Parents are the first role model in a child's life and a child is a perfect imitator. Since childhood, a child fully pays attention to what his parents do and what he gets will become his next behavior. Except, if he gets a better comparison for the same thing, then his behavior can change.
One of the things that children often pay attention to from their parents is how to shop for everyday life. Often children are invited by their parents to go to the market or supermarket to buy the family's daily necessities.
From home, children have been paying attention to how their parents check what items are running out, then decide what to buy and finally how to make a shopping list.
When they are in a shopping place, children will again pay attention in detail to what their parents will do there. Starting from what items are taken first, seeing what parents do if they are overbudget because the price of an item goes up, seeing how parents choose one item if there are many choices for the same item and most importantly, children will pay attention to whether their parents consistently only buy the items written on the shopping list.
Everyone's shopping characteristics are definitely different. However, in the context of teaching children to shop for daily necessities, almost all of us agree that what should be purchased is only goods that are necessities.
But in reality, in shopping centers we often find parents letting their children freely put anything in their shopping basket, or we see a child whining and his parents scolding their child for debating whether to buy or not an item.
Our consistency about "buying only what we need and not because we want it", has become a general principle for each of us, our families and everyone else in managing our daily necessities budget.
Practicing these general principles as a habit, whether we realize it or not, has also taught our children that shopping for daily needs is routine and must be done well.
Children have duplicated the way we manage our budgets and meet their daily needs. It turns out that their way of shopping is exactly like ours.
Is that true???
Best Regards
(Zed Amna)
