Your best friend was raised in a household where there was little discussion about private thoughts

Community activity is part of ‘civic responsibility’. It’s about doing things because we want to give back to our communities or help others.

Your child can learn about civic responsibility and be active in your community by:

• joining a Surf Life Saving Club, a scouting group or a local environmental or clean-up group
• helping with a primary school play, or coordinating or coaching junior sport
• setting up an arts space for the community or getting involved in youth radio
• being part of a youth advisory group through the local council
• promoting causes – for example, environmental issues, refugee rights, bushfire recovery and charities.

Your child might be interested in online civic or community activities – for example, an online campaign to save local parkland. Online community involvement can motivate teenagers to get involved in face-to-face community activities.

Benefits of being involved in community activities and volunteering

It doesn’t matter what teenagers do for their communities. Any involvement is good! When teenagers get involved in community activities and volunteering, they get many personal rewards and feelings of achievement.

Role models
By getting involved with community activities, teenagers can come into contact with like-minded peers and positive adult role models other than their parents. Interacting and cooperating with other adults and peers in community organisations encourages teenagers to see the world in different ways. It also helps them see how to put values or beliefs into action for the good of others.

Identity and connection
Young people are busy working out who they are and where they fit in the world. Being involved in community activities can give your child a:

• a positive way of understanding who they are
• a sense of belonging in their local community
• an opportunity to make new friendships and connections.

Skills
Community activities give teenagers the chance to apply the skills they already have. For example, your child could use the cooking skills they’ve learned at home at a community sausage sizzle or at a soup kitchen.

Volunteer work and community activities are also great opportunities to show initiative and develop workplace skills. For example, the sausage sizzle could give your child experience in speaking to customers and handling cash. Volunteering for Meals on Wheels might help your child prepare for part-time work as a waiter. And helping out at an animal shelter is a good way to learn how to groom or care for animals.

Being able to manage free time while balancing leisure, work and study is an important life skill. Being part of community activities could motivate your child to get more organised and start to manage their own time.

Self-confidence, mental health and wellbeing
Community activities can boost teenagers’ self-confidence and self-esteem. Your child can learn to deal with challenges, communicate with different people and build up their life skills in a supportive environment.

It’s also a great foundation for mental health and wellbeing.

Young people often feel good about being involved in something where others expect them to turn up, where they feel helpful and valued, and where they’re supported to achieve something as part of a group. These positive feelings can help protect young people from sadness and depression.

Being involved in positive community activity can also reduce the likelihood of substance abuse, mental illness and criminal activity.

“When I was 10, I was taken along to deliver Meals on Wheels to some elderly locals. I was unimpressed, and skulked in the doorways. But at the third house I met a wonderful tiara-wearing octogenarian. She told me about her time as a performer at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne. Somehow she had me taking out her kitchen bin and heating her lunch as she lectured me on making sure I could always support myself independently as a woman. I walked out on cloud nine!”

Encouraging involvement in community activities and volunteering

Start early
There are many ways for your child to be involved from early on.

Your child might get involved naturally in some of the things you do – helping out at preschool or school working bees, coaching a junior sport team, helping out at community events, spending weekends at local festivals, or swapping favours with other local families.

Your child is also more likely to get involved if their friends are. So you could suggest that your child takes part in an activity with a friend who’s already involved.

Take your child’s personality into account
Is your child a quiet, slow-to-warm-up character, who might like to observe the first few times? Perhaps bringing a close friend along to a ‘clean up the park day’ would be a good start. Or does your child love leading and being in the limelight? Then mentoring a group of primary school children doing a school performance might appeal.

Model civic responsibility
Take your child with you if you drop off a meal to a new parent or help someone move furniture. You can explain that it feels good to do things for others. You could also try taking your child to a rally or campaign event so they can see other young people engaged in broader community activities and issues.

Help your child get started
If your child wants to get involved but is a bit worried about it, a family approach might help. You might try joining a local tennis, sailing, football, soccer or photography club as a family. Or you and your child could join an art group or community theatre together.

Your child might need your help to make the first contact with a group. If you make some initial calls for your child, you might be able to increase their chances of success.

Some organisations have a minimum age for volunteers, so it’s worth finding this out early on.

Build on what your child is already doing
If your child isn’t that interested in community activities, one option is to accept this and just keep an eye out for future opportunities. But if you feel a push in the right direction is needed, you could try to build on things they’re already doing.

For example, if your child is in the debating team at school, they might enjoy a junior toastmasters group or an opportunity to speak up on a youth issue. If your child enjoys team sports, they could help out with some junior coaching. If your child has done some fundraising at school, they might like to put this experience into practice raising funds for a worthy cause.

You could also encourage your child to think about their family, friends and neighbours to see whether there’s someone they could help – a new parent or an elderly neighbour, for example.

Community activity and volunteering for young people with additional needs is just as beneficial as it is for typically developing teenagers. It can be a great way for them to build confidence and connections as well as workplace skills. Depending on your child’s strengths, interests and needs, you could look for opportunities in disability-oriented or mainstream organisations.

Child safety in community and volunteer organisations

It’s essential that your child is safe when doing community activities or working for volunteer organisations.

For example, depending on your child’s age, you might decide to meet any adults your child is going to work with, or ensure the adult volunteers or workers have a working with children (WWC) check. You could also agree on ground rules with your child about where they’re allowed to do community work. For example, you might agree that a public facility or space is OK, but a private home isn’t.

Community activities and volunteer organisations

You could also check out state-based volunteering websites:

Your child might find out about community activities and volunteering opportunities on social media. You could also find out about local opportunities from your local council or neighbourhood centre.

Privacy
As your child gets older, they need more privacy and personal space.

This is because your child is exploring new ideas, emotions and social interests. Your child is also working out what kind of person they are or want to be. It’s natural for your child to keep ideas and information to themselves as they do this.

Giving your child time and privacy to think and explore is an important part of supporting their growing independence. That’s because part of growing up is learning to handle new ideas, emotions and interests with independence and responsibility.

Monitoring
Because the teenage brain is still developing, teenagers sometimes make quick decisions and don’t always think through the consequences of their behaviour.

This means that your child needs you to stay in touch with them, so you can guide and support them. This is called monitoring.

But because teenagers also need privacy and independence, you need to monitor your child differently from when they were younger. For example, your child might gradually start getting around independently and checking in with you at agreed times.

Trust
This means you trust your child to make good decisions, behave appropriately, and decide what information they need or want to share with you and others.

Trust goes both ways. Your child needs to trust that you respect their right to have privacy and a say in decisions about their life.

When you and your child have mutual trust, you’ll have better communication. Your child will also be more likely to come to you when they need help.

Wanting more privacy and time alone doesn’t mean teenagers have something to hide. But if teenagers spend many hours in their rooms, don’t ever want to talk or seem very withdrawn, it could be a warning sign of depression, anxiety, smoking, alcohol or other drug use, or other problem activities. It could also be that your child is spending too much time alone on the computer or internet.

Respecting privacy for pre-teens and teenagers

How much privacy is appropriate? If you’re not sure, it can help to ask yourself what you really need to know.

For example, there are some things you need to know, like where your child is going to be on Saturday night, how they’re getting there and back, and whether there’ll be alcohol or adult supervision.

But there are other things that can be private between your child and their friends – for example, what they talked about at a party, or who they danced with.

Practical ways to respect your child’s privacy include:

• knocking before going into their room
• giving them space to talk with their friends
• asking before looking in or getting things out of their school bag
• checking whether your child wants you to be there when they see the doctor.

It can also help to discuss privacy with your child, set some ground rules and work out some boundaries. These can be changed as your child gets older.

You might also want to talk about situations where you’d need to cross the agreed boundaries. For example, this could be when you’re really worried that something isn’t right with your child.

To send the message that you respect your child’s privacy, you could avoid things like:

• listening to their telephone conversations
• looking at things in their room or in their drawers
• reading their diary or checking their email account
• ‘friending’ them or communicating with them on social media if they don’t want you to
• calling them to check on them all the time.

Monitoring pre-teens and teenagers successfully

The best monitoring is based on everyday rules and routines, plus staying connected with your child. This low-key approach to monitoring builds trust, strengthens your relationship, and makes it more likely that your child will share what they’re up to.

Family rules and routines

• If you can’t be there when your child comes home from school, ask them to call or text to let you know they’re home. This is a reasonable request.
• Make a regular family dinner part of your routine. This can be a good chance for everyone to chat about their days and their plans for the next day.
• Set some ground rules about what your child can do in free time. This means you won’t have to look over your child’s shoulder all the time. For example, you might negotiate a ground rule about what time your child comes home on Saturday nights.
• In the early years of adolescence, set some expectations about what you need to know. For example, this might include where your child is going and who they’ll be with. If your child is in the habit of giving you this information when they’re younger, they’re more likely to share it as they get older too.
• Be aware of what your child is reading, seeing on TV, and doing on the internet.

Staying connected with your child

• When your child starts a conversation, stop what you’re doing and actively listen to your child. This sends the message that you’re interested in what’s going on in their life.
• Try to be aware of what your child is doing and how they’re behaving. This might make it easier to spot any changes in their behaviour that might signal a problem.
• Keep a general eye on school progress, homework and deadlines. This is easier to do when you have a good relationship with your child’s school and teachers.
• Get to know your child’s friends and give them a space in your home. This helps you keep in touch with your child’s friendships and relationships without always having to ask. Communicating with the parents of your child’s friends can also help you keep track of your child and their friends.
• Try to avoid breaking your child’s trust or invading their privacy. But there might be times when you need to ask firmly for information – for example, ‘Where were you?’ or ‘Where are you going?’

Too little monitoring can leave teenagers without the support they need to make safe decisions about behaviour and relationships. But too much monitoring can send the message you don’t trust your child. When you monitor your child in a trusting environment, you’re giving your child what they need to learn how to make good decisions and behave responsibly.

Handling breaches of trust

Your child might break your trust or misuse their privacy.

For a one-off breach, you could withdraw a privilege. For example, you could take away some TV or computer time, or not drive your child to an activity. You might also need to monitor your child more closely for a period while you rebuild trust.

For major breaches of trust, or breaches that keep happening, you and your child will need to rebuild trust over time. You might need to use strategies like:

• ‘grounding’ (banning social activities for a period of time)
• withdrawing privileges like access to social media or devices
• withholding non-essential lifts
• stopping your child’s pocket money.

You can try to negotiate practical ways your child can earn back your trust – for example, by showing you that they can be responsible for certain tasks over a period of time. Letting your child know that you still love them even though you’re disappointed in their behaviour will help your child bounce back and learn from their mistakes.

Remember that trust goes both ways. If you breach your child’s trust or privacy, it’s important to take responsibility for this and say sorry. By doing this, you set a good example for your child. Your child will also respect you more if you can admit that you’ve overstepped the boundary.