Shopping Trips

Taking a baby shopping brings its own problems. Your baby can easily become bored, hungry, fretful, and difficult to manage, so it's worth planning ahead quite carefully to minimize stress. Taking a car will make a world of difference: you can feed and change your baby in it, you can stack your shopping in the trunk and not have to carry it, and you won't have to worry about catching buses and trains. If you don't own a car yourself, it might be worth asking a friend who does to join your shopping expedition or asking a relative if you can borrow a car. Try to shop fairly early in the day, because the streets and stores are less busy. Always try to give your baby a good meal before you leave home; that way you may have two or three hours in which to complete your purchases without her getting hungry.

Bring whatever equipment you would bring on any other trip. Toys may seem something of a burden, but they will more than pay their way, because you can attach them to the backpack, stroller, or supermarket cart for your child to play with without her being able to throw them onto the floor. Bring some kind of small snack, too, because shopping seems to make children either hungry or cranky, and a snack will deal with both.

Carrying Your Baby

You need to have your hands free for shopping, so how you carry your baby is worth some thought and attention. Once your baby is able to sit up with good head and back control, you can put her into your shopping cart. Many supermarkets now have carts equipped with infant seats and harnesses, but with the older type of seats you need to strap your baby in with reins. A backpack is ideal for carrying your baby on shopping trips; her interest will always be engaged, she will feel very secure with such close physical contact, and she should be well behaved and cry very little. Best of all, your hands will be left free. Try to undertake a shopping trip accompanied by your partner and have him carry the baby on his back, leaving you free to make the purchases. Reins are a very good idea for an older child, because they give her a sense of freedom and independence, but she will never be able to get very far away from you; a wrist link that is securely attached to her reins will prevent the two of you from becoming separated.

Keeping Your Child Under Control

Because babies are always grasping and reaching for interesting objects, walk down the center of the aisle so your baby is not tempted to dislodge cans and boxes. One way to control your child is to keep her interested, and you can do this keeping up a running commentary, with observations or questions that engage your child. Your young child will love being involved in shopping decisions, and she will feel very important and needed if you act on her preferences. With items where brand is not important to you, ask yourchild to select products by pointing to the one she would like you to buy. As my children got older and could toddle around the shopping cart, I used to ask them to put all their choices into the cart themselves, so that they were constantly engaged in looking for their favorite things, feeling a great sense of pride in finally finding them, and a sense of achievement in filling up the cart. At the checkout, don't feel that you have to buy everything your child has put in the cart; without her seeing, you can take out those things you don't want.

One of the ways I used to distract and entertain my children on a shopping trip was to ask them if they were thirsty or hungry immediately on entering the supermarket, and buy them a drink or a healthful snack. That way they could munch or sip their way around the supermarket and feel quite happy and occupied the whole time. If, however, you have a wayward child who keeps on getting into mischief, the only way to handle the situation is to keep your child on reins or in the cart to prevent her wandering off and getting lost, or shop without her.

Learning

Use your shopping trips as opportunities to teach your child ­about colors, for example: "This can is red; that box is blue; that jar has a yellow label." Your child will recognize the corn flakes box that she sees at breakfast every morning and will soon understand what the words mean, so that from quite an early age, say, 18 months, you can say to her, "Can you see the corn flakes? Now I wonder where the jam is?" Word recognition can be encouraged by associating the contents of a carton or can with things that your child actually eats at home. For example, if she drinks juice regularly, you only have to take the carton of the brand she sees every day from the shelf and ask "What does this word say?" for her to respond with 'Juice," because she has learned from experience that juice is what comes out of that carton. All my children began to read food labels before they read anything else.

An older child will also learn about the act of shopping itself, and the decision-making and choosing that are involved. You can introduce her to the value of money and to counting, and to some degree you can teach her about sociability and manners, because she will quickly learn the justice of allowing other people to get to the shelves when she has a great Interest in doing so herself.