Teenager prompts all-new vacation routines

A few “Musts” of any vacation with kids: Swimming pool, easy access to breakfast and patience.

Teenagers also require those things but in different forms.

The swimming pool better come with an attached hot tub. Cold cereal won’t suffice most days. Patience for new, more unpredictable demands.

Our family’s annual trip to the Oregon Coast went exceedingly well, particularly in that we could breathe non-smoky air for seven days. Technically, I have two teenagers now out of four – a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old. Thankfully, the 13-year-old, although predictably moody, still prefers the activities of his younger siblings.

My 15-year-old daughter, however, applies her single year of high school experience to approach life in all different ways.

I won’t sit here and say it’s not challenging. Every conflict with a teenager, especially when she’s the oldest of your kids, comes with uneasiness. Different than taking home your first infant from the hospital, but also not really. Point being, I don’t know what I’m doing.

BUT raising a teenager can also be delightful, because even familiar places and experiences come with new perspectives. On this vacation, we did the kid things AND we did some teenager things. Both fun. Both exhausting when you stack them into single days.

I provide a sampling of the experiences of my younger children vs. the life of a modern American teenager:

Music. Thankfully we’ve graduated from the period of exclusively listening to Disney songs and Kids Bop. My wife and I could pick our favorite music, introduce them to classics and listen casually to the radio.

My teenager, however, downloaded an extremely curated vacation playlist that MUST be heard through the car speakers. It included a whole bunch of Olivia Rodrigo alongside “old” music from 2015.

Shopping. As a shameless collector of trinkets and physical media, my choice of stores often aligns with our kids. Books! Toys!

Well, we added a new stop on our Oregon Coast trip.

My 15-year-old: “Oh, look! That store name is just Beads! We have to stop. I need to buy beads!”

So, we stopped at the bead store. Turns out they had pendant trinkets, string, chains etc. All you need for crafty, dangly jewelry. Somebody had to stay in the car with the dog, but I’m told the Bead store was glorious.

Activities. My teenager remembers the aquarium and not much has changed. Skip. She suggested that we all go see the R-Rated “Odyssey” as a family for a Tom Holland-Zendaya fix. Probably a little too intense for the younger ones.

Rather than dropping unnecessary money at the claw machine arcade (appropriately titled “Claw City”), I told the kids they could pick out $10 worth of goodies at store fully of stuffed animals, toys and candy. Also, there’s a Ross in town – you can pick a Squishmallow out of their kid section with a blindfold on and still get a better prize than at Claw City, but for 1/10th the cost.

My teenager chose to buy a little stuffed Avocado, which she immediately named Avogadro –I’d be lying if I said I understood the reference.  Anyway, she then proceeded to take multiple pictures of the avocado throughout the week at beautiful vistas. She even took it on a boat to whale watch. Somehow she held onto both her phone and the stuffed animal. I think she might have been more upset to lose the avocado.

This prompted her to also want avocados from the grocery store. We obliged, because avocados are not McDonald’s or Taco Bell, her typical foods of choice.

Beach. Kids dig holes, make sandcastles and couches, etc. Teenagers, apparently, like to smash rocks together to see if there are any fabulous designs or valuable jewels inside.

Biggest Ask. On the last day of vacation, before we had to leave for an 8-hour drive back home, the other kids wanted to make time to swim. We told them they had to help pack their things and get them into the car well before checkout time in order to have time.

My 15-year-old didn’t want to swim…or lounge in the hot tub, as she did all week, because maturity. No, instead, she wanted to stop at the fancy coffee place across the street from the beach.

“Do you think that last day, instead of swimming, one of you drives me down to get a matcha or strawberry latte? Maybe like a fancy treat too? I’ll get up early and help pack everybody and get the car ready to go.”

Sure enough, she woke up at 6:30 a.m. Then she made sure I was awake by 7.

“I really think we should get moving this morning. We have a lot to do, and I don’t want you to get a late charge for leaving after check-out time.”

I took the other three swimming. My wife took our 15-year-old to get a fancy drink. The line was out the door, and they didn’t return to pick the rest of us up until AFTER check out time.

But you better believe we have a photo to capture the precious memory of Avogadro trying her first matcha drink.

Tyler Wilson is an attorney, a freelance writer and parent to four kids, ages 9-15.

*Per the Google, Avogadro's Law states that equal volumes of all gases, at the same temperature and pressure, contain the exact same number of molecules.