A Simple Trip to the Shops

It's amazing how even the most banal of day-to-day errands can become a wonderfully enjoyable and educational experience for a gifted young child, if the adult approaches it with enough effort and enthusiasm.

This may require enormous quantities of coffee.

However this is far from easy, and we definitely do not manage to do this every time, and that's alright. All that matters is that we try and give the kids as much enthusiasm and attention while they're still young and, more importantly, they still want it.

The Journey In

The simplest option, and one that we resort to whenever we just need a break, is to bung all the kids into the back of car with a variety of snacks and drinks, and drive directly to the store. It's the quickest, cheapest and seemingly lowest 'hassle' method of achieving the goal of 'arrive at the shops in one piece', however it has two important drawbacks:

• If either of the two older kids fall asleep on the way to the shop, we're all doomed to be awake until well beyond nine-thirty pm, which nobody needs
• The journey ends up being really short

Usually a short journey is considered a benefit, however when trying to entertain and educate toddlers, I'll happily admit I'm frequently trying to fill time as the days become increasingly exhausting.

Let me clarify something:

I'm not wishing the time away

However if given the chance to make a journey last just a little longer, and along the way spend time interacting and - equally importantly - tiring out - my energetic offspring, then I'll take it.

So we frequently opt instead to take the park and ride, the bus or even the train into town, in order to turn the whole thing into a 'trip' rather than merely another errand.

Along the way we play a variety of the usuals:

• I-spy
• Which-car-is-your-favourite
• What-do-the-signposts-mean
• How-many-times-have-I-said-to-leave-the-sodding-button-alone

But for a bit of extra interest, thirty seconds and a sharpie can produce 'journey bingo cards' with things for the kids to spot and tick off along the way.

Shopping

I'll happily throw my hand up and be the first parent to admit I just want to stick my kids quietly in a trolley and whisk them silently round the aisles while I grab what I need and race to the checkout, rewarding them with something containing or coated in chocolate for not making a scene.

But I can't.

Because my kids won't do this, despite my best efforts.

Caveat: They did this - once - but we subsequently found them to be running a fever (not COVID) and they were asleep by five so I'm going to go ahead and label that experience as an outlier.

No, our bright young beans look gleefully at the ALDI sign and interpret it as

'ask every question you can think of and don't stop until mummy is crying'.

The doors glide open, the waft of air-conditioned breeze hits our faces and it's game on, starting with demanding to know why the bananas are green and whether the cucumbers are wrapped in cellophane before or after they're put on a plane. Halfway round and I'm quietly trying to explain to a two year old why my gin intake seems to have increased recently, while the three year old loudly highlights the various eating habits of our fellow shoppers.

I optimistically grenade a variety of placating snacks into their hands, hoping that a mouth full of brioche may somehow at least slow down the verbal diarrhoea but apparently it just turned the megaphone into a howitzer as he starts spraying half-chewed carbohydrate across the aisle.

I figure speed is going to be my only friend at this point and proceed to race towards the checkout, counting myself lucky that I managed at least half a trolley this week. As our pitiful haul is beeped through at an inhumane velocity by an increasingly frustrated cashier, I gaze enviously at the other parents in the store with their beautifully behaved children sat gracefully in their trolley seats, while mine argue violently over whose bread is better.

Sometimes I can get it right.

Sometimes, however, just occasionally, I can turn the shopping into a useful, enjoyable experience by getting the kids to run their own 'errands' and running off to get specific items by themselves. Of course this is within limits - it has to be something in strong packaging and not out of sight - but occasionally it ends up being genuinely enjoyable and helpful.

Granted it doesn't usually last very long, but they seem to thrive off the sense of responsibility and feeling useful, with the two year old in particular demanding to know what she should go and get next because apparently she's 'here to help'.

Other things I have on occasion managed to incorporate into our food shop include:

• Talking a bit about ingredients, and finding things that are different (eg bread and pizza) but that have similar ingredients
• Talking about prices, and adding numbers up, such as 'if I have three pounds, and apple juice is one pound, how many can I get?'
• Talking about recipes, and explaining the components we'll need for each meal

One thing that I found rather interesting was when I asked them how they would choose to pack the bags. This was great fun, as the usual 'sensible' arrangement utilised by adults the world over by 'which cupboard is it going in' and 'fridge/freezer' was replaced by vastly more enjoyable suggestions such as:

• All the red things in one bag
• All the soft things in together
• Potatoes in one bag, and not-potatoes in another
• All the tins on one side, and fruit on the other side, of the same bag
• Alphabetically stacked
• Stacked by number of each item purchased
• 'Yucky things in that bag and give the snacks to me'

I found I gained some real insight into how the kids' minds were learning to categorise the world around them, and it was a nice reminder of how boring we adults can be.

Still. I'm exhausted.