Shopping with Kids

Shopping with the kids is like a series of mini nightmares. It requires a strategic approach and aggressive tactics because they hit back hard with their own special flavour of guerilla warfare.

I like to take a methodical approach.

The first attack comes in the car, in the parking lot, and sounds a lot like a lecture. "Mummy and Daddy need to go into this shop to buy a table. We won't be long. We DO NOT WANT any squealing or running around. If you do this, we will take longer and you don't want that, do you children?"

The second comes on getting out of the car, one gets strapped in the pram, the others get a designated parent who holds their hand. So far, so good.

At this stage, it's safe to enter the store but they hit back with their first manoeuvre, by wriggling their hands, sitting down and squealing loudly "let me gooooooo". First point to the children, a quick survey of the other shoppers to make sure they saw that you were only holding the child's hand, and an under the breath curse at section 59.

Now they've been let go, they have the upper hand. They are faster, louder and don't have any purpose for being in the shop, just the aim of wreaking havoc. While the slightly cleverer, older one would normally wait till we've engaged a sales person in conversation, the smaller one just clears off at the first chance he gets, so she takes this as her chance to go too. They squeal in delight at being free. The shoppers all turn to see where the noise came from. The kids see they are getting a bit of attention, so squeal a bit louder and longer this time, to see if something more happens. It does. More people turn to look, while Mum and Dad go a deeper shade, a mix of embarassed pink and angry red. I try a subtle move here, a hiss: "children, stop screaming, and behave, please!" Jackpot. More squeals, mixed with shrieks of laughter now.

They're under a table and The Husband wants to storm over, drag them out and yell. But that's our old friend Section 59 - it's not a good idea to do this in public anymore, it can be misinterpreted. He holds back, goes more red. We won't be buying a table today, now we just have to get out of here in one piece.

The children are better equipped for this. We're the Na'vi with bows and arrows, they're the American Military, with helicopters and machine guns. We're down to our last weapon, it's our last line of defence, but it's got to work, because after this we've got nothing. We're resorting to bribery. "Children, stop yelling. Come here, stand nicely and if you behave nicely for the whole time, we'll go to a cafe afterwards and you can have a fluffy with marshmallows" (Good idea to point out here, this is the NZ interpretation of the word "fluffy", not the american). Silence.

The kids slink over. We breathe a sigh of relief, mumble an apology directed to the sales staff and shoppers within earshot, and leave.

It's gone okay, the kids kind of actually won, but at least we can feel reasonably successful. It could have gone worse, there were no tears, for example. We pack them in the car and catch our breath as we prepare for the next Battle - "Negotiating the Cafe: how to consume caffiene, not upset other diners and leave without spilling anything on the floor".