Doing some of these should keep you busy.

Always stay involved. (no particular order) If they are in Scouting, do the activities and trips with them. Show up at their school events. Make your home a place where all their friends want to hang out. Teach them to cook. My grandmother taught me how to bake bread when I was four. All through school I'd make anything the boys and their friends wanted. The catch was that they had to learn to make it. They could all deglaze a pan and make a roux. Many of them are serious foodies now in their 20's and 30's.

Share your favorite movies of your day with them. Share family lore especially funny stories about relatives. After they do their homework, teach them fun stuff over a period of years, astronomy, geology, horticulture, math tricks, limericks, jokes. Schedule the time if you need to. Kids that are bored are boring people. Keep telling them how beautiful they are so they don't fall into the arms of the first, second, or tenth whippersnapper boy whom you want to strangle who says it - make them street smart.

Their peer group is important, especially in middle school when they can start picking their own friends from a larger group. My boys were surrounded by motivated and successful people but occasionally we would use the Jerry Springer show as tangible examples of what not to do with your life. It's very simple, do this and you get that. What do you want? No lying, ever! It's beneath the dignity of those lied to and certainly beneath the dignity of those who are lying. You can get very creative in combatting that and have fun with teaching a lesson.

Teach them you don't 'find' yourself. You 'develop' yourself. Talk to them about situations and solutions that exemplify your values. I promise you that you aren't going to like the ones the next generation of teens are going to have. Give them a vision of their own future and your expectations. There are situations you must talk about before it matters.

Challenge them intellectually so they will always challenge themselves. Go to State and National Parks together, and study the flora, fauna, and natural features beforehand. Share your music with them. If you're not old enough, share the music of the 60's and 70's with them. Give them music lessons. Go to museums and historical sites together. Take your pick, go to local school plays, little theater, Symphony, Traveling Broadway Plays, Ballet, whatever your town offers and plan a big trip occasionally to a big venue. My mother would take us to the Pocono Playhouse several times per year. Even small towns have something of interest. Go to the big ones in big cities. Same with sporting events. As they go through school, have age-appropriate goals of how many books to read, maybe the classics but also fun and silly stuff, how to (avoid a bear attack in the woods, mark a trail, etc.), informational books, adventure books, even comic books. I think I read every Nancy Drew book growing up. Libraries are still free. Kids don't read for pleasure anymore which is too bad. The interesting thing about books, nobody reads the same book. And how many lives have you lived? Reading outside of school work is important. Don't 'give' them everything. Figure out ways even a child can 'earn' it. Teach them about money and investing. They should be responsible for their own rooms and helping around the home.

Instead of having lots of rules, (we only had 2 but they covered a lot - good behavior and good grades) let them take responsibility for their own choices and any rewards or consequences. Your job is to make it clear, if they do A, B will happen. If they do C, D will happen, allow them to decide and stick to it. Let them learn to self-regulate and to have self-discipline while they are in a safe home environment and they won't have problems when they leave home for college. It's a gradual process. If you don't have good communication all along the way, it won't happen magically when they are teenagers. Have fun with them. They will be up and out before you know it. I never understood why parents set up an adversarial relationship with their kids. No need to.