Every Parent's Nightmare: A Kid's Grocery Store Meltdown

The meltdown-free zone

Over the 25 years in our married lives with kids, I estimate that Julie and I have spent almost a full year engaged in the activity of "grocery shopping." This entails driving to and from the stores, actual shopping in the store, taking phone calls on the way out the store from frantic spouses saying, "We're out of diapers!" and dashing back inside, as well as other assorted grocery-shopping related ventures.

Seriously. Almost a full year of our collective lives in the gathering of food-related items to feed this tribe of Sabos.  It's at least in the neighborhood of 325 days based on some highly-scientific, even mathematical, big data gathering and algorithms. (Ok, ok ... the highly-scientific, even mathematical, data gathering and algorithms consisted of the following conversation.)

Me (to Julie, who is reading her Bible on the couch): "Hey babe, how many hours a week do you think we spend grocery shopping."
Julie: (Pauses...) "I don't know. Six. Or seven."
Me: "Sounds about right." (Whips out iPhone calculator to do some math.)

Virtually every trip to the store involves traveling with one or more Sabo wee lads or lasses, typically the youngest variety who like the adventure of modern-day hunting and gathering in a mostly safe setting. Not to mention that they hope to convince Mom or Dad that a bag of chips is essential to survival. I say mostly safe because one of the grocery stores in our range of foraging includes a Farm Fresh that has these nifty little carts that you see in the photo above. The kids love them. My heels don't. My last trip to Farm Fresh very nearly resulted in me becoming roadkill as Seth is still working out the kinks of staying in his lane, proper turn signaling and distracted driving. Next time I'm going to Farm Fresh it's in body armor and a helmet.

But as many parents know, grocery store shopping can bring out the worst in kids. It's more unusual for me to be in a store and NOT hear some kid having a total meltdown than to be in the store and it's a total-meltdown zone. So is it possible to take your kids grocery shopping and not be embarrassed? How have we at Sabo central survived all these years without being routinely embarrassed by one of our kids going max-unhinged in a shopping cart?

Good questions. For answers I turned to the resident family expert: Julie Sabo. Here's her cogent, insightful answer to grocery shopping with your kids and avoiding the inevitable meltdown in a Q&A format.

Julie: "If you are consistent with your training and discipline at home, you won't have a meltdown at the store."
Me: "Can you elaborate on that?" (As I'm taking notes...)
Julie: "Most parents aren't consistent at home with their discipline and training and the only reason they're bothered by a meltdown at the store is everybody is watching."
Me: "I agree. The meltdown-kid at the store is like a traffic accident. You can't help but look. And everybody looks."
Julie: "If you took the same care at home as if you were in a store you wouldn't have a public meltdown in the store."
Me: "So how does this training look at home?"
Julie: "Love them and train them consistently and they won't embarrass you at the store. These events aren't the kids' fault, but it's a message to the parents."

Here's my take on this: Consistency in discipline and training. That's the key to enjoying the shopping experience. Even with your kids.

When Kids Bicker: A Mom's Solution

Peace, love and no bickering

For some reason, I still get surprised when our kids at college say how much they can't wait to come home. They love being home and soak it in. There's playing with the younger kids -- "Hey guys, let's wrestle," says Ethan -- and there's home cooking -- "Mmmmmm. Mashed potatoes," says Evie -- and movie nights -- some serious laughs when "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" is on the TV.  Games, telling stories about the crazy things the older kids did when they were little, soccer matches in the front yard, impromptu music sessions, eating ... check that, LOTS of eating, are all in the mix when the family is home together over a holiday or weekend when the collegians return.

But it's not always peace, love and family harmony. Sometimes the Sabo family kids experience a dreaded condition called "bickering." Perhaps you are familiar with this condition as well. It can be highly contagious and very debilitating. It has the potential to be deadly as well, killing any and all joy in the house.

Are you familiar with this `bickering' disease? Well, we're here to help. At no cost to you we have interviewed a world-renowned expert in the field of child bickering and sat down with a very brief interview with this noted authority. Here's a transcript of the interview.

Me: Good morning.
Julie Sabo: Good morning.
Me: You look great by the way. I love you.
Julie Sabo: Um, thanks. What do you want?
Me: Oh, nothing babe. I just wanted to ask you a question if you have a minute in between getting Seth dressed, fixing breakfast, answering a million questions from little kids and settling an argument over the ownership of that toy sword that seems to be causing some sort of internal family conflict.
Julie Sabo: And the question is ...
Me: Well, it seems to be particularly apropos at the moment. But I'm wondering how you solve bickering between children.
Julie Sabo: Just curious, but how many kids do you have?
Me: Same as you my love. Fourteen.
Julie Sabo: And how long have you had kids?
Me: Uh, well if my math is right around 26 years.
Julie Sabo: And you don't know the answer to this question yet?
Me: Well, I just thought it would be best to hear from you. You have a way with words, not to mention being an expert in child psychology.
Julie Sabo: I see.
Me: Soooooo, the answer is ...
Julie Sabo: I try to get to the root of the problem. I'm training and working on character. So instead of just training behavior in the moment, I'm thinking bigger picture. I want to be training and teaching in non-conflict moments. So I work on patience, kindness, sharing, love and forgiveness.
Me: Wow. That's really good.
Julie Sabo: Thanks.

And there you go. Some key points to highlight from my perspective include these quotes:
--Training in non-conflict moments
--Working on patience, kindness, sharing, love and forgiveness

I tell you. I'm going to start writing this stuff down!

One Piece of Advice For Parents In Raising Kids

Any parent knows there's a million things that occur within the parenting realm that go into the process of raising kids. And that's just in one day. I'm no parenting guru, or expert, or someone who knows the recipe for the secret sauce of parenting. But in a quarter-century of being `Dad' to a significant brood of children I've learned a thing or two. Or a million. And there's a million more things to learn.

But I've been thinking about this bit of advice I'm going to share a lot lately as my older kids have hit adulthood and have started making big life decisions. With a million more big life decisions to make. It's been important to me over the last decade for my kids to see how I make decisions. This photo above, taken by one of my daughters last summer of Mt. Ararat, is symbolic of what I'm saying.

If you look at the photo you see this little church in the foreground. It's a lovely, photogenic church that in and of itself is worthy of being the target of your camera lens. Yet it is dwarfed in scale, in beauty, in power, ruggedness and mystery -- the `wow' factor -- by the mountain looming over it. The mountain lends insignificance to the little church, however photogenic and captivating that house of worship may be.

Big life decisions affecting families are like this photo. There may be something seemingly rather small and inconsequential that confronts me on occasion and I can look at it and on the surface think it's not that big of a deal. Or maybe it is something of a big deal, but I don't think of the ripple effects of that decision.

Taking a different job, for example. Maybe the new job is better paying and on the surface seems like a better deal for my family because we'll have more income. Yet what's the price of that increased pay? Is there less time with the family because responsibilities and demands increase in the new job? How do you put a price on that? Will there be more travel or a longer commute that will take me away from my family? Have I weighed the long-term effects on my family of that?

For my family there's been some major decisions that have occurred over the past six years or so, such as quitting my job in Virginia to attend the School of Ministry in Oregon, or planting a church (Calvary Chapel Gloucester), or refusing to let our athletic children participate in travel team sports that compete on Sundays (and would interfere with church). What Julie and I have done as parents is take time to seek the Lord in these decisions and wait on Him to provide the answers. In prayer, in reading the Bible in our daily devotions and in waiting on God is how we have made our decisions, along the way including our older children in that process.

One of the most important things that has occurred is that our decisions have been grounded in Scripture. We have been able to apply to our decisions verses we have come across in our devotions that speak into our lives. Sometimes they just jump off the page at you. Our older children have been able to similarly make decisions. One of the major blessings of that process is that when things have gotten hard and difficult and doubts have crept in about a decision, we are able to go back and stand firmly on that verse, or promise, and know that God is in control and is guiding our path.

Our children not only need to see us make decisions, but see how we make decisions. Look at the life of Jesus. Over and over again in Scripture when you see big things looming in His life you see Jesus agonizing in prayer and it's not uncommon for Him to spend all night praying. What is the process you go through in making decisions? One of my favorite verses is Hosea 12:6 that essentially says to wait on the Lord continually. It's a verse that runs completely contrary to our American culture but is one that I have found is invaluable to decision-making. Wait on the Lord, hear Him out, read His word and let your children in on that process.