Marketing Sucks When it’s Aimed at Kids.
Describing the mission of food shopping with a toddler
Food shopping, to most, is not fun. It is a mundane task we all have to get done. But what people don’t realise before they have kids is how much is taken for granted, such as this everyday task.
I’m about to describe to you a typical mother’s attempt to do a basic food shop with a toddler strapped to her. And trust me, it is least of all, boring or mundane.
Leaving the House
Getting yourself and your toddler ready to go anywhere is not easy for two reasons:
- Toddlers can’t get ready on their own.
- They don’t just comply out of kindness.
It is something to be meticulously planned and thought out if you want to be there more or less on time. Project and time management are only basic skills one needs to get it right.
Just kidding — throw punctuality out the window when the baby is out of that womb.
Do you remember going to a supermarket before you had a kid? Of course not, it’s not that interesting! You didn’t give it a second thought. You just got up and did a shop whenever you needed to. If you were really cool, you just popped to a shop after work on your way home for the ingredients you needed to cook dinner, and you grabbed a bottle of wine, too.
You may have even put it off and off because you felt lazy and you weren’t bothered about eating cereal for dinner. Life was easy like that.
In a comedy sketch, Michael McIntyre enacted the ease and simplicity of leaving the house when you’re single. He laughed as he said, “you have no idea what it’s like to be a parent.” I really recommend watching it.
Well, it certainly is made interesting with a child, I’ll tell you that.
Taking a baby to a grocery store is a project.
“Failure to plan is planning to fail.” — Benjamin Franklin
Getting Ready
For parents, I say it’s a game of snakes and ladders to go anywhere. You’ll get the toddler’s socks, hat, and jacket on, and you’ll find that somehow, right in front of your eyes without you really registering, they have scattered mud all over the floor with their wellies and are proceeding to pick little bits up and exclaim,
“Uh, Oooh!”
It is then that you are faced with a hard choice to make: to let the mess become a separate project to be dealt with later and continue with your plan to not starve by going out to do a food shop, or accept that you will need to abandon your plans to leave the house for a while to preserve your home before it accumulates.
“Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.” ― Stephen R. Covey
Putting aside the need for food, you set out to quickly sweep and mop the floors. Your kid keeps himself amused by sticking his hand in the puddles in your garden and drinks it. By the time you’re finished and are ready to leave, you find that the child’s coat is now soaked through from his spur of the moment water play. You go indoors on your tiptoes to avoid leaving footprints on the wet floors to grab another coat.
“Give up the thought that you have control. You don’t. The best you can do is adapt, anticipate, be flexible, sense the environment and respond.” — Frances Arnold
An hour later, you’ll get out of the house, walk to the car, wrestle the child into the car seat, and suddenly your child’s face will go red, and they’ll make the oh so familiar sounds of strain as they start taking a poop.
A few cuss words and a clean bottom later, the child will be back in the car again, and you’ll be driving to the supermarket looking like you just ran through a mud track.
“He who sweats more in training bleeds less in war.” — Greek Proverb
Arrival
Taking a toddler to a food store can be compared to an MI6 mission. Now, imagine a food shop during a pandemic lockdown.
The virus is a terrorist. The sanitising gel our weapon. Mask on, and child full of snacks so he does not get tempted to touch anything, we proceed to find a shopping cart.
I wouldn’t be surprised if someone filmed you trying to wipe the trolley down with antibacterial (and antiviral!) spray while holding on to your wriggly toddler.
“Energy and persistence conquers all things”. -Benjamin Franklin
Your son definitely has energy and persistence when it comes to kicking off his shoes in the car and refusing to let you put them back on. So in your arms, he must remain until the trolley is clean.
As he’s lumped into the seat of the cart, you wipe the area he would touch once again. It is then, and only then that you take yourselves into the establishment to do a food shop, ignoring the tuts of the growing line behind you of shoppers waiting to sanitise their shopping carts.
Shopping
Yes, you did it! You’ve overcome the first steps of the challenge not to starve! You are at the supermarket, having jumped over the high walls and crawled through the mud tunnels. Your toddler is sat in the shopping trolley amused, and now you have a vast selection of products to choose from to fill your home with. You will eat tonight!
But! One important factor must be met to finish your shopping successfully. Your toddler is amused for now, but some things just cannot be anticipated, and we must find a way to improvise and avert a crisis under pressure, with zero preparation.
The first challenge is marketing. You forgot to consider marketing. You silently cuss out whoever thought it was a good idea to stick a few toy vehicles on the sides of aisles, away from the toy section you worked so hard to avoid.
You must now find a way to distract your toddler from the toys by convincing him that what he has is better. Your once felt pride at how focused your toddler is now mocks you, for your son ignores all your attempts to distract him from the prize — that bright green toy truck.
Telling your son no to a brand new shiny car equals a day filled with but not limited to:
- tantrums,
- loss of appetite,
- failure to comply with all subsequent diaper changes and other tasks like brushing teeth and washing hands,
- quite frankly, a “bad” day.
But no, the supermarket cares about consumerism and capitalism more.
The supermarket strategically relies on the tired parents to give in and buy the darned cars to avoid the embarrassment of enduring the loud screams of kids begging for the toys. If a parent dares to fight the child with a “no,” they will be judged by other customers, staff members, and their own children.
Your child’s happiness is restored with a new car (after it has been wiped down with an antibac AND antiviral wipe), you proceed to finish your shopping. Frankly, you have forgotten half the items you need because your main objective now is to go home. You cut your trip short by whizzing through the food aisles, not stopping as you grab items from the shelves.
There is no time to check the nutritional info, and you don’t care that you’re now choosing unhealthy snacks and sugary juices, and you forget essential ingredients you’ll have to go out again for. You’ll battle that mission another time.
Six minutes later, you make it out of the supermarket alive, and your toddler is more than amused with his new toy and cereal bar.
Home Sweet Home
Before you know it, you’re home, glad that you cleaned the floors because that would be something you could not do now. Your husband comes downstairs to greet you and your child and says, “Oh yay! Food! Did you get me the sausage patties?”
You bark at your husband about how there are more important things in this world than sausage patties and how he should appreciate the fact you managed to buy any food at all, and how you quit your job as the food supplier. He can go out and buy the sausage patties himself.
Your husband, confused, scratches his head and responds, without thought, “didn’t you check the shopping list? There’s that amazing life-saving app I keep telling you about that will save you time and stress, you should use it.”
You turn into a dragon, and you warn your husband with a breath of fire while calmly explaining that a shopping list and the app can do one, for there are more important things in this world, such as your toddler’s happiness and your own sanity.
Your husband looks at his son, trying to find a clue as to why you are so stressed, and the child meets his eyes with a loving glare and then graces his father with a smile and a hug. Your husband now looks at you with doubt about why you could be in a bad mood, for your kid is just perfect. Then, your husband sees the brand new toy and says, “you spoil him too much.”
In a huff, you go to the bathroom for a 2-minute break before you turn into Satan and summon your husband to Hell.
Husband runs past with his son, knocks on the door, and says, “love you!” and you hear them both giggling away like in the cheesy Hollywood movies, restoring your mood and resetting your mind.
You count him lucky, for he will survive another day. Next on the to-do list:
Coffee.
“The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.” — H. G. Wells
This article was inspired by a friend of mine when she told me about her experience at the supermarket, alone, after leaving her daughter at home. It made me think about how much of a mission it is to get things done when you have a toddler, so this article came to fruition. Thank you, dear friend, for your support.
Sylvia Emokpae, thinker, and philosopher, is passionate about self-love, motherhood, and pro-race. See more work like this.
