The Cardinal Rule for Shopping with Kids

All par­ents know that the best way to avoid melt­downs and tantrums is to leave the chil­dren at home when you shop.  Of course, we also know that shop­ping with­out the kids is a pipe-dream, a logis­ti­cal impossibility.

Today I’m going to share with you my sure-fire, tried-and-true method for avoid­ing the gimmes while shop­ping with children.

Never, ever, under any cir­cum­stances, pur­chase any­thing for your child for their imme­di­ate con­sump­tion while shopping.

There are many vari­a­tions on the parents-trying-to-survive-shopping-with-kids theme and I’ve wit­nessed them all.  Buying a toy or a treat or a snack and then either giv­ing it to the child to keep them quiet and pla­cated or hold­ing it in reserve as a reward/bribe for their good behav­ior dur­ing shopping.

No mat­ter what the vari­a­tion, don’t do it!

The car­di­nal rule for shop­ping with chil­dren is to never estab­lish a cor­relation between shop­ping and acquisition.

Don’t get me wrong — I am not advo­cat­ing tor­ture or depri­va­tion or cru­elty.  I’ve been hap­pily shop­ping with chil­dren for 15 years now and my chil­dren are any­thing but deprived.  But they also, never to this day, have asked me for a candy bar or other treat at the gro­cery store or for a toy or game or any other trin­ket for their imme­di­ate plea­sure.  My chil­dren do not equate shop­ping with imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion because they’ve grown up with the com­plete and total absence of imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion while shopping.

Shop­ping is a nec­es­sary chore — some­thing we do because we need some­thing — be it food or clothes or a gift for cousin Bob.  Some­times we buy things that weren’t on the shop­ping list but these things always go into the cart and from the cart to the bag and from the bag to the car and from the car to the house where it is then put away in its proper place until it is needed.

I’m a prac­ti­cal woman and also a bit of a soft touch.  Even though I never made an imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion pur­chase for my chil­dren while shop­ping, the doesn’t mean that I didn’t see to their needs and wants.  With rare excep­tions, my chil­dren always had some­thing to eat and some­thing to play with dur­ing our shop­ping excur­sions.  All it takes is a lit­tle bit of fore­thought and planning.

The key is to keep it spe­cial.  When my kids were lit­tle, I always kept a stash of fin­ger food in the cup­board that was saved for spe­cial occa­sions like boo boos and shop­ping trips – snacks like Gold­fish, Sun­spire can­dies, ani­mal crack­ers, etc.  Costco has huge plas­tic tubs of yummy cin­na­mon alpha­bet cook­ies and big bags of trail mix that my kids loved.  I found that the snack that worked the best at keep­ing my kids occu­pied and happy were bags of mixed snacks (a com­bi­na­tion of fishies, can­dies, let­ters, etc) — good for occu­py­ing lit­tle minds as well as hands and mouths.  Of course, these snacks will leave the kids thirsty so don’t for­get the juice box or travel sippy cup!

The same goes for toys — keep it spe­cial.  Just as I held snacks in reserve, I also kept toys in reserve just for shop­ping.  And here, too, vari­ety works best.  After some trial and error, I finally estab­lished three or four small bags con­tain­ing a col­lec­tion of toys. Then I’d rotate the bags so the toys wouldn’t become famil­iar and bor­ing.  Match­box cars and Lit­tle Rol­lies vehi­cles and ani­mals were among my kids’ favorites.  When they were a bit older, a Dover lit­tle activ­ity books would keep them well occu­pied.  The bags of toys stayed in the car, tucked into the glove box or trunk and came out only for a shop­ping excur­sion.  Once shop­ping was done, the toys went back into the bag.

My kids learned to look for­ward to shop­ping trips as an oppor­tu­nity to munch on a spe­cial snack and play with spe­cial toys — not as an oppor­tu­nity to whee­dle a pur­chase out of mom.

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