Generally in our everyday lives with our children we encourage them to be hands on in their play-based learning. Whether it be outside touching flowers in the garden or giving them colourful toys to hold.
Then when we go shopping and it all changes.
Here they're expected to not touch anything, keep their hands by their sides and refrain from the excitement all the colourful displays offer.
At the supermarket for instance there are soooo many different shaped/coloured objects all around them, and huge displays built right at their visible level. It must look like one huge big toy store!!!
We all know kids learn a lot from textile contact. They pick things up, feel their texture, take in the different colours, shapes, temperatures.
Everyone else in the shop is walking around taking things off the shelves and putting them in their trolleys, yet children are tisk-tisked if they should happen to take something off the shelf? It just doesn't make much sense and must be so confusing for them! Children tend to copy what they see happening.
How do you explain to a one year old that everything they see is just to walk past and ignore, yet mummy and all the other adults in the shop are allowed to pick things up whenever they feel like it?
It's not really any wonder a lot of people say the supermarket is where the major meltdowns are inevitable!
These places are a sensory overload, and kids are expected to just sit and take it all in like "good little boys and girls" without touching anything, asking for anything, complaining it's boring, etc, etc...
I've noticed whenever I see something I like in a shop, the first thing I do is pick it up and turn it round in my hand to get a better look.
If adults are allowed to satisfy this impulse, with all the 'self-control' we've learnt over the years, then how on earth do we realistically expect our 'living in the present' impulsive children to refrain?
It's really such a shame that so many parents get stressed out, children get told off, and caregivers are judged by the 'naughty' behaviour of children, when they are so often just reacting to their circumstances instinctively.
I love the shops like Bunnings that have little trolleys for the kids. Giving them a bag or basket and allowing them to do a bit of their own shopping can make a world of difference to how your shopping trip might play out! Kids love to be involved, to follow what their 'elders' are doing and feel responsible for their own actions.
I really don't blame them for the times when it all gets too much and they lose it. Supermarkets and shopping centres are enough to make me have a meltdown with all their products, fluorescent lighting, advertising and crowds of people!!!
Thanks to those other shoppers who give me and my children a look of understanding, instead of disapproving looks and muttered comments about how "my children never behaved that way in public".
Happy shopping
quirkymama x
No comments:
Post a Comment