We’ve all been there… Our kid starts melting down in the middle of a store. They are on the floor or flailing around in the cart, screaming. Loudly. Sometimes very loudly. We try to assess if we can make it to through the check out line without having to abort the mission and return to our car empty handed, if you can really call carrying a screaming,defiant child empty handed.
We decide to press on as we feel the dirty looks floating across the aisle. They want us to control our kids. To make them stop. To make them behave like an adult. As if the fact that they are misbehaving is entirely our fault. Some strangers have taken it one step further, taking it upon themselves to control other people’s children by scolding them or in the case of one man in Georgia, even spanking them.
It can be stressful. A friend told me a good joke about a man in the check out aisle at Target who’s young grandson was throwing a doozy of a tantrum. The man kept his focus and kept softly repeating, “It’s okay, Ethan, it’s okay Ethan,” as he stroked the young boy’s back. The woman behind him commented that “Ethan was very lucky to have such a kind grandfather. The man just looked at her and answered, “No, I’m Ethan.”
As the joke demonstrates, some of us talk to ourselves, some of us talk to our children, some say a silent prayer and others scream for everyone to hear. What are your best strategies for handling public meltdowns?
3 Comments
I think the grocery store is a little different than other stores My husband is a med student and constantly gone or studying at times I have no choice to take my child to the grocery story when she is not 100% pleasant you need food get in get out however there was a time in my teens I saw a child screaming in a stroller very loudly in a department store the mother was casually sifting through the clearance racks dutifully ignoring her child’s bad behavior I went to another section of the store there was not a place in the building I could not hear that child screaming and the lady didn’t leave for 45 min even as a teenager then I knew there had to be a way where mom didn’t have to miss the clearance sale and every other person in the store wasn’t driven out I probably would have given the kid food if the sale was that important to me and it was because I waited 45 min till that screaming kid was gone to get my shopping in
No, don’t just stop and leave a store. Then the kid, who doesn’t want to be there anyway, learns that all he has to do to leave the store is pitch a fit. You can hurry through, get just the basics at the grocery, or decide to slowly head towards the mall exit sooner than planned, but don’t let the kid know. Obviously, avoid shopping, eating, etc., when the kid is likely to be a complete wreck. Restaurants are a different story, though – the other diners are being unacceptably inconvenienced, and if a trip outside for some fresh air doesn’t work, you either have to leave altogether or have one person wait in the car with the kid.
The mistake is thinking you can get through the line (or the meal, or the fill-in-the-blank) with the screaming kid. Nobody else should have to deal with your out-of-control kid. And since you can’t make them stop, leave. Every time they pull it, leave. Leave the cart, leave the restaurant. Just leave. Invest nothing in staying. Leave. If you do it every time they start, you’ll actually do it incredibly rarely. When my kids were at the age of the public tantrum, they learned to stop immediately the moment I got my car keys out.