Lesson 5 — Shopping with Children

Teaching Guide

  1. Lesson Materials

    1. Teaching guide: Shopping with Children

    2. Handout: Shopping with Young Children

  2. Preparation for the Lesson

    1. Read the handout before presenting the lesson, perhaps marking or highlighting what you think are the most important points to stress.

    2. Distribute the handout a week or so before the lesson and ask clients to read it in advance (if possible and if it seems appropriate for the client).

  3. Suggested Lesson Outline

    4. Following are some ideas for discussion and activities. In a limited time, you will probably be able to do only one (or part of one) of the activities. Select the ones that you believe will lead to a point you want to stress, that you are comfortable with, and that you believe will interest your clients.

    1. Sharing experiences

      1. Ask the parents what their general experiences have been in shopping with young children.

      2. If generally negative: Ask each parent to talk about what usually happens, why they think that happens, and what they do about it. (If you are comfortable in doing so, you might critique their approach. If not, see 3 below.)

      3. If generally positive: Point out that some parents do have rows with their children in the supermarket. Ask the parents how they manage to avoid that. Praise them for using good tactics.

    2. Applying previous lessons

      Ask the parents to apply principles from other lessons ("listening," "handling temper tantrums," "using do instead of don't," "reasonable expectations") to this area of behavior. You might want to review a few of these basic points and talk about how to apply them when shopping with young children.

    3. Review the handout

      1. If the parents have read the handout in advance, ask them to share a point or two that they thought was especially important.

      2. Review with the parents the major points from the handout. Ask them which of the suggestions they think would and would not work. Why do they think so?

      3. You may also want to share with them information from other things you have read or from our own experiences.

    4. Review the lesson

      At the end of the lesson, ask the parents to review the basic points. Add any major points they miss.

  4. Follow-up/Homework

    5. Suggest that the parents review the handouts prior to their next shopping trip with their children and to select one (or more) of the suggestions and try them out. If the suggestion helps, they probably will want to continue it. If it doesn't work, ask them to think about why—and perhaps talk with you about it the next time you are together.

  5. Application to Nutrition Lessons

    6. This lesson would be very appropriate as part of a lesson on food shopping.



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