How to Grocery Shop with Your Young Kids and Maintain Your Sanity!

June 20, 2010

When I grocery shop with all three of our girls (ages 6, 5 and 4), I leave the store feeling like this:

During the school year, I shop while they are in school or when I just have one with me at a time, maybe two, but I avoid taking all three with me to the grocery store. My kids seem to lose their minds when they get in there. I’m guessing by the looks of the other moms in the store and after talking with my friends, my kids are not abnormal with this behavior. Normal or not, it drives me insane!

Now here we are in the middle of summer and no school days anywhere around us for me to shop alone. I will usually go in the evening when my husband is at home with them or I make my mom go with me.

My husband was about to leave for a two week trip and I needed to do some serious grocery shopping before he left because I didn’t want to have to take the girls to the store with me. Two nights before he left, I planned to go by myself. Turns out, I ended up with an ear infection and missed my opportunity to shop kidless.

So I had to take all three to the store. I was shopping for two weeks and I needed a plan to get in and out with my sanity intact. I put on my thinking cap and came up with this plan. I’m pleased to say it worked like a charm and I left with all three kids, my entire list complete and all my hair in place. That’s quite a feat!

Here’s how you can do it too:

1. Grab a sale flyer from the store. This makes it easy to see what is on sale at a glance and you will need it for step 3.

2. Make an organized list by aisle in the store. There can be no wandering around thinking about what you may need to pick up. This will also help you avoid the unnecessary backtracking for something you forgot in the store. That way once you get past the cookie aisle, you won’t have to go back! I also got my coupons ready and in an envelope. I will normally just have a few ready and get out the rest as I’m shopping along.

3. Make a list for your children. I used the sale flyer from the store and cut out pictures of items we were buying that day. This helps you kids visually see what items they are looking for and it becomes a game of i-spy. I stapled the images on an index card. I made one for each child, organized by sections of the store. One had this card, another one had produce and some groceries and the last one had frozen and cold items.

4. Bribe your children to behave. Mine will do anything for fruit snacks, so I promised them fruit snacks when we got finished, if they behaved. You are free to skip this step if you don’t agree with bribing kids!

5. Take a kid sized shopping cart to the store. We tossed the Little Tikes shopping cart into the van and off we went to go shop.

6. Allow one child to shop at a time with their list and shopping cart. I placed the other two into the two kid sized shopping cart and entertained them with the free cookie from the store and sample foods. Next time I will take some coloring books and crayons or something else to entertain them while they are not shopping. The child shopping took their time searching for the items on their list and when they found them, they placed it in the little shopping cart. I picked up the other things on my list as we went along. Once their list was complete, we put the food into the big cart and switched out kids.

This plan worked like a charm! I got comments from people all over the store and one mom stopped me to say she thought about taking a little cart with her, but was too nervous about. Once she saw us, she said she was going to try next time.

To shop this way took much more time since I had to plan stuff out before we left and kids searching for stuff can be a bit slow, but in the end everyone had fun. I no longer fear grocery shopping with three little girls! I’m passing along our experience in case anyone else needs some tips.

If you have more than 3 kids or your kids are too old to sit in the cart, you need more help that I’m qualified to give! Good luck…and share some tips with me.

Posted in Fun For Kids, Tutorials