Dear Dr. Debbie,
I dread taking my little ones with me into stores, but often have no options. It’s so distracting to hear their whining and arguing when I’m trying to pay attention to what I’m doing. How do I shop with kids along?
Distracted Shopper
Dear D.S.,
Try to empathize with your shopping companions. What is their motivation for these errands?
Timing of Shopping Trips
Children (and many adults) are dependent on daily rhythms of eating and sleeping. Children who are well-rested and well-fed will be much more agreeable in any situation than when they’re tired and hungry.
If your shopping cannot work around these basic needs, you can at least appease hunger with take-along food, or if you’re grocery shopping, open up a package you’re going to purchase (crackers were our go-to) and nibble your way through the rest of the aisles. The bar code will still work just the same at the checkout. A few grocery stores offer free fresh fruit for children in recognition of their frequent needs for refueling. Their parents are better able to focus on buying more groceries as a result. And these future paying customers associate being in the store with having their needs met!
Tiredness is harder to accommodate away from home. You might get away with lifting a dozing toddler from the car, car seat and all, into a shopping basket, but then will have little room for your purchases. Look for a parking spot next to the cart corral to use this strategy.
Goals
A good strategy for gaining cooperation for YOUR errands, is to incorporate and give attention to your children’s motivation for being on the same journey. What highlights are there (for the children) at each store? For example, does the store have child-sized carts they can push or carts doubling as drivable toy cars? Are there live lobsters in the seafood section? Will there be fresh flowers to sniff? Does the deli section let you pick your own pickles from a barrel?
If you go to the same stores on a regular basis help your children form friendly relationships with the employees. This also works at the post office, library, and other community stops you may frequent. “We’re going to see XXX!” is how you announce the field trip. I still remember the warmth of the grocery store cashier when she remembered the wiggly tooth I proudly showed her the week before and asked if it had fallen out yet. Even if we didn’t know each other’s names, I felt that she knew me and cared about the milestone events of my life.
Tasks for Kids
Depending on your children’s ages, they can participate in shopping missions with assigned duties.
- A beginning reader can help to create the shopping list and check things off as they are added to the basket.
- Your little helpers carry in the reusable shopping bags.
- A pre-reader can hold coupons to match to products as they are spotted. (One mom told me she used coupons just for spotting, not buying, to keep three children engaged as she picked out what the family actually needed! It was a fun game for them all.)
- Two-year-olds, especially, love to make choices so let them. Certainly there are products of interest to them that they can have a say about. For example, red grapes or green this time? Salmon or trout for dinner?
- A toddler can competently hold onto smaller items and pass them to you for the self-check or help to load them onto the conveyor belt.
Back to You
As a parent you have daily tasks to be completed and short-term as well as long-term goals in your ongoing role in raising good humans.
Shopping trips, even with babies, are excellent opportunities for you to impart information and skills in; economics, nutrition, good manners, literacy, geography, cooking, and other topics related to running a household and interacting with the wider world.
Give a quiz on color names – “What else is yellow here besides the lemons?” “Where can you see purple?” Look for letters of the alphabet – start with the letter in each child’s first name and move on as they’re ready. Acknowledge local produce as coming from nearby farms. Point out the countries that some produce items come from. If it’s in the southern hemisphere, emphasize how our seasons are opposite. An older child can use the calculator in your phone to make cost comparisons between different sizes of jars of peanut butter. The decisions you make about meal planning – the prepared foods will save time on rushed breakfasts or the days you drive the carpool for gymnastics, the sale on drumsticks can also create leftovers for lunches – add to your children’s understanding of how to shop and cook as they grow toward independent adulthood.
Your job as a parent includes teaching your children to be kind and considerate of the people around them. So, you’re careful not to be in the way of other shoppers. (As they get tall enough to steer the shopping cart, this is a good tip.)
And, since you’ve managed to incorporate your children’s needs and abilities into the mission, be sure to thank your helpers so they know their contributions to the family are appreciated.
Dr. Debbie
Deborah Wood, Ph.D. is a child development specialist www.drdebbiewood.com and founding director of Chesapeake Children’s Museum www.theccm.org.
The museum is open daily from 10 am to 4 pm. Online reservations are available https://www.theccm.org/event-details/purchase-tickets-in-advance or call: 410-990-1993. Each Thursday there is a guided nature walk at 10:30 am. Art and Story Times with Mrs. Spears are on Monday mornings at 10:30 am.
Read more of Dr. Wood’s Good Parenting columns by clicking here.