Shopping with Children

by Carly,


Why is it so hard to run errands with children? There are too many reasons to mention but sometimes it is inevitable we don’t always have the choice to shop quietly alone in a store with no worries that our kids will break some thing or wine for some thing or poop. I would love to be able to look at things and actually TRY THINGS ON!


When I do have to bring my kids with me which is most of the time. I try different things that do help. I’ll share a few things that work for me and the upside and downside of my solutions.


The Bribe: The Upside is My daughters will do pretty well if they know they get to pick a treat at the end. When they start to misbehave I can remind them that they needs to do better to earn the reward. The downside to this is the actual treat picking. I don’t always want my kids to have some giant candy bar or sticky treat and right now my girls loves GUM! It gets everywhere! Enough said.


The Helper: The upside is that Involving my kids in my shopping makes them feel so proud of themselves. I let them pick some produce and put items in the cart. I also Let them choose a flavor of juice or yogurt or some thing like that. The downside to this is that sometimes they lose interest half way through and the rest of the errand is miserable.


The Joy Ride: The upside is that make believe makes them happy and well behaved. My husband does this one. He finds one of those carts where all my kids fit like the ones with the big plastic seats in the front. He then creates a make believe story like they are in a Rocket ship or something like that and Zooms through the aisles. My Girls obviously adore this! The Downside is the unsuspecting people in the rockets path. For the record he has never actually ran into any body, but it could happen. I also have a hard time finding the rocket ship when I have to put actual groceries in it and wander around the HUGE store with my arms full of stuff and no cart.

Those are the solutions we use most often. What works for you while your shopping with the kiddo’s?
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Carly is a contributing writer for Mommy Moment. She has 3 very dramatic but beautiful girls ages 7, 4, and 1. Carly loves to write, cook, and connect with other moms through this crazy thing called blogging! See what she has been up to over at www.livingthescream.com

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