Best way to communicate with teens onboard?

We will be traveling onboard the Oasis of the Seas on July 22nd. What's the best way to communicate with the 3 teenagers (ages 16, 13 and 13) that will be traveling with our party of 8 while on board.

If you are asking about electronic communication, then buy a multi-device VOOM package and use your smart phones.

Best way I find to communicate with teens is to speak loudly and slowly ;)

Best way I find to communicate with teens is to speak loudly and slowly ;)

If you're not purchasing internet package, or you're not getting one for free then maybe some simple walkie talkies could be ideal?

Many earlier posts say no walkie talkies.

We use cabin phones from public phones all over the ship; answering machine if necessary.

Post-it notes at cabin.

Or best of all, plan to meet at a certain place at a certain time/discuss the day's plans at breakfast/meet for dinner for sure.

We (parents) tend to find a nice deck area and stay there during the day for most of the cruise. Once the kids learn the location they can find us if they need to, which isn't very often. Never found a need for an electronic leash. If they needed us they knew where to look. Usually, we had an afternoon meet up time 5-6 in the cabin to plan what we would do for dinner.

We have had the family join us on cruises and the best way we found and no electronic gadgets, was to work out a Meeting time & location. We will go over the Compass so everyone knows where others will be at a certain time if they need to find us then meet up at the designated place.

We use post it notes. We also set up a place to meet at Windjammer around meal times.

We did quite a few cruises while my children were teenagers. Never had the need to communicate with them in real time. Instead we had fixed times when we would meet, usually ahead of dinner or lunch. We would often find them in the room or bump into them as we wander around.

We would discuss plans during our get together. This kept things simple. Either they were hanging out with us in the evening, going to see the show etc. or doing their own thing.

If we did need to swap information, we usually left a note in the cabin. Rarely needed to do this.

Agree..everyone should tell the others their plans for the day..and have some "meet up" times. Let the kids know where you'll be if their plans change.

Texting really tells you nothing about where they are, or their condition. I favor the "in person" communication!

We've done it with our four kids, and having a wifi plan is definitely the easiest and most convenient. But when we haven't done that, honestly, they've just found us. I mean yeah, the ship is big, but not that big. If we were on deck, we tended to be in the same spot. If we weren't anticipating being on deck, they usually were aware of that.

PANIC time. Oh no, how to communicate with kids without a phone. Funny thing is, we seem to forget, that the phone is a device but not a necessity. First you teach your kids how to be responsible. Than you must teach your kids how to use a watch. Than you tell them where to be and at what time. If this fails, than you let them know that they need to hang out with you for the entire day.

When I was a kid, my parents told me when to be home

When my kids were kids, I told them when to be home. (yes they had phones).

It was never my job to call them to say, time to come home. It was their responsibility to follow the rules and be where they needed to be on time, or face the consequence.

My kids, never missed a meeting time on the ship for fear of hanging with us.

Meet up times and post it notes on the cabin door has always worked.

The last 2 years we've used whiteboards on the outside cabin doors. They are quick and convenient; just jot your message on the way out.

We tried to use walkie talkies once several years ago. Because of the steel structure of the ship and interference from others, it didn't work well at all. Now we either use facebook messages if we have internet or post it notes in cabin if we don't.

If you are asking about electronic communication, then buy a multi-device VOOM package and use your smart phones.

This is what DW and I do.

We like to leave phones and devices in our safe. It is nice to get away from tech for a few days. We have been on 13 cruises with our kids, and only once did we use phones. The funny thing is that relying in it actually was worse, as sometimes the messages didn't go through..... then we got "where were you?" I like "old school" method much better!

For us, post-it notes aren't reliable. The glue just isn't sticky enough, and leaves open the "I didn't see your note, it must've fallen off the wall" excuse.

We have a magnetic dry-erase whiteboard from the dollar store. Since the walls are metal, the board sticks anywhere (I wouldn't leave a message-board on the outside of the door. Too easy for ne'er-do-wells to tamper) and we mandate everyone -- children and adults -- checks in throughout the day.

Dinner with the family is mandatory, so everyone needs to be back in the cabin by 6 or 7 to get cleaned up and dressed.

Note to self.... bring dry erase markers to randomly make comments on fellow cruiser's white boards. "Mom and Dad are having some alone time, don't come in" ;)

Dan

note to self.... Bring dry erase markers to randomly make comments on fellow cruiser's white boards. "mom and dad are having some alone time, don't come in" ;)

 

dan

We bought a whiteboard for about $15 on Amazon. I chose a flat on that was like a big magnet (this one to be exact... https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0786VXPMG?psc=1&ref=yo_pop_mb_pd_title )

I wrote everyone’s name and when you left the room you put where(ish) you were going. That way if we needed someone we had some idea about where to start looking.

We found it worked pretty well. We also ate supper every night at 7:15 so if anyone was just super lost they knew they could find us at dinner.

Once we had a little “oops” where we left the 13 year old in the teen club and told him we would meet him at 12:30 to eat at Johnny Rockets. Something went weird and he went back to the room at 12 instead. Then we couldn’t seem to meet him. So we just put Johnny Rockets on our name and headed to wait... sure enough, at even before we got a table he and my mom (separate from each other) managed to find us at Johnny Rockets. The trick was staying where we said we’d be.

Sometimes we would put “Wandering around” or “Deck 5” or “Poolside”

The whiteboard never failed us.

But, that aside, I think for the next cruise I’ll do the WiFi package. The whiteboard worked, but it would have been easier to just text.

We did see a few people with walkie talkies. They were super annoying. They were always shouting to be heard and there was a lot of “what?!?” Just as you’d imagine with a walkie talkie.

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Note to self.... bring dry erase markers to randomly make comments on fellow cruiser's white boards. "Mom and Dad are having some alone time, don't come in" ;)

 

Dan

This was actually one of our favorite things about the whiteboard. We had a fellow traveler named “Troy” who we started tracking as well. It was all good fun.

And we left our pens in a basket on the door so you wouldn’t need to bring one.

My sister set her board up for people to leave comments on each day. Every day she would start a question and people would stop and leave her notes. It was pretty fun. (She’s an English teacher, go figure!)

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So funny on the white boards!

We actually took some last cruise and didn't use because our doors were not metal.

Hey CheerMom, we have a 16 year old and a 17 year old and they are cheerleaders too! Would love to get the girls together since they have cheer in common. We are on the July 22 Oasis of the Seas also.