SHOPPING With Your Toddler?
How to save yourself trouble—and cash!
Emma Odaba recently visited various supermarkets and reports what she saw—from babies in trolleys with foodstuffs, to toddlers wetting the floor! Some toddlers did actually cost their parents both trouble and some cash.
No one can deny that going to a supermarket with your infant or toddler is likely to happen sooner or later. Besides not having someone to leave your baby with when you want to go shopping, there are a host of other reasons why you may end up with your infant strapped on your back or front during your shopping.
I decided to have a walk around various supermarkets in town, to see how parents and guardians handle their babies while shopping.
What are the must-dos for such a parent, I asked one mum. ‘Carry enough cash to pay for damages!’ she smiled back. Actually she was right. I thought, after I saw one parent get into trouble because her two-year-old boy had dropped and broken an expensive glass artifact. She told the floor manager. ‘You must have kids at home, don’t you?’ He answered an emphatic NO. Even if he had, he said, he would be careful to ensure his child did not run amok in the supermarket. ‘In any case besides causing this damage your baby could have been hurt.’ he admonished. The offended mum did not see the point in ‘arguing’ with the manager. ‘How much is the damn thing?’ she asked. ‘Twelve thousand five hundred,’ the manager replies. Though it wasn’t my child who had broken the glass artefact, I froze in my path! The mother did not have that kind of money. I was curious to see what would happen. She said she could not afford it and it became a ‘manager’s office case’. They disappeared inside the small cubicle.
Your guess is as good as mine—she must have ended up parting with her mobile phone or identity card as a guarantee!
In many of the supermarkets, and I think this is fashionable judging from the numerous incidents I saw; parents put their little babies aged between one and three years in the shopping trolleys. Nothing wrong with that: the top shelf of the trolley is a small compartment clearly marked out as reserved for babies.
The problem however is that some parents let other children push the trolleys or run around the supermarket ‘driving’ the trolley. Now, that is dangerous, I thought. As if I had cast a spell on the trolley I was commenting on, the child pushing it lost control and the trolley took off the gentle slope to another section of the supermarket. The baby was thrown out of the trolley as everyone rushed to try and save her. A few customers gave the daddy a critical eye of disapproval. I could almost hear the unsaid words, ‘You careless man!’
That’s not all, as I noted a few more interesting incidents. It is amazing how we feel so secure as we meander among the shelves of a plush hypermarket. We get so overwhelmed by all the captivating displays that we forget the baby in the trolley. One woman I met was asking. ’Oh my God, where is my trolley?’ Meaning, where is my baby?
There were some hilarious moments, too. I was observing the ongoings at a cashier’s desk when a lady pushed up a trolley and casually started handing over her items to the cashier. In-between, she realised she had forgotten something and as the cashier punched in the figures she rushed back to one of the shelves to get it. Her two kids. I guess about three and seven years old, continued to assist in placing the goods on the cashier’s desk.
When she came back holding toothpaste, the cashier was reading the last item’s barcode. The cashier then looked up waiting for the cash as the lady read the register’s display. She seemed quite shocked. She asked in a hushed voice, ‘Why is my bill so high?’ The perplexed cashier tried a smile and said, ’I don’t know… Can we remove some items?’ Then the lady seemed to understand why there was a problem. She loudly asked the cashier. ‘Whose teddy bear is that?’
At another supermarket there was drama when a mum ordered her tiny son to return an expensive toy car ‘to where you found it!’ She forgot the cardinal rule: never shout at your child when he/she makes a mistake. Your harsh voice might frighten or annoy your child, and he/she could drop the item on the floor. In this case, the irate boy hurled the precious piece away, its broken parts scattering all over the ceramic floor. She impulsively walked to her son and slapped his bottom in a fury. The boy repaid her by urinating on himself! I hope she had carried extra diapers, and a change of clothes—another must for shoppers with babies.
END: BL 05/62