Snowed in with Your Teens: How to Keep Them Busy

Teens are usually more active, emotional and restless than everyone else. When they're forced to stay home on snow days, those feelings can become even more intense.

For parents, the challenge of being snowed in with teens is how to keep them busy with interesting tasks throughout the day. Some ideas for harried parents may include:

1. Snow shoveling around home: If your house is completely isolated by the snowstorm, get the teens busy with shovels to clear away the driveway and sidewalks. If it would add incentive, reward them for their efforts.

2. Snow shoveling for cash: If they want to make more money, encourage them to take their shovels around the neighborhood and earn money. It's also a way to get the teens out of the house so parents can find quiet and relaxation.

3. Volunteer snow shoveling: Encourage your teens to offer to clear off driveways and pavements for homebound people and the elderly.

4. Snow constructions: Once the required work is done, your teens can enjoy the snow in many ways. They can make snow angels, build snowmen, construct snow forts, and then have friendly snowball fights.

5. If there are snow-covered hills nearby, the teens can go sledding, snowboarding and participate in other fun activities.

6. If some of your teens prefer to stay inside, put them to work with cooking and baking chores. Then when all the outside fun and tasks are over, everyone can gather for a great homemade meal together.

7. Home repairs: Check for any jobs that have been put off too long, such as fixing an electrical appliance, repairing a broken door or painting a kitchen cabinet. While the teens are snowed in, put them to work with useful tasks.

8.Video games and exercise: Tune in to a morning TV exercise program or play DVDs that will get the teens up off the couch and active.

9. Get your teens to read and study: Maybe your toughest effort on days when you're snowed in will be to get your teens to knuckle down to school reading and assignments. Encourage them to spend some quiet time in the privacy of their rooms with books, whether the old-fashioned paper type or electronic.

10. Let the games begin: Maybe the most difficult job parents will have in encouraging activities for teens on snow days is just getting them out from under the covers. The best way to do it is to create the inviting aroma of frying bacon and eggs wafting into the bedroom from the kitchen.