SOMETIMES I get lulled into thinking I have a particular parenting thing under control, only to be reminded that I’m just not as in charge as I like to think.
My youngest boy and I do most of my errands together, and since his younger sibling isn’t born yet, and he’s four years old, we’ve had a lot of one-on-one time to perfect our out-of-the-house behavior. He generally does well during our errands, especially when we go to the grocery store—he has lots of friends who work there and he has a sweet and special relationship with each one of them. We both look forward to our trips to the grocery store.
I always feel terribly for the parents whose kids don’t behave so well at the store, either as a one-time thing or as a regular occurrence, since there have been many times in the nearly fourteen years of my motherhood when I’ve had similar situations, and I know how awful and embarrassing it can be. Many times I’ve been so thankful that that part of my motherhood is behind me, and I truly believed this to be so, because a major cause of past incidents for me was having several small children to wrangle at the same time. Before my baby-on-the-way turns one, my four-year-old will be starting Kindergarten, so my days of wrangling many small children at once seemed to be over.
Well. Pride cometh before a fall, or don’t count your chickens before they hatch, etc.
One day recently, my boy decided to have a very uncharacteristic (for outside the house) meltdown in the checkout line at the grocery store. I’m talking a screaming, wailing, angry fit that lasted the entire ten minutes we were in line. In the midst of all that noise, he kept yelling, “I want candy!”
I can’t remember even one time when I bought candy for my kids in the checkout line. I was completely baffled by the cause of this meltdown, but one thing I knew for sure: there was no way he was getting any candy. And so he screamed (I’m talking bloodcurdling, ear-piercing screaming. So embarrassing.), and then he would stop for a second and choke out, “I’m done screaming. Can I have some candy now?” and I’d say no, and he’d start it up again.
What was there to do? If it happened while we were shopping, I think I probably would have left our cart in the aisle and gone home. But we were *so close* to being done—we were even in the express lane, because we only had a few things—so I just tried to ignore it. And wouldn’t you know but the other women in line came over to tell me what a good job I was doing, and the cashier marveled at my patience, and all the while my son screamed. I felt like a total amateur, like I was in a foreign land with no knowledge of the native culture. But what a lovely thing to be built up by the other ladies! We are often such good sisters to each other in times like that, and I was so grateful.
I figured that he must have just been having a bad day, perhaps he wasn’t feeling a hundred percent—one of my other boys was recovering from strep throat, maybe my littlest guy was coming down with it as well. When I considered this, I felt better, and was sure it was a one-time thing.
Until the next day. The very next day the same thing happened all over again.
I only attempted it because whatever sickness I thought he might be coming down with never came to anything—he’d seemed fine the rest of the previous day. While we were going through the store on that second day, we stopped to say hello to one of our friends, and I was telling her about what happened the day before, and she said that she’d heard the meltdown (impossible not to!) and had actually had the thought that it must not have been my boy, because he never acts that way. She was shocked to discover that it was, indeed, him, and I was shocked when he pulled the same bologna in the check-out line at the end of that second day’s shopping trip.
One time can maybe be chalked up to a bad day; twice in a row might be two bad days in a row, but it’s also a pattern that needs to be broken, especially since it’s so unfair to subject everyone else at the grocery store to that level of horror. So I decided my boy was no longer allowed at the grocery store, at least until I was sure he wouldn’t do that again. It was a rough decision, since I get most of our grocery shopping done during those times with him! He did seem to miss the trips to the store, and by the end of the next week started saying he wanted to go to the store and, “I won’t scream for candy!”
Last week I decided he might be ready for us to try again. We made our first trip back a quick one, and thankfully he did fine. We talked quite a bit while going through the store about how that kind of behavior is unacceptable, and he seemed to be taking it very seriously. Hopefully it was just a two-day fluke. But it reminded me of something an experienced mom told me a long time ago, at the beginning of my motherhood: “You’re never an expert.” That resonated with me so much, because she had six children who were nearly all grown up, so if anyone might have felt like an expert at mothering, it was her. I’ve definitely found her wise words to be true for me—these kids surprise me all the time; what was true for one or some isn’t necessarily so for the others; I don’t always know why or have all the answers.
But I do know that if my little guy tries screaming in the store again, it’s Hannaford To Go for us for the foreseeable future!
Kate and her husband have six sons ages 13, 11, 9, 8, 6, and 4; they’re expecting their seventh baby in the fall. Follow her at www.facebook.com/kmtowne23, or email her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
