Tips for a Stress-Free Food Shopping Experience
Tips for Taking the Kids to the Grocery Stor.
Cherylyn Feierabend
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Tips for a Stress-Free Food Shopping Experience
Hey there! You’re listening to the Mighty Mommy with some Quick and Dirty Tips for Practical Parenting.
Today’s Topic: Stress-Free Food Shopping, Tips for Taking the Kids to the Grocery Store
I love grocery shopping. I don’t really know why, but I do. I love to clip coupons and check sales ads to save money. I have my list and my coupon organizer ready when I arrive at the grocery store, but it still takes quite a while to find everything I need. If I have the kids with me, which I usually do, shopping can become quite a challenge. We have found some great ways to make the shopping trip fun and educational for all of us.
Organizing your shopping trip in advance can save you time, money and stress. It’s best to shop with children when everyone is well rested and not hungry. Try to keep your shopping trip under an hour. Older children will be able to tolerate longer shopping trips, but toddlers generally don’t have that much patience.
Some supermarkets have fun shopping carts. Check to see if you can find a fun cart for your kids. Some stores have miniature shopping carts that your kids can push and some have ride-on carts that look like cars for the younger shoppers. Always use the carts as they are intended and buckle your children in as instructed. Let your child walk once she is mature enough to walk along with you. Unless a child is tired or refusing to stay by your side, she really should be permitted to walk. It is good exercise and good practice for following instructions. Letting your child walk also gives her some independence along with the ability to retrieve those cheaper items from the bottom shelf for you. If your child is having trouble staying with you, ask them to hold onto the cart. When my daughter was just learning to walk with me, I would thread a knotted receiving blanket through the side of the shopping cart and have her hold onto the other end. The blanket was much easier to hold onto than the cart.
The grocery store can be a fun and educational place to visit. It may seem boring and tedious to some grown-ups and children, but you can make it interesting with a few little games. Since the store is covered with labels and price tags, it lends itself very well to letter and number recognition games. For the younger crowd, just learning letters, you can ask them to help you find items in the store beginning with a certain letter. If your daughter’s name is Mary, you can ask her to point out items with the letter M on them. Older kids can carry your shopping list and help you locate and mark items off as they are found. If you are shopping with coupons, have your child match the picture of the item or brand on the coupon to the item on the shelf. The more you make it seem like a treasure hunt, the more fun it will be for everyone.
You might think that a child’s favorite place in any store would be the toy aisle. This is not so with my daughter. She loves the produce section. The pretty colors and smells always get her attention. When we are making our produce selections, I let her help. This is definitely her favorite part of the shopping trip. She will pick up an apple and turn it around looking for bumps and bruises. If it satisfies her, she will let me look it over and if we agree, she gets to put it in the bag. We do this with most of the product items we purchase and not only does she enjoy the process, but she’s more likely to eat the items she’s helped pick out. I remember a day when my daughter had chosen a large bag of beautiful, red grapes. I had looked at the price and thought it was much too high. We almost put them back until I realized that the price was about the same as a premium box of cookies. She was making a healthy choice and I wanted to support that. We enjoyed plenty of delicious grapes that week. This incident gave me the opportunity to talk to my daughter about making healthy choices and saving money.
[Older kids might find it a challenge to help you find the best deals. Shopping for the best price is all about math. Give your child a few options and let her figure out what will save you the most money. If you are shopping as a family, have each family member try to keep track of the running total as items are added to the cart. Before the cashier begins ringing the order, have each person make a guess as to the total of the bill. The winner will be the person closest to the actual bill total. This is a great game for older kids and preteens. The prize could be something as simple as not having to unload groceries this trip. Games like these keep the shopping trip interesting, fun and educational.
I have two more quick tips for today. My first tip is to leave any precious toys at home. Unless it’s a toy you don’t mind losing, it’s better not to bring it into the store. If you let your daughter bring her favorite little doll shopping, she might drop it somewhere and never see it again.
My final tip is to invest in a protective seat cover for shopping carts. These are wonderfully useful items. They make the shopping trip more comfortable for little riders and, with regular washing, can cut down on those icky shopping-cart germs. At the very least, take advantage of the antibacterial wipes now available at the entrance to most grocery stores. Wiping down the cart’s seat and handle can help minimize the amount of germs that you and your child will be sharing with other shoppers.
That’s it for now. Hope you enjoyed listening.
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Music – “Golly Gee” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons “Attribution 2.0” http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/