May 14, 2007

Keeping Your Child Safe in a Parking Lot

Parent Hacks offers two ways to keep your child safe in a parking lot while putting groceries away: (1) play "assume the position," i.e., have your child stand with his hands on the car and legs spread as if he were about to be searched; or (2) strap your child into his car seat before putting the groceries in the car.

Personally, I prefer to keep Alex in the shopping cart while I put the groceries away, but maybe that doesn't work as well with an older child. I also tend to carry Alex in parking lots if we're not using a shopping cart. As to parking lots in general, I have a friend whose two-year-old tended to take off until she was so vehement about the necessity of holding hands that it's the one place where he knows it's absolutely non-negotiable and never puts up a fight.

What do you do?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Usually my daughter is very good about staying with us and DS I keep in the cart or carry. Of course all of this depends on whether I'm flying solo with the kids or if DH is with me too.

I unfortunately learned the hard way to keep a close hand on my daughter at the check out. We were checking out and she took a few steps near the door and it opened automatically and she was out into the street! I hadn't considered the automatic doors to be a hazard before that! Now our handholding starts at the check out out to the car.

ChiefFamilyOfficer said...

I've heard at least a couple of other people mention their kid escaped through the automatic door. That must have been terrifying - good idea to start the handholding at the checkout!