NewsLetter #11 06/21/2024
What’s at the Grocery Store?
The question seems obvious, but the purpose of it was to suggest that there is more at a grocery store than you suspected. There are many things at a grocery store that you have never seen. It is those invisible things that get you into trouble with your children, assuming, of course, that you sometimes have problems with your children.
Well, of course, there is food at a grocery store, and candy, but that is not what is causing you the most problems. It’s the skill set. It’s both your child’s skill set and the skill set that the grocery store environment requires. The two don’t have to match exactly, but if there is a large discrepancy between your child’s skill set and that required by the grocery store, then you have a problem. Every environment requires certain skills in order to productively engage with that environment.
As a natural environment, grocery stores are both flexible and rich in academic and functional skills. This means that the grocery store environment provides many opportunities to engage those skills. As your child is just beginning to develop those skills, she is challenged in that environment. When you see children behaving badly in the grocery store, this is the root of that behavior. The child lacks the behavior repertoire demanded by the environment. But all children want to learn. Using the grocery store as an opportunity to teach your child the skills demanded by that environment is the best solution to the bad behavior. Don’t merely take your child shopping, engage your child in the activity in a way that increases her skills and responsibilities.
When Your Child is Not Engaged
As a parent, you have a good idea of your child’s skills, what she can do and what she can’t do. As someone who has gone grocery shopped many times, you know what skills the store environment demands. Because you know your child so well, you are in the best position to help her manage the skill demands of the grocery store as she grows.
When your child struggles at the grocery store with her behavior, think about what skills she has and what skills the store is demanding from her before you conclude she is being “bad.”. Do these two skill sets match? If they don’t, then you child is struggling simply, because she lacks the skills for this activity. She is probably not being “bad” just to give you a hard time.
You child will always engage the grocery store with the skill set she actually has, not the set you want her to have. For example, if at any moment the shopping activity requires the ability to read food labels and your child doesn’t read, then there will be a mismatch of skill sets and you will be the victim. If, besides reading food labels, the shopping activity requires scanning rows of products searching for a particular item, then your child will need to be able to scan as well as read food labels to be productively engaged.
For a very young child who is yet learning to read and scan items, there is a role in your shopping activity that may fit her skill repertoire. That role is shopper helper. The role of the helper is not to do the whole task but only part of it. The saving grace of children is that they enjoy being engaged in any way they can. They just want to be part of the activity.
Probably the part of the activity in which your child shows independence is dropping the product in the shopping cart. Your child is probably partially independent in helping you push the grocery cart (of course you know better than giving your child full control of the cart; I’ve seen that happen and it’s a disaster!) So you will engage your child in pushing the cart to different parts of the store. You should be pointing our to her the different products as you travel through the store. Turn the activity into a sight-seeing trip. You are grocery store tourists. You and your daughter will discover the item you are looking for together.
You will direct the grocery cart to the item and stop right in front of it. Then you will tell your child the item is in this area and, using a gesture, indicate the general area the item is located. Have your cell phone and show your child a picture of the product you are seeking. This will reduce the scanning demands of the grocery store to skills your child possesses. Now, your child is perceiving the activity as a game. Treat it like one. You can even keep points on who finds the grocery item first. If your child is older and can read, you won’t need to give her so much help in reducing the area of scanning nor will you need pictures of the product. If your child is in her teens, you can probably give her full control of the cart. Teens are seeking independence. This will give her some of that,
Areas of Engagement with the Store
I have identified 5 areas of engagement in a grocery store. In the example above, you have used 4 of them. The 5 areas of engagement are: self control, identify food items, retrieve food items from shelf, transport food item and pay for food item. We did not discuss paying for the food items; I will direct you to NewsLetter 12 where there is a thorough discussion of that area. I want to discuss the first area, self control, as that area is not so obvious.
First, you helped your daughter control her behavior by engaging her in the activity. Most children are required to merely follow the parent around the store; they generally show that this is a difficult task for them. Secondly, you helped her control her movement around the store by having her help you push the grocery cart. Thirdly, you helped her identify and find food items by restricting the area she had to search. By the help you gave her, you greatly decreased the skill set required for this activity and increased her chances of success. Failure experiences produce much child misbehavior. Increasing your child’s chances for success decreases her failure experiences. However, one of the biggest factors for helping your child manage her behavior resides in the final item on your shopping list.
The Final Item
The final item on your shopping list is what your child has had on her mind during the entire shopping activity. Before you and your child go shopping, you will have a conversation with her about the last item. Your child will choose the last item. It can be anything she wants, but there will be things she has to accomplish to get the privilege of buying the last item. The item will be her reward for doing a good job as your helper. You will go over what she has to do to get the last item and during the shopping trip when she is doing a good job, you will verbally praise her for that. This is essentially a contract you have made with her. It will help her stay focused on what she should be doing during the shopping trip. By recognizing the challenges presented by a grocery store and by turning those challenges into opportunities for your child’s learning, you turn a daily living task into quality time with your child that you and her will both remember.