Shopping tantrums, or how to enrage the middle classes
by isabelrogers
Sometimes I have to go to a supermarket with my three-year-old. Today’s experience was so educational I think I should share it.
It started well. We were in a supermarket so middle-class the shelf-stackers can offer opinions on Plutarch’s influence on Shakespeare’s history plays if you want. Let’s call it Fêtechôse.
The three-year-old and I wandered round with her sitting happily in the trolley, squashing up as we put more stuff in. We passed a number of members of staff. Some waved, some chatted. All smiled. At the child in the trolley. Where she had sat on every previous visit. Let’s just remember that fact.
At the checkout, we were informed that she had to get out of the trolley ‘for legal reasons’. This was late morning. Blood sugar was low. It was not a good time.
So, explaining to my daughter she wasn’t allowed in the trolley any more, I tried to remove a suddenly feisty octopus with really sticky suckers. I pulled. The trolley followed us. Daughter invoked the Density Rule, which means the crosser she gets the harder it is to lift her weight. Eventually I won, leaving an increasingly noisy crumple of child on the floor as I turned to pack the shopping, only slightly out of breath.
I paid, and tried to leave. Daughter had other ideas. Start the clock.
After a few attempts to get her to her feet, worrying my eardrums were going to burst from their proximity to decibel hell, I wandered off in the direction of the door, calling ‘bye then!’ at her cheerily. This usually works. She merely hit the Turbo Tantrum button and went – as I believe the term has it – off on one.
I’ve just recovered from months of bad back, brought on by hefting my daughter around. I can’t just pick her up under one arm and wander about: I’ll snap. So I try to resort to patience and reason.
It took ten minutes to get her to the door, with me walking ahead and calling. She did some of it on her knees: perhaps she thought there was a network of laser beams above her head?
It took another struggle to get her through the automatic doors (I went ahead, just around the corner, from where I could see her through the window and hear her wails). By this stage, we were attracting quite the audience. Fêtechôse shoppers aren’t used to such spontaneous street theatre, and showed their inexperience in various ways. At least five separate people stopped to ‘help’ her, looking around wildly for the callous or forgetful parent who had clearly abandoned her. After a few calls of “it’s ok, she’s mine!” they mostly smiled and left us to it. Some did not.
A car-park chap surprised me by shouting quite suddenly from behind that he expected me to “get down on the floor and join in” because he’d seen it on the telly. This fact was corroborated by another couple just about to go in. How we laughed. When it became clear that I wasn’t going to “join in” they stopped laughing and got on with their own lives.
When we finally got her out of the door we had only the car to reach. It was metres away. It might as well have been on the moon. Daughter demanded a piggy-back (she knows I can do those even if I can’t pick her up normally any more). I crouched down, but she refused to get on. Trying to scoop a soggy blancmange from the pavement onto your back is impossible. We gave up, causing a renewed tantrum.
I again went ahead on the green walkway. She again shuffled forward on her knees. If I stopped, she stopped. If I walked, she shuffled. I guessed that was the way to get to the car, since she was safely on the walkway, and carried on. By this time we had EVERYBODY’S attention. The full force of middle class righteousness is not to be belittled. I had reached the car, opened the boot, put the shopping in and was returning to my small yelling dynamo when the latest woman who had stopped to comfort my daughter turned on me.
I won’t repeat everything she said, because it would have to be all in capitals to convey her tone and frankly I find that exhausting. To summarise (please imagine the pointing, shouting and tiny flecks of spit coming out of the corners of her mouth): I was not a responsible adult, if someone had reversed over my daughter it would have been my fault, and she hoped the cameras had caught it (so did I, as I half-feared she was about to assault me). After walking away a bit, she turned and shouted some more, saying it was a good thing that a caring person like herself had stopped to help. I thanked her. She strode into the shop, telling every onlooker she passed that I was an unfit mother. There was more pointing.
Meanwhile, my daughter agreed to climb onto my back and I staggered to the car with her almost deafening me. We were up to about forty minutes by then. It took twenty more to get her to sit in her car seat and allow me to do up her seatbelt, because I wasn’t prepared to force her.
We drove home. I think I’ll become an agoraphobic internet shopper from now on. Fêtechôse deliver, after all.
It’s the ‘helf and safety’ police at fault really; and have none of these other shoppers ever had children???!! What a nightmare. You are deserving of a large something of your choice this evening.
PS I had a delivery from said supermarket last week (I know think of the food miles) and would recommend.
They deliver to you?? Blimey. I think it’ll be a long time before I’m brave enough to go anywhere with the 3yo again.
Oh dear. What a hideous woman, I hope she chokes on her sun-dried samphire this evening. Get a cushion behind that back of yours, pour a gin, and, as schedule yourself a delivery for next week.
Dammit, I forgot the samphire.
As long as you didn’t forget the gin.
Jeezo, what a day! Sooo glad I’ve got the toddler tantrums behind me. Mind you, teenagers can throw wobblers too…
So I was thinking of having a baby in a year or so… NOT NOW.
Yeah, maybe I should have subtitled this ‘contraception’. Sorry.
With a child who has his toe slightly on the spectrum I’ve been through this many times, most commonly in our local supermarket which I now refer to as ‘Fiascos’. All the staff know us there now but the customers have been so judgemental, mainly with comments like ‘what he needs is some discipline’. Always feels horrible, I completely sympathise!
Thank you! Our fellow shoppers are such a joy.
I sympathise, too. I wish people would stop being so generous with their opinions and advice. And, Emily, don’t be put off, the joys outweigh the tantrums.
I’m growing more philosophical about it. I think I’ll just frame this blogpost for her wedding present, or something.
This is why we borrow other people’s children rather than have our own. They are always on their best behaviour and we can give them back once the novelty wears off!
Seriously though my sis has a 5yo who has uncontrollable tantrums linked to blood sugar. She’s seeing a naturopath next week cos it’s getting to the point she’s avoiding going certain places.
Returnable children. *dreams*
Son1 was a tantrummer. Thankfully I missed the part (being a stepmum who only came on the scene when he was 13) where he became a legend in Galashiels due to a supermarket toddler tantrum. But he was still kicking off occasionally right up until a couple of years ago. The second last time, he broke the glass panel in the front door by slamming it – husband said calmly ‘you’ll be paying the joiner’ and the combined effect of losing £80 and being mortified that the joiner knew what had happened to the door put paid to tantrumming almost for good. He had one odd burst of rage aged about 18 in which he dented a metal crate kicking it and frightened his younger brother – but the next day he apologised to all of us separately then we had a big chat about it, and it’s never happened since. Well, to my knowledge – perhaps he’s frightening his flatmates in Dundee…
Your husband sounds as if he’s got it all under control!
Oh dear, that all sounds awful. Particularly the ‘health & safety’ thing which 9/10 of the time seems to be invoked simply to make the ‘enforcer’ feel important.
My mother had similar problems taking my younger brother anywhere public. He had what these days is called ‘severe learning difficulties’ (in his case, the mental age of a 2 year old, but no speech, and since he wasn’t Downs Syndrome he looked like a perfectly normal boy). You can imagine the kinds of comments/looks we attracted when a strapping 14 year old lad behaved the way you described. (And this was the non-PC seventies).
Actually I’m interested to know what the acceptable reaction is, as I feel a bit defensive here! I’ll happily admit to being a middle class, middle aged, toddler-tantrum-intolerant child-free person, but hopefully I don’t let my irritation show, and I certainly wouldn’t pass comment. Is there something I should do or feel? Sometimes the parenting thing seems to me like an exclusive club and can be a bit intimidating to outsiders.
Gosh, Robin, you’ve really made me think. I’ve never imagined the perception of exclusivity before. I suppose a lot boils down to realising that we can never know the complexities of a situation we only see for a minute or two. My shouty woman had seen 2 mins of what had been 40 mins by then. Your mother must have experienced very intrusive assumptions.
I guess I’m not in a position to offer advice! I didn’t let people know I couldn’t pick her up because of my back. Perhaps if I had, someone might have offered to gather her up and deposit her in my car? I could have asked for help. What I was doing, though, was trying to let her come out the other end of her tantrum and learn that she could manage it herself. That’s an important lesson for them. I remember once another shop assistant congratulating me for not giving in to her demands for chocolate (conveniently at her eye-level) which set off another disagreement. My daughter was much younger & I was absolutely exhausted from sleepless nights. That small endorsement from a stranger meant so much.
Am I saying I only want comments with which I agree? I don’t know. I can assure you that most parents you see dealing with this in the shops are extremely tired and wish they were anywhere else but there. That doesn’t answer your question: sorry. I’ll think on it more.