Hey everyone, so I have two teenagers, one is 15 and the other is 13, and every single time we go out for errands it turns into a full blown drama session. Like last Saturday, we had to hit three stops: the pharmacy, the grocery store, and the post office. Simple stuff right? Nope. The moment I said we were leaving, the complaints started. “Why do I have to come?” “This is so boring.” “Can we just go home after the first stop?”
I get it, they’re teenagers and the last thing they want to do is ride around with their parent on a Saturday afternoon. But I genuinely need help here. I’ve tried letting them bring earbuds, I’ve tried promising a food stop at the end, I’ve even tried asking them to help me with the list to keep them involved. Nothing works for long. They still moan the entire time like I’m making them haul bricks.
Anybody dealt with this? What actually worked for you? Not looking for perfect parenting advice, just something real that helps make errands less of a war zone 
Oh man, I feel this post in my soul 
My 14 year old acts like going to Walmart is some kind of punishment I invented specifically to ruin his weekend. What worked for me, and I know it sounds small, is I stopped asking them to come and started telling them they’re coming but giving them ONE choice in the trip. Like “we’re stopping at the grocery store, you pick what snack we grab for the week.” Suddenly they have a stake in it. They went from dragging their feet to actually walking ahead of me in the snack aisle. It’s not magic every single time but it shifted the energy a lot. Also I stopped explaining myself too much. The more I justified why we had to go, the more ammunition they had to argue back. Short, calm, and done.
Okay real talk, I tried everything PixelXDriveHub mentioned too and what finally clicked for me was just… accepting the complaints. Like I stopped fighting it. My daughter complained, I said “noted” and kept driving. After a few trips of realizing her complaining wasn’t getting a reaction out of me, she genuinely stopped. Kids that age complain partly because they want to see if they can get out of it or get a rise out of you. When neither happened, it lost its appeal. Now she still sighs dramatically when I say we have errands but she gets in the car without a full argument. Progress
Every errand run in my house ends with a stop at our go to taco spot. My kids know the drill. No complaining, we get tacos. Complaining the whole time? We go straight home. I only had to follow through once, skipped the tacos after a particularly rough Costco trip, and they have never forgotten it. That was two years ago. My 16 year old now reminds his younger sister to behave so they don’t lose the taco stop. The system works. Let the tacos do the heavy lifting.
I want to gently push back on some of the advice here because I think we sometimes forget that teenagers complaining is actually developmentally normal. Their brains are literally wired to resist what feels like a loss of independence and errands with a parent on a weekend hit that nerve hard. That doesn’t mean you have to tolerate nonstop whining but understanding why it happens might take some of the frustration out of it for you as the parent. What helped in my house was having a quick conversation not during the errand but on a regular evening where I asked my teens what would make errands less painful for them. They came up with ideas I hadn’t thought of and they were more bought in because the solution was partly theirs.
LOL at Silicrypte using tacos as behavioral currency, that is genuinely genius parenting and I say that with full respect 
I do something similar but with drive through coffee. My 15 year old is obsessed with those fancy cold brew drinks so now errands are basically “errand and coffee run” and she acts completely different. We even have conversations in the car now which never happened before. Teenagers are simple creatures when you find the right currency, I’m convinced of it.
Can I just say that the car ride itself is where you can actually win them over? I stopped trying to make errands fun and instead made the car ride decent. We have a rule in our car that whoever is not driving picks the music, no questions asked. My 13 year old son blasts stuff I have never heard in my life and I just nod along like I understand what’s happening. But he’s in a good mood, he’s not complaining, and by the time we get to the store he’s already forgotten he was supposed to be miserable. Small thing but it genuinely changed the vibe of our errand days.
I tried the music thing TechRider mentioned and it works until they pick something truly unlistenable and then it becomes its own problem. But seriously, what changed things for me was giving my teens actual responsibility during errands instead of just bringing them along for the ride. My 14 year old now handles the grocery list on her phone, she navigates, she reminds me what we need. She went from passenger to co pilot and the complaining dropped significantly. They complain when they feel dragged along. Give them a role and they engage. It doesn’t work every time but most trips are smoother now.
Can we talk about the post office stop specifically because that one sends my kids into full meltdown mode every time Something about standing in line with nothing to do absolutely destroys their will to live apparently. I started letting mine stay in the car with the music on during the quick stops. They love it, I’m in and out faster without managing their boredom, and everyone wins. Pick your battles. Not every errand needs to be a group activity and sometimes splitting it up makes the overall trip way more bearable for everyone involved.
Something nobody has mentioned yet: I started telling my teenagers ahead of time. Not the morning of, not when I’m already in the car. I mention it the night before. “Hey, tomorrow afternoon we have a few stops to make, should take about an hour.” That’s it. No big deal, no long explanation. Teenagers hate being surprised with obligations. When they’ve had time to mentally prepare and work it into their idea of the day, they’re a completely different level of cooperative. My son still sighs but he doesn’t argue anymore because he already knew it was coming. The ambush errand is the enemy of peace in my house.
Adding onto what DigiWave said because the advance notice thing is huge. I do the same and I also started giving a realistic time estimate and actually sticking to it. My teens used to complain partly because they felt like errands were this endless black hole with no end in sight. Now I tell them it’s three stops, roughly 45 minutes, and I mean it. If I say 45 minutes I make sure we’re done in 45 minutes. I even started timing it like a challenge and my kids thought that was funny enough that now my 15 year old actually reminds me to hurry up in the store so we beat our own time. Turned a complaint fest into something weirdly competitive and it’s been working for months.
Not gonna sugarcoat it, some days you just have to accept that the errand trip is going to be loud and annoying and that’s fine. I spent two years trying to optimize errand experiences for my kids and one day I just… let it go. They complained, I let them complain, we got our stuff done and went home. The world didn’t end. What I noticed is that if I’m calm and unbothered, their complaints eventually fizzle out because there’s nothing to push against. The more stressed I was about the complaining, the more it seemed to happen. Now I treat it like background noise and genuinely, it has gotten better over time without me doing anything dramatic about it.
Okay I have to share this because it worked way better than I expected. I turned our errands into a podcast or audiobook trip. Found a series my 13 and 16 year old both thought sounded interesting, we only listen to it in the car during errands. Now they actually ask when we’re going out next because they want to hear what happens. It became something they look forward to instead of dread. The key is picking something they genuinely want to listen to, not something you think they should enjoy. Ask them to pick it. We’re on season three of something I would never have chosen myself and I am genuinely hooked now too