It’s amazing how fast the time goes by. It seems like just a few short years ago my daughter was a baby, and now she is a teen getting ready for college.

I have found that as your child becomes a young adults your job as a parent becomes so much more important, and so much harder.

You want to make sure your children have learned those all too important life lessons, but the time you have to teach them and encourage them just keeps getting shorter.

Oui vey!

As a parent, you have to learn how to be more creative.  It is harder to connect with your teen as they grow.  They are more independent and they start pushing the envelope.

Your teen grows and they don’t value your input the same way they did when they were younger.  You know that their teenage knowledge has not prepared them for life, so you have to keep talking knowing that what your saying is being heard even if it isn’t being applied.
Ahh, the joys of parenting!

My solution to challenge has been spending special time with my daughter over dinner. It gives us a chance to leave the problems at home and go somewhere we are both relaxed.  We enjoy good conversation and a great meal.  I call it the mommy daughter date.

This time we ate at Ruby Tuesday.

We all ate there a couple months ago and we both were surprised at how well things turned out, so we went back.

It’s a great restaurant for cozy conversations, and I love the selection and the amazing salad bar.  The lighting, environment and choices are vast so we can talk without feeling rushed, or tense.

There are so many things we need to talk about and food is definitely one of them.  

As food has changed and as her life becomes full of activities, responsibilities how she eats will be even more important.  She needs to know that her choices are important both now and later.

Being able to model the importance of eating fruits and vegetables is easy when you have good choices.  With a big salad bar and healthy options making healthy selections are easy.  Watching her make choices that are good for her makes me feel like those lifelong lessons are finally hitting home.

Connecting with my daughter over meals lets me show her that there are ways to do what she wants, within her means.  

These trips even give me a chance to show her that we can do nice things while we stick to a budget.  With the coupons that Ruby Tuesday has on-line these chat and chews are well within our budget. We don’t have to sacrifice these special moments, just because we are watching what we spend.  

With buy one get one 50% off deals, you can really have a great time, eat great healthy food while you make time to connect and talk outside of home.

 

When it comes to connecting with your teens, be creative and think about your end goal.  Don’t let their silence stop you from reaching out your presence is needed and important even if they don’t tell you it is.