So what are kids into these days?

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

onlyroz wrote: »

Sounds like my kind of girl. Wish I was brave enough to go turquoise.

I went Midnight Blue at the same time.


All you have to do is have hair light enough to show the colour - using peroxide/bleach and a purple shampoo/conditioner to tone it if necessary, before putting on the temporary colour. Hers is by Stargazer, I used La Riche.



If you don't like it, it washes out soon enough and you can replace it with another colour.


If you can get away with it at work, go for it - it's better to regret something you've done than regret not doing anything.

daisiegg

Spendless wrote: »

Monster High

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_High

Mean girls, I'd not heard of, but sounds a good one for my 10yo to watch, she has problems with the [STRIKE]witch clique[/STRIKE] 'popular girls'

One Direction
http://www.onedirectionmusic.com/gb/home/

You haven't heard of Mean Girls?!?! :eek: I don't know a teenage girl not obsessed with it....in the last week of term from Year 7 up to Year 11 they start carrying copies of it around school and hopefully waving it in your face at the start of each lesson (to be sadly disappointed though as contrary to popular belief we do NOT just watch DVDs in the last week :rotfl:)

It is actually quite a good film, even though I have sat through it dozens of times. Not sure I would show it to a 10 year old but I am apparently incredibly old fashioned in my views about what kids should and shouldn't watch.

CupOfChai

14 year olds nowadays still listen to Linkin Park? Crivens! I think I was listening to them when I was 14... er, about 14 years ago . Good grief where's my life gone...

As for the entire point of the thread, that certainly shows, kids are all different, just like everyone else. Can't you ask them or the family at all what they're into? Sorry, I'm useless at this, it was just Jojo's post took me right back for a minute there!

tyllwyd

I've got a 14 year old and a 10 year old and to be honest if we go to stay with relatives I wouldn't regard it as their problem to keep them entertained - if they are bored then they will moan to me!

If you have films available on Netflix, you can let them connect to your wifi on their phones (do you need any ground rules about bandwith usage etc?), you can let them play any suitable games you have/they bring on your xbox, the rest is their parents' problem! You could make sure you can get hold of any board games easily in case they get bored enough to go retro, but don't try to force it on them.

Edited to say - and if you want to get to know them, the best thing is just to try to relax and go along with what they are doing - if you are all sitting nicely in the living room and you start asking them what they are doing at school, you won't get anything back! But if you join in when they are playing a game, or kick a football around with them, or watch a film and bring out snacks, and listen when/if they start chattering on about something, you've got a much better chance of enjoying their company.

liney

My DS is 9, so this might help with the boy child.

Football in the garden and water guns.

Get him helping with the garden, raking grass, and cleaning up hedge trimming to earn some pin money.

Do you have, or could you get a swingball? Great family fun or can be played alone.

Get the children to cook dinner. Decide what they are making, price up on the internet. Go to the supermarket. Cook together with minimal adult interference. HM pizza is good - DS likes making dough. Upon the same lines. Check out the afternoon tea menus online at fancy hotels and get them to create 'high tea.' We also have done 'Come dine with us' for Dad, and created a menu. Kids could have a competition to design the best one online.

Libraries have jigsaws, and DVD's as well as books to borrow.

Local Leisure Centres may have activities. Ours have things like tennis, football, swimming and athletics for a £1. Also Dance mat sessions which the girls might like.

Geo caching. 'Treasure' hunting using an app to follow a trail locally and find the stash. Investigating this myself atm online.

Local stuff that you have seen a million times that they have not!

Cinema probably has a 'Kids club' where older films are shown for £2.50 ticket once a day.

Girls and ladies could have a mini pamper session one evening while you do boys things with little fella. Cheap facemasks, nail varnish etc.

aliasojo

Tropez wrote: »

....... the 11 year old girl would likely be fine with some dolls and ponies ...

I have nothing more helpful to add...but I just wanted to laugh at you anyway. :rotfl:

An 11 year old. With dolls. Bless you, you innocent. :rotfl:



(Just banter, please don't be offended I'm just having a laugh with you.:D)

You've had some good suggestions, I'm sure the time will fly past.

valk_scot

aliasojo wrote: »

I have nothing more helpful to add...but I just wanted to laugh at you anyway. :rotfl:

An 11 year old. With dolls. Bless you, you innocent. :rotfl:

My 11 year old got her dolls house down from the attic at the start of the summer and every time her friends have been round they've been playing with it. They're a pretty sophisticated lot but there they sit in their make up and sparkly nail polish, making the mum doll hoover the lounge etc and rearranging the furniture. The original idea was to sort out the dolls house to ebay it but DD has now told me that she'd like to keep it just a little bit longer. :rotfl:

liney

My friend's daughter has done the same thing with a Sulvanian Families dolls house, Valk

They grow up too quickly.

aliasojo

valk_scot wrote: »

My 11 year old got her dolls house down from the attic ....

Where it presumably had been because she no longer played with it?

She's clearly now into her 'retro' phase. :D

Tropez

So as not to turn this into some multi-quoting nightmare I'll try and address your comments by name. If I should miss you out, please feel free to poke me with a stick... not a sharpened one, of course. Not again.

Jojo - Kids still listen to Linkin Park? Wow, that takes me back to going all mopey and listening to In The End. Thanks for the info about NERF guns. You seem oddly knowledgeable about water based explosives. [insert suspicious looking smiley here]

Trolleyrun - Pictionary might be doable if they're in to that kind of thing. They can go tree climbing if they desire but due to an injury I can't even climb a ladder.

Silverwhistle - Well I did get ID'd by a cute girl a few weeks ago so maybe I don't look as crusty as how I feel, or maybe she was just a girl on a power trip who thought that forcing people older than her to show their ID was the first step towards world domination. You can never really tell how the megalomaniac mind is working.

As I mention above, I have an injury which prevents me from engaging in most sports... except the rather lazy kind where you know that calling the competitors "athletes" is at best a bit of a stretch but I do agree that sports are good for tiring people out and I am fortunate to have a large back garden, I went into my garage cubbyhole and was delighted to locate a football and even some tennis rackets. No tennis balls though but that's easily fixed. As for doing just fine, we'll see... do kids still all want to get up at 6am because that's going to be a problem?

CupofChai - I don't have any contact details for this family, myself. I've only just managed to get some names!

tywllyd - Never fear, I have no plans to force anything on them but I would like to be adequately prepared so that the capabilities of keeping them entertained are not outside my ability. While it would be nice to assume that their mother would be able to provide all the fun they required, the truth of the matter is that I do remember being a kid and I do remember being bored while away from my home.

While a certain degree of boredom is to be expected, the truth is that if these kids don't associate my house positively, then they're less likely to want to come back and if they don't want to come back, then this isn't great for my partner. I'm going to refrain from going into all the details but my partner's childhood was hellish to say the least. The vast majority of her "family" don't deserve to be referred to by the word; her father, for example, is a most apt example of the phrase that some people are only alive because it is illegal to kill them. His "gift" to her on her 15th birthday was to say he wished he'd punched her mother in the stomach harder to abort her.

It also hasn't entirely escaped my attention that certain traits of my partner's that make us a good couple likely only exist because of what's happened to her and that makes me feel not entirely noble, to say the least.

However, she did have a good relationship with her cousin, one of the few but as so often happens they didn't keep in touch very well and it's only recently that they've been able to talk more often, culminating in this little trip. They haven't seen each other in a decade, so making this go well is pretty much the most important thing I have going on right now. My partner is a wonderful, beautiful person and she deserves to have at least one person she can call family and have a proper relationship with.

Now, of course, I'm not going to go completely nuts and turn my home into some sort of bizarre reboot of Fun House (I don't have time to grow a mullet for a start) but ensuring that activities are available within the home and that potential activities are available outside the home once I actually get to know what these kids are into is a positive step. The safe choices are the Xbox, the TV with Netflix, Sky etc., the computer and I have an old tablet I can put the Kindle app on so they can read too but it doesn't hurt to have a few more options.

liney - Interesting and quite varied ideas, thank you. I shall have to check a few things out to ascertain whether they actually exist around here. Seriously, if it isn't on the route to the railway station, I have no idea if we have it

Aliasojo - What? When I was at school in Y6 which would have been 10/11, last day of each term we always had a "Bring Your Own Toys in Because the Teachers Have Given Up Caring" days and the girls would always be sitting there with some cutsey-wutsey doll or something that had pink hair and looked vaguely like a unicorn. Now I know they say that kids grow up quicker with each passing year, but if they've grown up that much then we're going to be at a stage where you have 9 year olds worried about the mounting political unrest in Egypt and its affect on the greater African and Middle Eastern economy.

Next you're going to tell me that boys aren't still into Manta Force! Shocking, just shocking....