Shopping with Difficult Children

Getting Real With Veronica Ibarra

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I really don’t like shopping. Why they say shopping is a female thing, I’ll never know. I just don’t get that whole glorious victory feeling after hunting through racks to find the perfect whatever.

Shopping is what I do when I need something. When I get time off without my kids I usually spend it in a coffee shop reading.

Shopping is made worse for me by the fact that I have kids that don’t do well in stores. The oldest wants to look at everything and my youngest wants to leave as soon as we’ve gone in. Sometimes I try to shop with just the youngest while the oldest is in school, and even then I only have about five minutes before he throws himself into a passionate tantrum that has the whole store wondering if I’m trying to steal my own kid. I’m not sure if it’s because he hates shopping more than I do, if it’s because he’s 3, or if it’s a sign of some behavioral/cognitive issue that has yet to manifest with enough symptoms to be identified, but my son’s tantrums make shopping ten times more agonizing for me than being simply something I’d rather not do.

With my husband’s work schedule and my more flexible schedule, it makes sense for me to do the shopping. I signed up for e-mail notifications from our local grocery store, and do the coupon thing. I make lists, and have a mental layout of the store to maximize efficiency and minimize my time in the store. Still there are the tantrums, which mean those looks from the other shoppers.

May I ask why anyone would think I’d bring my kid into public just to annoy them? I can’t afford a babysitter just so I can do the grocery shopping, and I don’t have anyone to watch him as a favor. I wonder how many other women find themselves in this situation? I cannot be the only one in this economy.

So, if you see a woman in a store with a screaming kid, it might be me, and it might be nice if you offered to help instead of giving me the stink eye like I didn’t already know that my kid was making your shopping experience miserable. I’m not really a bad mother; I’m just overwhelmed and understaffed.