MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. -- Parents who battle tantrums, begging, whining and other behavioral problems while shopping at the Commissary may be taking the wrong approach, said Dayna Boykins, family care behavioral specialist for Marine Corps Community Services.
To help ease the woes of shopping with problematic children, Boykins plans to teach parents how manage expectations and gain control during, “The Commissary Experience: Handling Behaviors” workshop June 5 at the Child Development Center North and June 7 at CDC South, from noon to 1 p.m.
The “brown bag” training, where you bring your own lunch, will offer parents an interactive experience with a behavior expert, who is also a spouse of a deployed service member and mother of three school-aged children.
One of the biggest mistakes, Boykins said parents make while grocery shopping is skipping out on a meal before.
“You shouldn’t take your kids to the grocery store hungry, no more than you should go hungry, because everything that they see, they’ll want to eat,” Boykins said.
According to Tammy Wickes, pediatric nurse at the Naval Health Clinic Quantico, it’s difficult for a child to control their behavior when they’re hungry, because the body releases chemical stressors, which means less control of impulses.
If parents don’t have time to provide a meal, Boykins recommends taking along small snacks to curb a child’s appetite and offset impulse purchases. Additionally, parents are advised to include their children in the shopping experience, which could mean discussing what you plan to buy or allowing them to put items in the basket.
Overall, Boykins said parents set the standard for children. Unconscious habits like routinely buying treats or allowing children to behave poorly can often perpetuate undesirable behavior.
“Kids are creatures of habit, so what you do is what they’re going to expect,” Boykins said. “Children learn behaviors based on what happens and how it happens.”
Military parents, particularly spouses, often juggle household duties and children while the other spouse serves. Although it’s a task that can, at times, prove to be challenging, the goal of this workshop is to equip parents with tools that will change their shopping experience.
“It would be ideal to go grocery shopping alone, but if you’re a single parent or you have a military member who is deployed, you really don’t get to,” Boykins said. “My goal is to empower military parents to go into the community and be confident about what’s going to happen between them and their kids.”
CDC North is located at 3311 Purvis Rd. and CDC South, 3314 Purvis Rd. To register call 571-316-8251 or email: boykinsdj@usmc-mccs.org.
Staff Writer:
afelton@quanticosentryonline.com