The perils of shopping with our kids are many. Shops are full of stuff, designed to appeal to children just like ours. And when you are really young it can be difficult to understand why you can’t have something which is apparently being offered to you. The good news is that there are a number of ways that we parents can teach our children to walk away from these lures, ones that don’t involve a battle of wills.

Here is a sample of some of our easy and effective tools for solving this issue

This works really well:

PLAN AHEAD:

• Before the shopping trip, agree with your child what the boundaries are.
• You can use an “I”-statement such as “I will take children shopping who don’t constantly ask me to buy things”.

Here is another suggestion:

POSITIVE REDIRECTION: (to be used if what your child desire’s is something that you are prepared for him or her to own at some point in the future)

• Example  “Sure you can buy it, as long as you can pay it with your allowance” (for children who receive allowances), or “Would you rather add it to your Birthday or Christmas wish list?”.
• Positive Redirection, offered as a question, allows children to feel empowered into making a decision about something.

You could also try:

ENERGY DRAIN:

• When we explain that a situation is ‘draining us of energy’ we allow our children to realise that their actions affect others.
• We can then let them know that in order to ‘repair’ the situation, they will need to help with household tasks or give us time to replenish our energy.
• So say to your child, with empathy “All this begging and whining is causing me an energy drain, I’ll need your help getting some energy back” or “When you whine my energy begins to drain away, I will need your help to recharge”

 

These are just a few examples of our Best of Parenting Tools. You can find more ideas and solutions to typical parenting challenges in our book ‘Kids Don’t Come With a Manual – The Essential Guide to a Happy Family Life‘.