Latest / The Raising Emotionally Intelligent Humans Podcast / The Grocery Store Mis-Happen-ing
Transcript
- Heidi: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Raising Emotionally Intelligent Humans Podcast. I'm Heidi Lindemann. I'm your host, a single mom by choice to two little ones, lover of feelings, parent figuring this out as I go. And I'm also a therapist. All right, so if you've listened to any of the recent episodes, you know that my kiddo, my oldest one, she started kindergarten. And I'm gonna tell you a story about the grocery store. This happened. This was the third day of kindergarten. It was a Monday. Because she started on a Thursday. She went to the school on Thursday and Friday. All right, so we're gonna set the scene on Monday. Monday morning, we are going through the fridge to make her lunch. And my little one, nope, big one. She is little but she's a kindergartner. She went to the fridge and she got out an orange. And she actually wanted to eat it now with breakfast. So I opened the orange and then I'm like, I don't know if we should eat this 'cause it kinda felt squishy. And then she's like, You should taste it. Okay. So I started chewing it, I'm like, yem then I spit it out. Ugh. That tastes like nail polish gross. That's disgusting. Do not eat that. I don't think she should eat that. And then she says I I'm gonna go get another one. I think they're actually probably all bad. They've been in there for a long time. Oops. I'm probably gonna need to go to the grocery store sometime soon and get some new oranges. Then she asks, Can you go to this grocery store today? Can you get some today for us? And I said, Ooh, that's tricky. I happen to have a full day of work. I don't know that I'm gonna have time to go to the grocery store. Then I watches her face, thinks, and then she starts to get her eyebrows raised. She smiles and she says, Mom, I have a great idea. yeah? What's your idea? You know how we have time after you pick me up before we go get my sister? Can we go to the grocery store then? Like you and me, just you and me? She was so excited. And I was like, that is a fantastic idea. I love that idea. Yeah, we can do that. If you're still feeling that after school, we can go to the grocery store together before we go get your sister. She was excited. She loves the grocery store. She always has and she's been pretty little. Then I take her school, we drop her off, come on home, do all my work, I go pick her up and I check in with her. It's like, Do you still want to go to the grocery store? I really do, Mom, I do. Like, okay, we can go. Let's do it. And it was raining this day. So I had an umbrella with me. She was walking in with the umbrella next to me. We walked down through the playground, down the it's almost like a driveway where trucks can come to get the trash cans. We walk down this big driveway, down to the road. There's a little stream of water in the Gutter in the I don't think that's called the gutter. You know that place at the side of the road? Where the curb is? Whatever that's called. Water running down there. Because it was raining. She stops and she looks at it. She gets real quiet, her body gets very still. Mm, she shakes her head and says, Mmm. And she turns around and starts walking the other way. I was like, Hey, where are you going? You wanna go that way? Okay, you know our car's right over there, right? You can see it. She says, Mm mm. Mm. Not with words, just sounds, gestures, pointing. Mm. All right, let's go that way. So I grab her hand and we walk down the sidewalk, down to the corner. Maybe where we should be crossing the street anyway, I don't know. And we go to cross the street at the corner. It's nice and clear. We looked both ways. We start walking down the ramp on the side of the sidewalk to the road, and again she stops. And she looks at the water. I look at her, I'm like, You can jump over it. And I go back over and I jump over and I show her how I can jump over. Like I bet you can do that, and you're pretty big. You could jump over it. She stands there for a moment, looking at the water. Quiet. Thinking. And then she gets her body ready and she jumps over the water. And I was like, Great, you did it. Let's go. And then she gets back up on the sidewalk. Like she goes back over the water that she just jumped over and stands in the grass and on the sidewalk and she says, Mm Mm mm, I can't do it. Like you just did it. And then you got back on the sidewalk. What's going on? Mm, she didn't really say much, but I knew that there was something like she didn't want to get her feet wet. There's some reason why she didn't want to walk across the street. She thought there was too much water. I don't know. Like, okay, how about I pick you up? I'll carry you a grass. He's like, Okay. Pick her up. Holding the she has to hold the umbrella so that I can hold her. We manage it all out. Get across the street. I carry her a little bit down the sidewalk. And then she sees this ramp. A very sh small, like a it's wood. It's almost like it looks like a ladder almost, except that the pieces are really close together, so it's not a ladder. Somebody built it and they're front yard but it's on the not their front yard. It's on the outside near the street grass area. And there's a little ramp up and then it's a kind of a bridge over and then it's a little down. She's like, can I walk across that? Sure, go for it. So she walks up and she walks across it. It's probably a little ramp bridge thing for a bike, I would guess. And she really enjoys it. We walk to the car. I get in the car, I get her stuff in the car and then We eventually get her in the car. It was quite the process just to get out of school that day. I don't know. It wasn't like a big process. It was just like the it was interesting to watch her not want to walk all across the water. She's never done that before. But whatever, it's okay. And I check in with her again. I'm like, Are you sure you want to go to the grocery store or do you need some rest? You seem kind of tired. She's like, No, I want to go to the grocery store. Let's go. Okay, let's go. Drive the grocery store. I almost got lost. It's like, what street am I on? I don't know where I'm at. And then it's like, wait, I do know where I am at. Because her school's just a few blocks away from where she used to be. So the road, a couple streets down, just looks different. I haven't driven it that that many times. It was funny. Get the grocery store. It had stopped raining at this point. We go inside. She picks out a cart. She wants to get in the cart. So I put her on the cart, we start going, and then she wants to get out of the cart. And I was like, okay. And she was pointing like back to where we the area we had just walked by. Like we walk in the grocery store and there's a you know, kind of where the pre made food is. We were in Safeway. or easy to grab food like little lunches or soup that's in a container, that kind of food. And she's pointing back there. It's like what do you want? There's happens to be some drinks coolers over there that we've gotten Gatorade out of before. We did that recently. And she just kept pointing, not saying anything. I'm not sure what you want, sweetheart. You're gonna have to help me out here. What are you wanting to get? I don't know what you're wanting to get. We are here to get oranges. We gotta get oranges and we need some cheese. The cheese is right there. Can we please go to the cheese aisle? She just keeps pointing back there where back there and she climbs out of the cart and she starts pushing the cart somewhere, but not kind of in the direction she was pointing. It was slightly over. So she pushes it over and she's kind of going around. And now I can tell she's going to the Starbucks that's in Safeway. And I was like, Where you going? We need to go the other way. We need to go get the groceries. And she says, kick pop. Almost like she's a baby. Kick pop, kick pop. No, we're not gonna get a cape pop today. You if you're hungry, we can go get something from the grocery store. I often let them have snacks and I don't know, whatever, applesauce a bar or something. And she's insistent on the cake pop. And she pushes the card over there and I tell her, No, we're not gonna get a cake pop, let's go And she sits on the floor. Super sad face. The and right before that the person at the Starbucks had said, sorry, I'm I'm here. What do you want to order? I'm like, sorry, we're not ordering anything. We're she wants a cake pop and I told her no, we're just trying to get going. She sits on the floor. Slumping her head, kind of slumping her body, kind of like leaned over herself, looking very, very sad. And I crouch down and I get right down next to her. And I let her know that I see that she's feeling really sad. She wanted a cake pop and I said no. That's really hard. And then I try playing the color game with her without her really knowing. I start looking at the floor. And this is a regulation tip that you can do with kids. With anybody really. And I start noticing the colors on the floor. There's kind of these darker grays and these lighter grays. And I was just naming that. I was like, and look at the floor. There's kind of like some dark gray, there's some light gray. It's kind of smooth. Then I looked a little bit further up and was like, and look, there's some pink cups over there. there's a brown stand. if you look way over there I see some flowers. no, you can't look that far. Okay, there's some look, there's a blue bag. I couldn't remember I can't remember what it was. Just naming colours and just hoping that that was gonna help or it often can. She didn't eng engage in any of it. And then she got She just sat there. She was just kind of still like looking a little shut down, a little sad. As I'm sitting there trying to help her through this moment, the person at the Starbucks kind of comes out and looks at me. He's like, I have a cake pop in the back. I go go get a cake pop in the back. And At first I like sh I shook my head saying, No, it's okay. Trying like say, No, we don't really want 'cause I actually didn't want her to have a cake pot. The whole point of me not buying a cake pot was 'cause I didn't want her to have a cake pot. and the the guy just kind of came over again. He said, I can get a kick pop and I was I kind of like said a I don't know, almost like a gesture of like, Ugh, I don't know, okay, whatever. and he comes over and right next to me, he says, I'll be right back in just a minute and I say, Okay And I'm staying focused on my kiddo then and continuing to like notice colours and just sitting there with her really. And he comes back a moment later, a minute later or two. And he tries to hand her a bag. She's like, H Here, this is for you, this is a cake pop. And she s kind of pushes it away or swats it away from him. So then I take it from him. Mm then he walks over back towards the Starbucks. We're sitting in front of Starbucks. He walks back towards like the back of it. And he said something like I was really hoping that that was gonna make her happier. Like, yeah, I know. And then I just put the cake pop in the cart. And then she starts screaming. And kicking her legs, crying a lot. And I say I'm gonna pick you up now. I pick her up and try to put her in the cart and she's like trying to climb out of the cart as I get her in the cart, but I get her in the cart. Like we're gonna have to go home, which makes her scream more. And I was very calm during all of this, which is just sometimes surprising to me. Sometimes I'm really able to stay calm in these moments, and sometimes I'm just not. But it was very calm and I said, We're gonna have to go home. We're gonna go outside. I'm pushed the cart outside. She's screaming, trying to climb out, but I'm not letting her climb out of the cart. And we go right outside the doors and are s sitting on the she's still in the cart. We're just like you know, right outside, and there's by the side of the wall. And then she starts grabbing the wall, which happens to be textured, and she tries to like pull us towards the door. While she is screaming and crying and being mad and sad. And then I I d asked her, like, what does that feel like? The wall. Can you feel that wall? Can you feel how it's kind of rough and bumpy? She kinda felt it, but I don't really know. And then I asked her what what are you doing? What's what's going on, honey? And she says, Groceries, I wanna go shopping. And she's screaming in my face that she wants to go shopping. I wanna go shopping, I wanna go shopping. I wanna get groceries. And I tell her very calmly, sweetheart, you n if you want to go get groceries, then we're gonna need to be able to regulate a little bit. If you need to scream and to cry and to do that, that's okay. Then we're gonna get in the car and go home and you can do it in the car and at home. And she just says, Groceries. It's like you wanna try one more time and she shakes her head. She's still kind of screaming and crying. I'm like, Okay, I can slowly try this. I need you to know that if you're gonna keep screaming and kicking that we're gonna have to go home. So as soon as we get in this grocery store, I'm gonna n you need to stop screaming. I wasn't trying to get her stop necessarily crying, but like the screaming, the yelling in my face. And as soon as we got to the door, like f two front wheels got in the into the into safe way. She sticks her thumb in her mouth and she starts twirling the top of her hair. Which is her thing. And she stopped screaming. She actually stopped crying too. Not that I needed her to stop crying, but she did. And then I take a deep breath with her. I'm like, ooh, yeah. That was a lot. Do you wanna go get the cheese first or do you wanna go get the oranges first? And she says cheese. The cheese was closer than the oranges. So we go over, we're picking out different cheeses. She picks out kind some of the cheeses that she wants they're really good ones for the the like individual servings so she can take them in her lunches. The whole point of us being at the grocery store was to get things that were really helpful, easy packing things for lunches. As we now have to do this every day for school. And we go through the whole grocery store, we get all of our things. And she totally turned herself around, as in she wasn't screaming and crying. She actually ate her cake park too. And It was it was really fascinating to me at how calm I was able to stay and how I actually took her out of the store. when the screaming became more intense. realizing that I myself don't have to put us through getting all the groceries while she's dysregulated because if I did, and I've done that before, what happens is then I start feeling frustrated 'cause I'm like and that's when I then get more snappy and I'm like, can you just stop? And I don't really like telling her to stop having her feelings. Though I need her to not be yelling in the grocery store. and Taking those moments at the beginning and being very clear with her about what the expectation of when she went in the grocery store's like, We're not gonna scream, we need you to stop screaming. I could have also said use your talking voice, but I didn't. I just like you needed not scream. I could have said, You need to be quiet, you need to talk, you need to I could have put that in a different language. I didn't in this particular moment. And for some somehow she was able to do that. And this these moments for me are really Because it's the beginning of school, I know to expect bigger emotional. Expression. particularly after school because of all that she's having to do during school. She's having to hold herself together in a certain way at school and she does it really well. And then there's just this need to expel energy and that's some of her Screaming, crying, kicking. Stuff that goes on. So because I know to expect at the beginning of school, because I've heard many parents talk about that, this grocery store moment was a moment that was able to flip my mind to more meet what she needed. And I think that was probably actually why I was able to stay more calm, because I didn't have an expectation of her of being like she normally is at the grocery store. I mean, that might have been a small one in the back of my mind. But I also had awareness that she very likely could have a crying, screaming, meltdown because she has those and has had them with the school starting. And having that awareness helped me, I think, s be able to stay calmer and be like, I just need to be here and help her see if we can help regulate her enough to be able to grocery shop. And maybe we can and maybe we can't. And if we can't, what's the worst that happens? We don't have oranges. We have other food in our house. It may not be the easiest things to pack, but we have food in our house. It's gonna be just fine. We will not go hungry. just trying to think if there's anything else I want to say. Yeah. I think that was that's probably it. And then we actually had a really lovely shopping trip and she got to pick out a couple of things that she wanted, like extra things, because it's the start of school and we're navigating this together how to build a school lunch and a school snack. That's enough food. We're trying to land somewhere in the like Enough food, not too much, not too little. Don't really know how to do that yet. Mostly I give her too much food. Which I'd rather her have more food than she needs. than not enough food and still be hungry. Anyway. That was our grocery store mishappening. Almost a mishap. But then it wasn't. We still happened to go to the grocery store. We made it happen. and I hope this story helps some mom or dad or parent who also is maybe navigating some challenging outing with a kid. And knowing that it's okay to pause, to be with them, to take them outside of the store, to try again. And even if you don't make the thing happen, you could if you try again and there's it's still the same thing, that your kid might need something different. They might need to go out and go to the car. I don't know, maybe they need to run around. Who knows? Yeah. So I hope that was helpful for whoever listens to this. And if you found it helpful, I would love it if you share it with another parent who might find it helpful. Maybe another parent who has a kid. That sounds kind of like mine. And know that you're doing enough, Mama. Yeah. You've got this. You can make it through this transition of school starting. My nephew need help. See if you can find any buddies, any friends, any other parents who are in the similar stage or have kids a little older who can help navigate through it. If you're in Colorado and need a therapist, I have a spot or two, maybe two spots open right now. So feel free to get onto my website, self grounded therapy dot org. That is a dot org, not dot com, dot org. Self grounded therapy dot org. And you can schedule free consultations on my website and learn more about me. And may you have many blessings today.