Why Is a Quick Trip With Kids Never Actually Quick? Parenting Insight and Simple Tips
Last Tuesday, I strapped both my kids into the car at 4:17, checked my watch, and announced we had 15 minutes exactly to grab milk and bread before my oldest’s soccer practice. It was supposed to be a quick trip. By the time we walked through the store’s automatic doors, my 4-year-old was tugging my hand and saying she had to pee. We detoured to the family bathroom, which took 7 minutes just waiting for the previous family to exit. On the walk to the dairy aisle, we passed the seasonal produce display, and she froze. “MOM. PURPLE CARROTS.” I told her we didn’t need purple carrots, she just wanted to touch them. One slipped out of her hand and rolled under a display of watermelon, and I had to kneel to fish it out. By the time we got to dairy, my 7-year-old perked up. He remembered he needed a packet of active dry yeast for his 2nd grade science experiment, due the next day. I’d completely forgotten. We detoured to the baking aisle, dug through the shelf to find the right one, and by the time we got to checkout, my 4-year-old had spotted the plastic Halloween buckets by the register, grabbed one, and dropped it. A bag of mini candy corns spilled across the floor. I looked at my watch. We’d been in the store for 28 minutes. We were already going to be late.
For years, I blamed this on bad luck, or my kids being stubborn, or me being a disorganized parent. I’d leave the store huffing, wondering why a 15 minute trip always turned into 45, why my kids couldn’t just stick to the plan. Then I started volunteering in a local pre-K classroom a few months back, and I watched a group of four-year-olds go on what was supposed to be a 10 minute walk to the mailbox down the street to mail a stack of parent letters. It took 37 minutes. They stopped halfway to watch an ant line carry a cookie crumb across the sidewalk. They stopped to collect leaves that looked like dinosaurs. One kid’s shoe came untied twice, and another had to stop to pet a stray cat that curled around his ankle. The teacher leading the walk didn’t rush them. She just checked her watch once, smiled, and said to me, “Their clocks don’t tick like ours.”
That line stuck with me, because it’s not that kids are intentionally dragging their feet. It’s that their brains work differently than ours do. As adults, we move through the world with goal-oriented tunnel vision. We see the grocery store as a series of checkboxes: get in, get two things, get out. We tune out the purple carrots, the Halloween buckets, the ant lines on the sidewalk because our working memory is developed enough to prioritize the end goal. For kids under 8, that skill is still building. Their brains are wired to notice every new thing, because that’s how they learn. Every new sight, texture, and sound is a new data point for them to file away. Asking a 4-year-old to tune out all those interesting things and just focus on getting milk is like asking you to work on a deadline with 10 different TV shows playing in the background. It’s not that they won’t do it. It’s that it’s really, really hard.
Over the last few months, I’ve tried a few small things that cut down on our trip time without turning every run to the store into a battle. First, I stopped promising myself (and anyone waiting on us) that it’ll be quick. I add 7 minutes of buffer time for every 15 minutes I think I’ll need, and I build one small stop into the plan before we even get out of the car. I’ll say, “First we get milk, then we get bread, then we get 2 whole minutes to look at the pumpkins by the door before we check out.” Giving them a guaranteed chance to explore removes the urge to sneak detours along the way, and 2 minutes rarely derails the whole schedule. Second, I give each kid a specific, small job to focus on. My 4-year-old gets to hold the list and check off each item with a broken crayon I keep in my purse. My 7-year-old gets to count how many cartons of 1% milk we pass before we pick ours. Giving their working memory a small, clear job gives it something to hold onto, so they’re less likely to get pulled off track by every shiny thing they see. Third, if I’m really crunched for time, I name the reward ahead of time. “If we stay on track and get out of here in 20 minutes, we get to listen to your favorite dinosaur podcast on the way to practice.” No negotiations in the checkout line, no crying over lollipops, just a clear agreement we make before we walk in.
It doesn’t work every time. Last week, I ran to the drugstore for Advil when I had a headache, and my 4-year-old decided she needed to try on every pair of sparkly Halloween sunglasses by the register. We were 10 minutes late to piano lessons, and I left the store with a pack of Advil and a new pair of sparkly sunglasses I didn’t plan to buy. I still get annoyed sometimes, when I’m running late and I’m standing in a puddle of spilled candy waiting for a store employee to get a broom. But I don’t fight it as hard as I used to. After that purple carrot trip, we roasted those carrots for dinner that night, and my 4-year-old explained to everyone at the table how purple carrots taste sweeter than orange ones, how the outside feels different when you wash them. It was a 10 minute detour that gave her a whole new thing to talk about, a whole new thing to learn. Quick is an adult word, after all. It’s a measurement of what we need to get done. For kids, a trip to the grocery store isn’t just a chore. It’s a trip out into the world, and there’s a lot of world to see. Some days, the extra 20 minutes isn’t wasted. It’s just part of the trip.
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