Attention Ricochet: a Simple Parenting Technique to Survive Shopping with a Toddler

If you have never thought about store design or product placement before, have your toddler accompany you for your shopping trip, and you definitely will.

A whole layer of products, so far invisible to your eyes and non-existent to your thoughts, will emerge as the primary product range in the store. 

All of a sudden it will seem that most products a grocery store (or any store, really) has to offer have to do with sweets, toys, and supposed-to-be-healthy products packaged in cute animal figures.

And all these things that could possibly catch a toddler’s attention (and I’m talking about plenty of things here) were miraculously placed so that they will, indeed, catch her attention

You are up against not only science but also a billion-dollar industry built on this science.

You need an out-of-the-box solution, and you need it now. As the century-old maxim goes, you cannot control what is happening to you, but you have full control over how you react to whatever that may be.

Now, let me admit something: I love to go grocery shopping with my two-year-old. 

I enjoy putting her in the cart, strolling the lines, listening to her unfiltered thoughts that she is sharing with me on the go. Her sometimes cute, sometimes wild associations, all triggered by the torrent of stimulus and information overload an ordinary supermarket means to her.

At the same time, I am well aware that going to the groceries with a toddler is a pain for many others, and I can see why. I have seen enough toddlers throwing temper tantrums on the supermarket floor as much to the embarrassment of their parents as to the entertainment of all others.

There is one and only one parenting tool I use to make a grocery round turn into a fun experience. Whenever I managed to pull this technique off, and consistently implement this parenting technique (which is not always easy), it has never let me down. Touchwood. Never.

In fact, I love this technique so much that I’ve come up with a name for it: I like to call it the “attention ricochet” technique.

She gets to choose one, and only one item.

She is completely free to choose which one (yes, I know some supermarkets sell 8K Qled TVs, but I found that toddlers, luckily, are more attracted to fruit yogurts and colorful ribbons). And, here’s the thing: she is completely free to change her mind as long as we’re in the store.

Let’s face it: it’s not rocket science. But this parenting technique totally works.

And I think it works because it capitalizes on the exact same phenomenon that marketers use in the first place.

You guessed it: on the bouncing attention of a toddler.

Yes, whenever we pass a shelf loaded with colorful cans of yogurts, it will catch her attention. She will want one. And when we get to the section full of fruit juices, she’ll want one of those, too. And when we pass by the children’s toothbrushes she will definitely want a new one. Not to mention the candies at the checkout.

But as new and new things will catch her attention, she will not be able to focus simultaneously on all of them. What she will really, only want is the latest one. Which is completely fine: it’s exactly what we wanted.

By the time she will want the toothbrushes, she will not care about the fruit yogurts a bit.

So, here’s how it plays out in practice.

• Look, nice red flowers! Let’s buy one for Mommy!
• Great idea, it’s so nice of you. Choose one!
• Wow, look, fruit yogurt! Can I have one?
• Sure, you can! But you know you can only have one thing, so if you want the yogurt, we will have to put the red flowers back.
• OK, I want the yogurt… Look, what’s that? The red one!
• Apple juice.
• And those colorful boxes?
• Sponge clothes.
• OK, let’s put back the yogurt because I want the apple juice, and then let’s put back the apple juice, too, because I want the colorful things.

OK, maybe it’s not always as clear-cut as this, but believe it or not, this conversation has actually happened between my two-year-old and me.

Do you know what I ended up buying that day? A Kinder Surprise, because it came with a plush sloth. 

She named the sloth right away. She named her Julia. 

And she didn’t care about the chocolate at all, so I had to eat that on my own.

Actually, the “attention ricochet” technique makes shopping a lot more fun than it was ever before.

Sure, it does. Like all things parenting, it requires your attention, it needs you to be consistent, which is the hardest part, and it takes some time, too.

But whoever said or thought shopping would be as effective and efficient with a toddler than it would be alone?

What I like the most about this parenting technique is that it somehow transforms shopping into a collaboration. From something that I have to do myself, avoiding all the distractions and obstacles a toddler can mean, simply because I had nowhere else to place her while I’m running the chores, shopping is now something we do together.

I even dare to say that it makes shopping a valuable time spent together.

And it is well worth the extra minutes we spend among the shelves putting back colorful stuff in order to be able to choose other colorful stuff.

Do you have other tools, techniques, or ideas on how to make shopping a fun activity with children? 

Have you tried the attention ricochet technique yourself? Did it work? Did it fail?

Do you want other situations to be covered on our parenting blog?

Let us know in the comments!