How to: Shop with kids and keep your sanity

I couldn’t possibly claim to do everything right with kids. Is there anyone who could? The truth is, I often feel like I’m failing – I’m impatient, short-tempered, don’t listen enough, and the mommy mommy mommy drives me up the wall. I love my kids, but sometimes they make me want to crawl out of my own skin.

HOWEVER.

There is one thing I do that I’m pretty proud of. It’s a small thing – I love to shop with my kids. Errands? Bring ‘em on. The grocery store? The more the merrier (I once took my two children and a 16-month cousin to the grocery store for a full grocery run). So I thought I would share my secrets with you on how I not only do my errands and shop with kids, but prefer to do all of it with them. Give me my cocktail on the deck by myself. Target I’ll do with kids.

* Here’s my biggest secret: make it fun. Give yourself enough time, go with a game plan and a good attitude. When you’re stressed, the kids will just make it worse. Take Mary Poppins’ advice:

Here’s how you do that: for every one or two errands that you need for you, do something for the kids. Is there a pet store nearby? Stop in to see the animals. Need to get lunch during errands? Go to a place with a play area. Going to Target? Hit the toy aisles so they can play for a few minutes before you leave. You can even stop into a sporting goods store and let them look at the baseballs and bicycles – I swear, if you tell them you are “letting them” do something, they will assume they like it. If you don’t want to go to a different store altogether, when you’re at Bed Bath and Beyond – ask them what THEY want to look at, and spend a few minutes looking at pig-styled kitchen stuff and As Seen On TV slushy makers.

This is not to say “bribe” them. I usually don’t tell my kids that we’ll do something for them. This way if I don’t end up with time, I’m not disappointing them. It’s usually more of a “Hey! There’s a Petsmart! Let’s go look at the fish!” Feels spontaneous to them, but obviously it’s not.

There are also a few tricks to my tricks. I don’t do it all the time. Sometimes it’s related to time, but also I don’t want them to EXPECT it because then it’s just another chore for me. Every time we go to Target I do not let them play in the toy aisles (although at this point I tell them ahead of time that we don’t have time to look at the toys). Or sometimes, if I’m pressed for time but still want them to enjoy themselves, I say they can pick ONE aisle to look in. Also, we never buy. I do not buy toys unless I had entered a store for that purpose. This goes for everywhere – the Disney store, gift shops, Target, Toys R Us. I’m not scared of stopping by a toy store just to look because the boys know we aren’t buying (this is not to say they don’t ask, but they don’t seem to be so upset when I say no).

The toys live at Target. When you’re done playing, you put them back on the shelf and say “goodbye, toys!” Give a little wave.

When we go to the grocery store, we get a free cookie from the bakery. This also is not a bribe for being good, however I will specifically say no cookie if they haven’t been good. Henry got in trouble at daycare? No cookie at Publix when we stop for milk. Cookie is the first stop if we only have a few things to get, and the last stop if I need a full cart of groceries.

There are other, smaller tricks, that I use through the store. Spencer is learning to read, so I try to always make a list of stops or a grocery list so he can keep track of it for me. He likes to mark off things that we do. Henry counts how many items we got, or how many things we need to get. We see how many red things are in the cart, or if we can find the sign with popsicles on it in the store.

I think I stress “no bribes” so much because my mom bribed my siblings for every inch of good behavior she got, and she spent a lot of much on throwaway toys and never really got good behavior out of them (I was older so I saw this, however I have no idea how I was growing up).

(an addition: I do not like clothes shopping with kids, but I'm pretty terrible about clothes shopping anyhow. This is how I make it work: I get the largest dressing room and let them go crazy in it while I'm trying things on. I don't worry about noise, I encourage singing while standing on the bench and jumping up and down in front of the mirror. In exchange I ask that they stay with me while I yank anything off the racks that might possibly work on me as quickly as possible. This works most of the time)

I can’t imagine that this works for every child/children. And sometimes it doesn’t work for me – I won’t lie. But I think the best thing you can do for yourself is to give yourself as much time as possible, and look at every errand like a game. You’ll be a lot happier, and then so will your kids while you drag them all over creation looking for that specific cream moisturizer and the book you heard about on Twitter, and to pay the electric bill.