If you’ve ever been to a supermarket with young children, you’ll know how it goes.
First, they want to go in the trolley. “Fine,” you think. “That’s good – at least they’ll be confined to one spot and I can get this over with smoothly and quickly.”
Then they want to get out the trolley. And then back in the trolley – but not in the bit reserved for small kids, not the sensible bit with holes for their legs and a belt to keep them safe and secured.
Nope. They want to go IN the trolley, in the main bit, where they will sit on the eggs and grab at passing multipacks of crisps, all the while lurching so far out that the whole thing threatens to topple over. Related... The Best Bargains To Bag In The Argos Toy Sale If your child makes it out of the trolley, which handily doubles up as a cage, they will probably have a tantrum because you have refused to buy them another plastic ball pit (rookie error: the first rule of supermarket shopping is never, ever walk down the toy aisle).
They will lay face-down on the floor and beat their fists, while other shoppers step gingerly around them and glare at you like you’re the world’s worst parent.
You might think the solution is simple – particularly if you’re using a pram or a buggy. But you can’t push a trolley and a buggy at the same time, and it’s hard to balance a basket piled-high with shopping on one arm whilst trying to keep your volatile child IN THE GODDAMN BUGGY.
Plus, if your child is anything like mine, they’ll have figured out how to make a Houdini-esque escape from the straps in their pushchair anyway. It’s enough to make you want to weep – or, at least, never go shopping again.
Well, not anymore. Because one mum has come up with an ingenious parenting hack that might change all of our lives. Jessica Gosling shared her tip on
Facebook support group The Parent Pack – as reported in the
Liverpool Echo – and people are loving it.
It involves buying a buggy clip and attaching one part to your pram, and one part to the shopping basket, so the pram drags the basket around. Amen to that. One parent wrote: “Why in my three years of being a parent have I never thought about doing this?!” And another said it had “literally just changed my life.”
The only problem is, what the hell to do when your child doesn’t want to go in the pram anymore? Leading us right back to the trolley conundrum... but one step at a time, folks. One step at a time. Related... Elf On The Shelf Is Back For 2019 – And This Year, It's Cheaper Genuinely Tasty Cooking Apps So The Kids Can Nail It In The Kitchen I Don’t Want To Cook For My Family And I’m Tired Of Feeling Guilty About It