Fun Bag vs. iPhone

I've been wanting to write about this pic for awhile. I felt very proud of myself the first time I took both littles to the grocery store. Keep in mind that Bo is 20 months old and Priscilla is 4 weeks old. Bo is very active and often wants to get out of the basket and have me hold him. I cannot do that now that I'm wearing Priscilla. So I had to devise a plan to keep him entertained enough to want to stay in the cart. Something that would help him practice self-control. I did not want to use technology to pacify him. I often see kids his age in the grocery store playing a game on a phone or a tablet. I just feel like he's too young to be looking at a screen plus it doesn't actually teach him self-control or allow him to engage with his surroundings. Twice he dropped a few colored pencils and twice someone picked them up and handed them to him and said something nice to him and twice he looked someone in the eye and smiled sheepishly. These small interactions are invaluable for a child developing social skills and learning how to pick up on social cues. If he had been glued to a screen, yes, that would have been far easier and less messy for me, but sometimes easy isn't the best thing. Parenting is hard and making little tiny choices like packing a fun bag ahead of time filled with Playdough, cars, markers and paper will benefit you and your child later in life as they learn how to behave in public. I know because I used to pack this same bag for my first 2 when they were little. So as we must have been a site leaving a trail of Playdough crumbs to the check out line I didn't mind because my child didn't miss an opportunity to observe his surroundings, see how people interact, and hear his mother model gratitude each time someone handed him a piece of that play dough he was dropping intentionally. :)