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My Dad came up with this question and I thought it was pretty good. We talked a few weeks ago about punishment but the responses were mostly centered around what you do at home or in a place where you have a time out spot available. So now I want to know what do you do when you are in a public place, like a store or a restaurant, and your child starts misbehaving?
5 comments:
There is nothing like a good ol' fashion bribe. It may be totally against any parenting book, but I am a believer! My rational is, in life we are rewarded when we do good things right? ;) So whenever I take my kids to the store, I tell them as we are going in, if they are good and behave they get to pick a treat at the end of the trip. I stick by it, and my oldest gets one warning and then no treat if he is misbehaving. I still have to be realistic and keep my shopping trips on the short side, but it seems to work.
I have only had a few complete melt downs, and if that happens, I leave everything and take him off to the van for time out.
so far Quinn is still relatively easy to distract, but the times when she isn't, it's nearly always because she's tired, hungry, we pushed it too far, etc...so for me the number one thing is prevention. prevention in the form of naps and goldfish crackers. :) i'm sure i will have to get more strategic as she gets older, but for now these two things seem to be working alright.
As a general rule I always have a variety of snacks, drinks and a few little toys in my bag. This has prevented many melt downs in the car and at stores. I even keep a few bribery treats hidden just in case (fruit snacks and mini marshmallows). They work like a charm. When Ian is starting to act up I just make that my last stop and head home as soon as I am done with that store/etc. I don't avoid taking him shopping, I want him to get used to going out and doing things. I was talking to a friend of mine who has 3 kids and she still takes them grocery shopping. She always has taken them all so they now know the routine. I think that is important to not avoid opportunities to teach them how to act in certain places. And also to let them know that they can't get away with demanding all kinds of toys and food! My friend just says "that is not on my list today!"
I make sure to not always use the expected bribe, otherwise it's an expectation, not a reward for my kids. I take all 4 of my little ones to the grocery store or the dreaded Walmart, and it's hard, but they know how to act in the store by now. But no matter where I go, people always say, "You've got your hands full"! I guess that's what you get having two in the basket and one hanging off each side. They need to make baskets bigger, in my opinion.
I agree that you need to give your kids these experiences and I am also a big believer in preventitive action. I never run errands during nap times or if they are hungry. I also remind myself that they are kids and its not good to keep them contained in a cart or car seat for too long...they need to get their energy out...so we keep our errands to 1-2 stores. I usually let the kids look at some toy when we go into the store and I say "You can look at this while mom shops but we aren't going to buy it. We have to give it to the lady when we are buying our other things." And they always give up the toys without a fuss at the checkout line. My daughter has always been extremely calm so I'm not sure what I'm going to do when my son--who's a little more outspoken--gets frazzled in public. I suppose I would take a time out and get home as fast as possible.
Now that gas is so outrageously priced I don't think anyone will be driving around much to run errands. Let's just let our kids throw fits in the backyard :)
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