What do pre-teens do on the weekends?

November 12, 2024 7:20 AM

I'm trying to get a sense of what the 10-13 year-old age group does on weekends. It's a time that is post- playdate and organized group music classes, but pre-getting a job, making own plans etc. So curious how kids across all nations (not just US) spend this time in their lives.
posted by Toddles to Society & Culture (14 answers total)

My kids have sports activities on the weekend, generally in the morning. They either have friends over for the rest of the day, or lay alone in their room watching youtube videos and also playing roblox. We often do something as a family on a weekend night, perhaps go to eat or a movie, or stroll the walkable part of town, or something.

I have two close in age, both in your age range, but they don't really play together that much.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:25 AM on November 12

My 13 year old has sports activities, volunteering, and piano lessons on Saturday. Other weekend activities for him now and my other son when he was that age include:

- having friends over
- chores, including bonus chores for cash (things we would pay others to do like this year I got some lawn care quotes because we were overloaded, and then my kids decided they would rather be the lawn care company - my 13 year old did the bulk of it and he did a great job)
- my kids each cook dinner one weekend night so that they develop their skills - this is not a hard and fast rule if they have other things going on. Because it's new and novel this sometimes takes up to 2 hours.
- homework and piano practice (this latter is not a chore for my son, he likes to spend time playing on weekends)
- family excursions (we usually do 1-2 a month - galleries, museums, festivals, outdoor markets, etc.)
- making videos and art and cosplay stuff
- D&D
- board games
- right now some dog training
- summer - kayaking at the beach, long bike rides
- and frankly, this is video game and youtube time - my kids are both pretty busy during the week so this is when they do that stuff
posted by warriorqueen at 8:09 AM on November 12 [1 favorite]

Organized Sports

Lessons (coding, music, art, etc)

Girl Scouts / Boy Scouts

Chores (cleaning room, doing own laundry, etc)

Developing Free-Range Skills

Reading

Volunteering (food pantry, etc)

Wasting time playing video/phone games by themselves

Texting with friends

Hang out with friend(s) in person for games, TV, D&D, etc

Developing free-range skills can can be things like running to the store for something the family needs, or walking to get pizza with a friend without an adult chaperone.

Of course there's a big difference between 10 and 13, so some of these things come online over those years.

posted by Winnie the Proust at 8:14 AM on November 12 [2 favorites]

My ten-year-old has dance classes that take up most of Saturday mornings throughout the school year. We often do some kind of family activity on Saturday afternoons; otherwise we have quiet time at home (TV, tablet, books, arts/crafts). Sundays are for catching up on chores and getting ready for the week ahead. For her, that looks like helping with laundry or dishes, general picking up, and occasionally assisting in the kitchen.
posted by timestep at 8:16 AM on November 12

Oh, and she will often have marathon Facetime calls with her bestie, but they are usually doing something while they talk, like drawing challenges or making bracelets. This was a habit that started during the pandemic and has tapered a little now that they see each other at school again, but it's not uncommon for them to spend three hours on the phone together over the course of the weekend.
posted by timestep at 8:18 AM on November 12 [1 favorite]

Mine (US, 2015-2020) were not into sports, so they met up with friends to go for bubble tea, hot chocolate, play MtG in person, or read. Sometimes parents would organize an outing like a "hike" but more like kids running off and exploring in the woods for a few hours. Sometimes they'd go to a favorite shop to browse while I went to a cafe or bookshop nearby. They would hang out online with IRL friends in Minecraft with live chat going over discord. They'd invite friends over to bake, then watch a movie. Some chore training: laundry, cat litter, dishwasher, etc. We used meal kits so food prep was sometimes a weekend thing. Many, many hours solo creating MtG decks and listening to music.
posted by cocoagirl at 8:24 AM on November 12

My 13 year old spends her weekend time doing any or all of the following:

- wakes up at literally noon I am not exaggerating

- either Saturday or Sunday I force the kids out of bed a little bit sooner than they like and make them go to the gym with me

- she fixes herself an elaborate brunch at around noon. Saturdays and Sundays are the time to make blueberry waffles with a side of avocado toast and a perfect runny-yolk fried egg

- depending on the season - mows the lawn, rakes leaves, pulls weeds (I hate yard work so I make my kids do it all for me). Also does her laundry, cleans her room, etc.

- practices violin for 45 mins

- binge-watches TV shows or youtube videos for maybe 90 minutes or 2 hours until I start yelling about brain rot! screen addiction! kids these days! go outside! LOOK AT YOUR EYES YOU HAVE SPIRALS IN YOUR PUPILS, etc.

- annoys her 16 yo brother and/or is annoyed by him, and then those two laugh about for a bit, then they go hunting for snacks in the pantry. They may also decide to cook/bake something.

- at least once a month her brother is gone camping with boy scouts or at a robotics competition so she finds other things to do like obsessively arrange her art supplies by date acquired or size or color or function.. she's very finicky

- texts friends, makes plans to walk over to her friend's house or has her friend come over for a couple of hours in the afternoon/evening

- walks to the store to get me some grocery or other item I'm missing, or walks to Starbucks or a nearby ice cream shop to get herself a treat

- almost every alternate Saturday evening: she hangs out with a family friend who has a regular biweekly date with our whole family, eating dinner and then watching a movie or doing art or playing board games with all of us
posted by MiraK at 9:44 AM on November 12 [2 favorites]

In NYC, my 11yo and 14yo read, practice magic tricks, meet with their friends to play soccer, watch movies, play Minecraft, and play with/harass each other. There’s some hw and chores and errands in there, and we do things as a family during parents’ less-busy periods. Sometimes they bake something. One practices piano.
posted by Ollie at 10:10 AM on November 12

I'm in Toronto, Canada. My kids have a couple of lessons on the weekend but they've got a lot of free time. Here are some things they'll do to fill it:

The younger kid might organize playdates either at our house or at a friends but this is maybe once every 1 or 2 months.
The older kid might make a plan with their friends to go to the swimming pool. This is also maybe once every 1 or 2 months.
Birthday parties.
Reading books.
Homework.
Piano practice.
I can usually convince my younger kid to go for a walk or bike ride to play Pokemon Go. Sometimes the older one will come too but this usually requires a bubble tea bribe and sometimes even that won't work.
We might have family plans to go out so then they get roped into that.
They've got friends that are relatively close by but no one in our immediate neighbourhood so they can't just ring a doorbell and ask if a friend wants to hang out. I'm pretty sure that if the younger one and their friends could easily communicate with each other they'd make more plans to meet up. The older one likes their alone time.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:21 PM on November 12

NYC northern suburb. I have 3 kids very close in age. 30 months top to bottom. So, when all 3 were in that age group, they all had sports events on Saturdays and some Sundays. I coached a few of their teams so, often, we would go out to lunch afterwards. Or we would stop at Rocky's and get wedges for everyone and then have a picnic outside. Sometimes they would go home with a friend on the team or on the team they played. Saturday afternoons, were mostly them either at a friend's or having a friend over. The three of them might go exploring in the small woods behind our house. I cleared a bike path through the woods and added some jumps and obstacles and they would also race each other. Once in a while, the early evening was spent at urgent care or the ER getting stiches or a cast. They would also have a catch with each other in the backyard or toss a lacrosse ball around. If the weather was warm, I had built a wiffleball field in the back yard and they would play wiffleball. In the winter, I would try to make a rink for them to skate. That was fleeting because some winters in just wasn't cold enough long enough to sustain the ice. Then a deer would rip the plastic sheeting and well, it was over for the season.

Saturday night was usually either a sleepover or a family dinner out. Sunday afternoons, in the fall was watching the Giants on TV. Sunday night was dinner and milkshakes followed by making sure they had done their HW for Monday. Right around that age, they got cell phones so I am sure they were Blackberry messengering their friends and looking at things on the web they probably should not have. (This was all about 15-16 years ago.)

Sometimes they would come outside and help me wash the family cars or work on the classic car we had. In the winter, when there was no basketball travel games, we would go up to our lake house and do stupid things on the frozen lake like drive my truck or try to ice fish. I think the specifics of what they did depended greatly on the time of year and what they had obligations for in terms of sports teams or other organizational commitments.

And, of course, they would annoy the hell out of each other and come complain to me or their mom and we would tell them to work it out themselves. The two boys, 13 months apart, used to wrestle with each other. The older one was stronger, but the younger one was bigger so that led to some interesting battles. (Now, years and years later, they are best of friends but VERY diiferent personality wise.)

My daughter, maybe because she had two brothers in the grades below her, grew up to love sports yet be very pink preppy sorority girl. What she was particularly good at was pushing the boys buttons to piss them off. That too because a weekend afternoon activity.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 1:32 PM on November 12

Australia, the burbs: pretty similar to the above. Mine is 10 and has a 7 yo brother. They do play together if they are both around, but she also plays sport, has parties, reads (a lot), goes for a bike ride, meets a local friend on her bike or has them here, and if we can make it work we do family outings of some kind: walk, a play ground, or some other thing. She bakes a bit. We watch the Mandalorian together most nights over dinner at the moment. We also have church on Sunday. Most other families have another sport at that time
posted by jojobobo at 11:12 PM on November 12

My ten-year-old has very full weekdays, so we leave a lot of the weekend open. He goes to math circle and piano and plays some video games every weekend. These are some things he sometimes does on the weekend:

- A hike in the woods
- A walk in the neighborhood
- Doing a challenge to get more screen time
- Playdate with a friend

The rest of the time is almost entirely filled with reading various Rick Riordan books.
posted by ignignokt at 6:45 AM on November 13

Canada, suburban neighbourhood, two boys with different personalities:

Kid 1:
Read, take apart mechanical things, program, sometimes work on homework for his tutor

Kid 2:
Read, have neighborhood friends over for board games, play basketball, listen to audiobooks

Both kids:
Swimming lessons, hang out on discord chatting with friends, sneakily play video games while pretending to read or listen to audiobooks, keep up their Duolingo streaks, board games with us, walks in nature with the dog, plot and scheme about how they will use their sanctioned video game time

At some point they should do and put away their laundry... But that often seems to be laaate on Sunday night.
posted by Sauter Vaguely at 6:51 AM on November 13

My kids occasionally saw friends or had a planned activity, but most of the time they stayed home and did their own thing. Computer games, reading, art projects, videos, homework, etc.
posted by metasarah at 12:35 PM on November 13