Ginger Hubbard

You know, you tell them they're sitting in the cart.

You've already gone through this.

You're not allowed to grab something off the shelf.

And if they do it anyway, if they have

directly disobeyed, then there needs to be a consequence.

And when they're little, I tell parents this like, well, it's such an inconvenience.

I mean, there I am in the grocery store and I have this full cart of groceries.

Well, it only took a time or two of me going up to the cashier and saying, hey, would you mind putting my milk and eggs back?

And I'm going to come back just as soon as I can.

But I've got to deal with something right now.

And then we got in the car.

We drove to the back of the parking lot to where we could deal with their disobedience in private in a way that doesn't embarrass or humiliate them out in public.

And then I come back.

And then my kids learned very quickly that my word is my word, whether we're in the grocery store or Walmart or even at grandma's house.

Yep.

And so a lot of times, especially when we're out in public, it may seem more convenient to ignore or look over that behavior.

But when we do that, again, we're doing the child thing.

an injustice.

It may be inconvenient for us, but taking the time to train them in what is right, that's going to be more beneficial to them.

If we neglect training them just because it's inconvenient for us, that's going to cause a lot of problems later on because then they learn that our word is not our word when we're out in public.