what to do with a 13yrold

[mushpea]

ok so I have a rough idea as I have a 13year old daughter but she just disaperars of to her room to do her own thing each night which is generaly playing with her ponies or going on the internet.
if you have 13year old mindees what do they do after school? do you let them on the internet? she will be my only mindee 3 days a week after school at the moment the other 2 days I also have a 2yrold and a 5yrold so was thinking we could do more grown up things on those 3 days but what ??? any ideas folks?

[mama2three]

cooking , craft , jewellery making , sewing , scrapbooking , puzzles..

Im guessing really , no experience of older girls at all...I think Id have to ask her what she likes to do!

[sarah707]

We have looked after a few teens - they tend to come over the winter when they don't want to go home to an empty house then disappear in the summer.

They come in and usually do homework, play on the laptop, watch a bit of TV (if it's another room from little ones), listen to music, do puzzle books, sometimes play in the garden with the little ones... just chill really and then have tea before going home.

We usually get fond of them just when they decide they are too old for us

[BucksCM]

Sarah's answered really.
They normally just want to chill out.
If you do an activity, i would do 1 a week as you could quickly run out of ideas
I do find though, if I have littlies that they will play with them and actually have a lot of fun...they are not playing though...just doing it for the little ones!

[Bridey]

I have a 12 year old boy and set up a little space in my spare room for him. He has a sofa, tv, ps2 with games and dvds. He does his homework and chills and is welcome to come downstairs to join in with games and craft whenever he choses. He doesn't have a laptop but he's only here for a few hours a week.

[SandCastles]

Same as Sarah.

I looked after a 12 year old and god she used to eat loads when she got here, so we started cooking together not just cup cakes and biscuits but also savouries like cheese straws, sausage rolls and her own recipies from cooking class, so she could eat everything she has made and keep some for the next evening if she wanted.
She liked chilling with her DS that mum dropped off here to prevent her taking it into school, she even got my son passed a tricky level on his DS game on more than one occassion.
When the littlies were here she was like my helper and kept them entertained with all sorts of games and even did magic tricks for them, and put on performances.
Some times I gave her my craft catelogue and a marker so she could compile a shopping list of all the craft activities she wanted to do. I then gave her a budget and she had to keep within that budget, while considering p&p etc... so I got a good idea of what she wanted to craft while she was here.