Holiday Couch Potato Syndrome

Q: As soon as my 14-year-old son gets home on the last day of exams, he plops himself in front of the TV and doesn’t move again until school starts up again in January. Whenever I try to get him involved in stuff, he says that everything I suggest is “dumb” or that he’s too tired. Help!

It sounds like your son has been hit with a particularly bad case of Holiday Couch Potato Syndrome. Fortunately, the condition is not contagious and it doesn’t require treatment: it typically disappears on its own around the same time as all of the leftover turkey.

If you’d like to encourage your teen to be a little less Scrooge-like and a little more active over the holidays, give him a project he can really sink his teeth into, like teaching the neighbourhood kids how to skate or leaning how to use the digital camera he got for Christmas—or both! Even something as simple as asking him to assume responsibility for taking the family dog for a walk around the block once a day may be all that’s required to keep him from developing a full-blown case of Holiday Couch Potato Syndrome.

Here’s another tip. Try to figure out if there’s something special your teen would like to do over the holidays. Of course, you may have to play 20 questions to try to figure out what that special activity might be. Agree to play along, in keeping with the spirit of the holiday season. Who knows? You may discover that your teen is eager to check out the new indoor rock-climbing facility in your community or that he’s keen to try snowboarding—two activities that would require that he hop off the couch and relinquish the TV remote. (Well, at least temporarily!)