4Being a parent is tough. It gets even tougher once the kids are old enough to take into public with you while running errands. Everyone has a story about the last child they saw throwing a tantrum in the grocery store, while the mother stood by, mortified. To avoid as many of these spectacles as possible, there are a couple of simple rules to remember the next time you take your child shopping with you.
- Start the shopping trips as short excursions. Remember that children are children and will always have short attention spans to a certain degree. If you start by taking your child on a short errand with you to get him used to the idea of going along with mommy or daddy on a trip that isn't about him, then you can ease him into the longer shopping trips, little by little. Start with a short trip to the grocery store. On the next trip, you can take him to the grocery store, then the bank. Once he's been initiated and has small trips under his belt, you can introduce him to the mother of all child-parent tests--the department store.Make the trip fun for the child. This is not to say that you need to entertain her the entire time that you are on your shopping trip, but giving her a reason to enjoy your time with her will make them look forward to future trips. This will reflect in her behavior, because she will know that in order to go out and have fun with you on the next trip to the store, she has to behave.Involve the child in some way. Involving the child in the shopping, even in a seemingly insignificant way, will make the child feel important and responsible. Start with something simple, like, "Mommy needs to get sugar today. Why don't you pick the best box of sugar you can find for mommy?" Your child will jump at the chance to show you what a good job he can do with this small task, and will want to be on his best behavior so he can be assigned further responsibilities in the future.Use positive reinforcement, instead of punishing negative words. Before the child has a chance to misbehave, tell her what a good job she is doing at "listening to daddy," or "following instructions" or "being a big girl at the grocery store." Positive feedback about what she is doing right is more powerful than negative words about what she is doing wrong. If your child does start to throw a tantrum, ignore the behavior as best you can. It is an attention-seeking behavior that, if you feed into it, will only get worse. Instead, once the child calms herself, give positive attention to the fact that she's stopped tantrumming. For example, say "Oh, I like the way you've calmed down and gotten yourself together. You are doing a great job being a good girl for mommy at the store today."
