My six year old and I started a new bonding ritual: Friday night grocery runs.
After a long week, all I wanted was my weekly 90 minutes of freedom: going to the supermarket.
“Oh, can I come?” T asked chirpily.
“Oh, fuck no,” I said to myself in my head.
But I simply said, “No.”
“Please!” He begged and gave me a big hug, pulling out the charm offensive.
“Ok, fine. You can come,” I said.
He cheered. He was practically bouncing off the walls by the time we walked out the door.
In early days of parenting, learning about T’s prognosis and experiencing his hyperactive impulsive behaviour and meltdowns often made me anxious when we went out.
But I have to say he’s mostly good now with going out and it’s a blessing I don’t take for granted.
I am strategic about the places we go out to. He’s a kid who’ll sometimes start doing half cartwheels and front rolls at a restaurant just because he can’t help himself.
A supermarket is a place I often avoid with T, because I know he can’t resist wanting to touch everything and I dread the thought of chasing him up and down the aisles.
But there’s something appealing about getting T into the habit of doing groceries with me.
It’s a life skill we can nurture and help teach him about responsibility.
It’ll remind him that things cost money and to value the food we have on our table.
It’ll hopefully open his eyes to the variety of food options and encourage our picky eater to widen his palette.
When we arrived at the parking lot, I gave him my usual before-we-enter-a-store talk.
“Please don’t do anything that’ll make us go viral on the Internet for the wrong reasons,” I said to myself in my head.
Instead, I reminded him to not touch or grab anything without asking.
T is getting to be quite big, now at 4 feet. But I still plopped him into a cart and he was happy to be pushed around.
My mission was to go in and out as quickly as I could.
I have to say that T did a great job.
He was like a tour bus driver, loudly narrating and pointing out all the vegetables and fruits in the produce aisle to nearby shoppers.
“Oh look, brocoli!” …
“Oh my God, is that a coconut?!”
I asked him to make decisions along the way, like which type of pasta, ramen flavour, cereal, snack and fruit to buy.
I also handed him the non produce items to sort onto the cart. He created a big messy mountain on one corner of the cart, as expected.
He clung onto his Gluten free Oreos.
“You’re going to have to give that to the man now,” I said when we arrived at the checkout.
He watched everything get scanned and then finally gave his Oreos to the cashier.
He has no idea what Gluten free means, he just liked the white packaging, different from the usual Oreo packaging.
We were in and out without incident and I have to say that I enjoyed his company.
When we got to the car, I gave him several high fives, genuinely delighted at this bonding time that we spent together.
“Do you want to do groceries with Papa every Friday?” I asked, because I’m clearly a masochist who needs a sanity check.
“Yup!” He replied back with a smile.
I love that you are taking this as a life skill learning opportunity. My son used to ask to go to the store because he wanted to walk around and name ALL the produce, even exotic ones. He would explain the produce to strangers and they usually loved to stop and chat with him about it.
It was cute but it usually added 45min to my shopping trip!
That’s too funny and adorable. Yes, I can see the same time addition with my son. But it’ll be fun nonetheless!
I can’t stop smiling reading your post, both your thoughts and T’s positivity and enthusiasm. Irresistibly good and funny with important child and parenting life lessons. I don’t really like groceries , but now I’m motivated . It’s been awhile seen I have fresh coconut, it’s mostly canned. Anything that reminds me of the tropics I often buy or taste. I’m very Nostalgic and I love everything from the Islands. Thank you for the feel good moment. Happy Tuesday my friend. ☀️🙏
Thank you. 😊 Do you have Filipino groceries at SF. I imagine you do. We’re pretty lucky in our city to have fairly ethnic brands in the traditional groceries as well as specialty cultural stores. So we can find a lot of stuff now like the tropical fruits too. And even freshly made halo halo. I may need to make a trip now this weekend now that you’ve brought it up! Happy Wednesday!
We do. Plus we have the big Asian groceries of all kinds. Wife just made pancit today for co-workers Bday. Delicious. Thanks.
Pancit would be lovely right now!
Yes.
We have several Filipino restaurants and groceries in the Bay Area. We have chowking, Jollibee, Goldilocks, Seafood City. Reminds us of childhood home every time. Happy weekend.
Sounds like you have all that you need. I remember eating my first polvoron years and years after we came to Canada. It was so delicious, like having it again for the first time. Now, we’re lucky these food items are more ubiquitous.
Having Filipino foods close definitely makes Philippines so close. Thanks.
I love that T wants to do “groceries with papa” it says a lot about your relationship. It sounds like a wonderful bonding and learning experience.
Thanks LaDonna. He’s a handful to manage but we do love our outings. 🙂
♥️♥️
Awe I am so glad it went well and a perfect way to teach him life lessons. Now you need to find another way to have time for just you to replace the time you gave up.
Thanks Diane. There’s never enough personal time in a day or week! 😆
Well that turned out better than expected!! Sounds like you both had a fun trip to the grocery store and it’s always great to sneak in some life lessons. I didn’t know that there were gluten free oreos. The packaging does look nice so I can see why T would gravitate towards it. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Linda
Thanks Linda. The hubby was at Shoppers last night with T and got scolded by a store clerk cuz T was touching everything. Not every outing can be a winner. 😑
Hope you’re having a nice weekend. We’re going out soon to play in the first snowfall of the season!
Sounds fun!! There’s always something magical about the first snowfall of the season. We took last week off and went on a road trip to the US. We’re supposed to come home tonight (assuming we get the results of our COVID tests back).
🤞🏻Hope you’re back in Canada now! And look forward to your Roadtrip recap.
We’re still in the US. Since we didn’t have our negative COVID test results yet, we could either pay $6,200 (each!!!) to come back into Canada or stay in the US and wait for our results. We decided to stay in the US for another night. Fingers crossed we get the results today. We’re also scheduling another test just in case we don’t get our first results within the 72 hour window. I guess there’s been some delays with the Thanksgiving holiday. Yikes!!
Omg, that is quite intense! I hope you to get to squeeze in an extra day of sightseeing at least. Fingers crossed you get back home safely!
I’m glad to say that we’ve made it back into Canada!! Woohoo!! We ended up getting another COVID test and forked over the extra money to pay for a rapid test where we were guaranteed our results within 2 hours. We had to spend half the day in the waiting room though, but hey, I’m glad it’s over and done with now. It’s nice to come back to some snow. It’s definitely starting to feel like Christmas!!
Welcome back! 🙂 You’ve also got a great travel story to share now during your holiday get together in a few weeks!
You totally crack me up, Ab! I know that voice in my head. 🙂
You inspire me for your ability to find the reasons why it’s good for T to go and for overriding that very sane voice of self-preservation in your head to have that time together. I’m so impressed.
Congratulations on a grocery run that didn’t go viral for all the wrong reasons and a post that should for all the right reasons! 🙂 <3
Thank you, Wynne. We try to make every moment a learning one if possible.
Friday was a good day. Yesterday was the total opposite. 😆 But thankfully no viral moments… that I know of.
Enjoy the rest of your Thanksgiving weekend! We’ve got our first snowfall over here. 😊
Sorry to hear about yesterday. I know you’ve said this again and again in your posts, but that has to be so hard on your body, mind, spirit to have to have to always be a little prepared for that. Do you have any game changers that can change the trajectory of a day once it starts going bad? Like going outside and howling like wolves or having an emergency milkshake?
That’s fun about your snow! Hope you have a great day romping in it.
I would go outside and howl like wolves but I think our neighbours might call the nuthouse of us. 😆 An emergency milkshake is a great idea though!
The snow was great! Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
My friend Katie passed on that idea of emergency milkshakes. For the times when you just have to throw everything out of the window, change it up, surprise the kids. Amazingly, it works to just change the tone. I