I have found the trick to getting a teen that is seemingly permanently tethered to his video games out of his room:  Take him to Costco. 

I have tried all sorts of enticements in the past:  shopping for new clothes, dinner at a favorite restaurant, or a walk in the park with the dog.  Nothing seemed to work and I was pretty much at the point of accepting the fact that the days of his being my little buddy were nothing but a sweet memory.  So yesterday when I stuck my head in his room to tell that we were going to Costco – and then casually added “Would you like to go?”  I had absolutely NO expectation that there would be any interest, let alone any response!  I had to ask twice if he had really heard me correctly, and vice versa. 

Back in the day when my kids were little, they certainly had their fair share of toys and games that they loved.  But their favorite thing to play with was a big cardboard box from some kind of appliance.  We had a great fort/playhouse on our porch for a while that they had fashioned and spent hours of imaginative play in it.  The trip to Costco was nearly the same.  When my son walked in, awed by the vastness and variety, he said “if I ever had to be stuck in a store overnight, this would be the one I’d like to be stuck in”.  You could see the wheels turning on what an adventure that would be! 

We wandered around with the kids (my son, my daughter, and my fiancé) acting as if we had gone back in time about 10 years and they were in Toys R Us.  I had to shepherd them away from the things we weren’t there to buy and try to herd them towards the things we were.  Every corner held a new excitement:  food samples!  I swear you’d think I never fed them.  At one point I was patiently waiting for my two biological children while they stood in line to get pizza samples (the third adult-child was off exploring something and I gave up trying to corral him).  My kids both looked over at me and smiled with this excited little smile and I swore if I didn’t know where we were, I would have thought we were waiting for them to see Santa!  Priceless!

I get so caught up in trying to figure out how to give my kids what they need sometimes that I forget that it really is very simple.  A warm home, a warm meal and a warm heart will probably give them most of what they need.  My son’s 17^th birthday is coming up soon and I’ll going to make sure I give him all those things…and maybe a trip to Costco and a cardboard box just to spice it up!