The Perfect ‘Teen Cave’

Tira Khan

As children enter their teens, it can be a challenge to keep them close—but not so close that they feel they lack independence.

A solution to this parenting problem can be very concrete: simply making room at home. But the perfect “teen cave” is about more than interior-design elements. When smartly done, it can have features that help parents do their job: doors that don’t lock, entrances through the kitchen that force interaction with Mom, and ceilings that lack soundproofing—all which allow for a little more oversight. At the same time, the space needs to offer enough privacy and enticing features that teens want to be there, rather than hanging out in places where they might not be as supervised.

Tira Khan of Newton, Mass., recently remodeled the basement of her family’s Victorian home to give her three teenage daughters a place to socialize. She added two couches, a low table, colorful pillows, an area rug and radiant heating to make the concrete floor comfortable for lounging. A wall-size dry-erase board, for spontaneous art work, was a suggestion from her 14-year-old daughter Viveca. Ms. Khan installed a sliding door at the base of the stairs to her teen space, but the door doesn’t lock. She also left the ceiling unfinished—a nice aesthetic touch but one that also allows sound from the basement to be heard upstairs.

Viveca recently held her first sleepover in the room, and loves the privacy. “You don’t necessarily want to be in the range of your parents all the time,” she says. When a separate room is available, “you can have your own space, and you can act a little crazy too,” she says.

Many parents simply clear out some space. Carrie Kelleher and her husband recently moved a desk and old toys out of the basement of their Chicago home, and added plush area rugs to make the space comfortable for their son Jack, 15, and his friends. The basement stairs open into the kitchen and home office, making it easy for Ms. Kelleher to overhear the teens talking and playing music and games downstairs.

Cousins Ava Khan and Viveca Khan with pup, Dante

Tira Khan

She loves listening and talking with Jack’s friends when they come up to the kitchen for food. “It’s a nice way to get to know the kids, and to get to know how my kid is with his friends,” she says. But she tries to give them privacy, too. “I don’t want the other kids to feel like, ‘We go over to Jack’s house and his mom doesn’t leave us alone.’ ”

Hosting means a certain amount of disorder. “Your house is going to be messy,” says Tracy Kurschner of Minneapolis. Her 15-year-old son Wilson and his friends use the basement of the family’s home to play together as a rock band and produce video projects. She brought the boys a 5-pound bag of Halloween candy two weeks ago and is still finding the wrappers. She cooks them “boxes and boxes of penne pasta, with lots of butter and grated cheese,” she says. “When you’re dealing with 15- and 16-year-old boys, you need to have food.”

Ms. Kurschner was making dinner recently when she heard “a kid with an entire drum set coming in the front door—bump, bump, bump,” she says. She later found a small hole in the door’s screen. “We fixed it, and it’s fine,” she says. As Wilson grows up, she says, “I’m never going to get this time back.”

Middle school is a good time to set aside a teen hangout space, says Amy Behrens, a Newton, Mass., parenting coach. Children often change schools and make new friends. Bedrooms are often too small and too private to be suitable hangouts for groups of teens. Hosting friends at home gives teens a chance to practice social skills and learn to be a host, Ms. Behrens says.

Keeping teens close to home enables parents to keep better track of what they’re doing and who their friends are. Adolescents are always looking for places to gather without too much adult interference, says Jamie Howard, a clinical psychologist who works with teens at the Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit mental-health organization in New York City. “They’re going to search for those opportunities if you don’t provide them,” she says.

New issues arise as teens get older. Caroline Rogers and her husband Kevin, parents of four children ages 13 to 21, set up the basement of their Elmhurst, Ill., home years ago “to create a child-friendly, cozy, safe and loving” space for them and their friends, Ms. Rogers says. They painted the concrete walls and installed indoor-outdoor carpet, a bathroom, a ping-pong table, a dartboard and a microfiber couch that Ms. Rogers calls “indestructible.” Their children have hosted countless gatherings in the basement and around a fire pit the couple installed in their backyard, for campfire conversations and s’mores.

The Rogerses avoided installing a bar or refrigerator in the basement. “This is a hangout for teenagers, not adults,” Ms. Rogers says. Guests are asked to enter the house through the kitchen and walk past the family room, where they usually see Mr. or Ms. Rogers. The couple has given up weekend date nights for years so they can be present to supervise their teens, Ms. Rogers says. When their oldest child entered college and drinking at parties became common, he stopped hosting groups of friends at their home.

Parents should set clear expectations upfront about curfews, alcohol and teens’ behavior in the house, says Cathy Cassani Adams, Elmhurst, Ill., a therapist, author and co-host of a podcast, “Zen Parenting Radio.” “You don’t want to create a space for teens because you think it’s the right thing to do, and then feel resentful,” she says.

The Khan family’s teen space has a wall-size dry erase board.

Tira Khan

Teens can be put in a tough position if their friends show up with alcohol, says Dr. Howard, the psychologist. She recommends agreeing on “a code word the teen could text to the parents” to notify them, enabling parents to “check in and act as if they just discovered it” accidentally, she says.

Teens should be told that parents will check in frequently, at any time, says Katie Bugbee,senior managing editor for Care.com, a family-care website that has hosted discussions on teen hangouts. Some parents limit the number of teens who can visit at one time and set more restrictive rules for boy-girl gatherings.

Parents should be wary of choosing a space that is difficult to supervise. Twenty-one-year-old Enna Efimoff of Hubbard, Ore., attended pool-house parties as a teenager and says they “can be a little too private.” “Kids were always stocking the fridge with alcohol. It was too easy to get away with too much,” says Ms. Efimoff. She intends to set tighter limits for her own children.

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