combined with a little nostalgia, can make for the perfect opportunity to connect.
Why the Holiday Break is a Perfect Opportunity for Connection
Holiday breaks give us a rare pause in everyday responsibilities. While teens may initially gravitate toward their phones or friends, they might also feel the same subtle yearning for family connection. The holiday atmosphere, with its relaxed routines and festive spirit, provides the perfect context for conversations, shared activities, and moments of closeness that might be harder to come by during the busy school year. Additionally, the holidays often offer unique opportunities to bond over traditions, whether through cooking, decorating, or even giving back to the community. When we view this time as a chance to create lasting memories and strengthen bonds, it opens up space for meaningful connection.
3 Ways to Connect with Your Teen During the Holiday Break
- Create a New Tradition Together:
While it can be meaningful to keep family traditions alive, starting a new one with your teen can be a great way to bond. Your teen is in an age of transitioning from childhood to adulthood, and being able to bond with you through more quality time and autonomy is age-appropriate and nurtures your connection. Try asking them for input on what they’d like to do each holiday season, like baking together, visiting a holiday market, or even setting aside a cozy movie night. Making them part of the planning gives them a sense of agency and may make them more excited about the holiday season.
In our Woodland Hills teen therapy sessions, we often hear from teens who struggle with how to connect with their parents. They go back and forth between wanting to be nurtured and cared for as a child and wanting to be seen as a young adult. Setting aside quality time takes the onus off your teen to reach out for connection, and making an effort to have a specific age-appropriate tradition lets them know that you see that they are growing older and wiser.
Be ready to try something new and outside your comfort zone. This is a great way for your teen to learn and practice compromise. You also set a strong example when you model for them that you are willing to at least try something new. Conversely, prepare yourself for something you might not find very exciting. In your anticipation to give your teen some more authority, you might be amped up and prepared for something really outside the box. Without meaning to, you might push for “something more”, wanting to encourage your teen to ask for what they “really want” or to aim “higher”. If their suggestion is met with a response that their idea was big enough, creative enough, or bold enough, that means their suggestion is being rejected for being inferior in some way. The best way to prepare to talk about what your teen might like to do is to prepare to say, “That’s a great idea! Let’s try it!” (within reason. Always be ready with your boundaries when discussing any plans with your teen, and encourage them to have their own boundaries as well).
Letting your teen know that they are old enough for a more adult tradition might have some surprising outcomes. You may find, when talking to your teen about what new tradition they would like to start, that they tell you what childhood tradition(s) also mean(s) the most to them. You might be surprised to hear what it is that your teen doesn’t want to let go of or hold as a dear memory. So often, teens are striving to prove that they are growing up, that they know their own minds, and that they are responsible. When you treat your teen with respect and show that you can see that they are getting older, they don’t have to fight so hard to be taken seriously. It is in those moments that you might find that they want the nostalgia of a childhood film or outing to be included in your plans, if not remembered for a while. Be ready to support your teen no matter what they say is significant to them. When you give them space to be who they are, you might learn something surprising! In this way, you and your teen are building and maintaining your relationship. If your teen has younger siblings, they might want to participate in helping you organize a tradition for the younger ones, as well.
- Embrace Volunteer Work or Acts of Kindness:
The holidays are a great time to teach empathy and generosity by volunteering or doing something thoughtful for the community. Find a local food bank, toy drive, or animal shelter and volunteer together. Not only does this offer a break from technology, but it also encourages teens to connect with people outside of their usual circle.
Doing something meaningful together can be a powerful bonding experience and may become a tradition they look forward to each year. It may also become something you do more consistently if you find a volunteer opportunity that really speaks to you both. Volunteering together can help to strengthen your parent-child dynamic, and be a great way to connect with your teen, as you are now both working as a team that is being led and/or organized by others. Sometimes, these situations can challenge what we think of each other. You may be able to see your teen’s skills more easily when you are not the person making the rules and organizing the day. Similarly, your teen may be offered a glimpse of who you are as a person, beyond how you show up as a parent when the two of you are working side by side on a project. Consider how you can release patterns from your daily life together and focus on becoming closer through your volunteer efforts.
In a season that can be full of so much consumption, it is beneficial for all of us to take note of what we have and what we are thankful for. You do not have to have a lot of material wealth to be grateful for your family, your relationships, and your ability to help others. Giving back by volunteering allows us to see what we have in our everyday lives. It also teaches us that the people who don’t have what we have are not so different from us. Most are folks who had a run of bad luck, who didn’t have the support they deserved, or who weren’t shown acceptance and kindness for who they were.
Challenging yourself and your teen to do acts of kindness is a great way to teach your teen how to practice looking out for others. You do not have to sign up as an official volunteer in order to give back to your community. In fact, if your schedule prevents being able to commit to a certain shift or event schedule, self-driven acts of kindness are a great solution. This community-minded activity can be done whenever both you and your teen are free and can be shaped by their input so much more than an organization will facilitate.
For example, you get to decide where you are going for your acts of kindness, how many you want to do, what your budget is, and more. You might decide to visit a shopping center of some sort and try to find one person to help pick something up or get something from a shelf. Maybe you each want to pay three compliments. How many people can you hold a door for? While you’re there, you may also be inspired by what you see around you. The skill of looking for ways to help a stranger is the skill of having an awareness of the people who walk past you every day. Building empathy and enjoying the reward of doing nice deeds is so helpful in shaping your teen to be a person who thinks of others.
- Have Tech-Free Times for Family Check-Ins
Technology can be a major barrier to connection, so consider setting specific tech-free times during the holiday break. This means you are also away from your devices; modeling this behavior is the easiest way to enforce the idea of putting technology away. Use these moments for casual family check-ins or even to play a board game or card game. It doesn’t have to be forced or long; just a short period of time where everyone is truly present. By focusing on conversation and interaction, you can make the most of these moments, letting your teen know you’re genuinely interested in their world without distractions. As a teen counselor in Woodland Hills, I often hear how much of an impact quality family time can have on teens’ mental health and happiness.
It is impossible to completely cut your teen off from social media, as it is where a lot of peer socialization and culture happens. Because social media has an impact on teen mental health, it is important to be aware of your teen’s social media usage to some extent. This means knowing how long they’re spending online, and the kinds of content they are interacting with. The best way to ensure that your teen talks about what they do online is to be supportive of them sharing. Like most social interactions, a failure to respond well to small bids isn’t likely to breed bigger ones. If your teen wants to show you a video they love, taking time to watch it and asking a question or offering an opinion can foster your teen’s willingness to share more with you. The less you judge what they like and dislike, the easier it is for them to come to you with something they might worry you’ll judge them for. This is how you build in-roads to them being able to disclose something they need help with, and the effort is worth it.
Choose your tech-free time wisely whenever you can. Make sure it makes sense. If the family is sitting down to dinner, and everyone puts their devices away, it’s only natural that your teen does, too. If there’s an online event in the evening, where an influencer is going Live on a platform and all your teen’s friends are going to be watching, that won’t be the instance where your teen is happy to have tech-free time. You can’t always shape family plans around something like that, and those instances are good times to practice compromise and resilience from letdowns. But communicating with your teen about when there are important online events and doing your best to show you understand why they mean so much to your teen will make it easier for you to carve out time offline, as well.
While it’s not your job to entertain your teen, it is reasonable for you to have an idea of how you will spend time offline. Asking your teen to put their phone away but not having anything planned for them to pay attention to won’t set you up for happy conversations. If you ask your teen to be device-free at family meals and during arranged quality time, that is fair. If you want your teen to put their phone away simply for the sake of it being away, that will be less popular. This doesn’t mean that you have no boundaries around online time in order to avoid butting heads, it means you choose your battles so that most people are happy more of the time.
Teen Therapy at Embracing You Therapy
We’ve seen the benefits of being intentional with holiday breaks in our time offering teen therapy in Woodland Hills. Those who attend in-person or online teen therapy tell us of their struggles to grow into who they are while balancing their families, friends, and social narratives. When you get creative in carving out time with your teen, you give them permission to connect with you as they are, to be better known by you, and to know you better in return. Creating more mature traditions with them preserves your connection and deepens your understanding of one another. Always leave space for them to feel safe, whether they want to preserve a tradition that you’re surprised by, or come up with something new to share, or both! They might seek to build on existing traditions, like adding a new recipe to the holiday baking menu. You may learn new things about their worldview when you spend time giving back to them, and you may also find that you are affirmed in things you already know.
