He gets OK grades in school. He has a few friends. They seem passable. He eats at the table every night and sits in the back seat of the car every weekend, but really, he's a teenage boy. You don't know him.
You think you do, but you don't. He's a mess. Underneath his skin he's all hormones and confusion and angst and misunderstanding. Oh, and video games.
With pimples and/or an awkward teenage gait, the boy won't be scaring anybody any time soon. So a jar of Mortal Terror should help him out, in case he absolutely needs to scare the heebies out of somebody.
($10)
He's old enough to appreciate the irony, but still young enough to maybe actually play with it when nobody's looking.
($12)
There's a very real danger that your son may be shopping somewhere like Hot Topic. Stop this madness at once with a t-shirt from Meat Bun. Your safest/best option would probably be their classic "4th Gen" shirt, now available in grey-on-black.
($25)
You might think buying him a game is a good idea. It's not. He's likely to be very fussy with his games. Very snobby. So get him this. It'll let him buy his own games!
($50)
It won't actually be released by Christmas, but present him with a pre-order receipt for one and he'll still be happy. It's a gaming handheld, it's new, it's shiny, he'll likely want one, so you'll be doing a great deed by getting one for him.
($250)
You can contact Luke Plunkett, the author of this post, at plunkett@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.