For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for December 19, 2021

The reindeer plushie was so ten minutes ago. Now it’s a mouse in a dress and apron!

Those tricky retailers putting the display model of toys right in the sight of the adult heads, knowing full well that kids in their carriers at the same height are going to spot them and want them. Think of all the sales they get from grabby kids and the parents that give into them. In my day, they put the display models of toys at the kids’ eye-level. You can imagine how low the sales must have been trying that method. That would be for kids being pushed around in strollers for holiday gift shopping, but what parent in their right mind would do that?

Oh. I don’t miss those days….

It’s sadly true that wanting something can be a greater feeling than having it. Once something special you want is yours it often doesn’t seem so special anymore. It’s just …. there.

Kids that age have the attention spans of gnats, so maybe one dat will suffice.

oh it’s such an awful idea to give in to this sort of nagging. Teaches the kids that nagging works and that no isn’t a final answer (which can lead to way worse problems later on, of course).

Taking screamers to a public venue is poor parenting. If they have to then they should control them.

These are times many parents wish their kids had never been born.

Excellent marketing display skills. Respect to the merchant.

My kids quickly learned that this type of behaviour resulted in sudden return to the car and then home and into their room to contemplate their navels while lying on their beds. Yes, I had two children very close in age. If tantrums escalated (rarely), a smacked bottom would be next. I hated to do that, but it did work, and tantrums were few and far between as a result.

After 30 seconds April is bored with it.

All 3 of my kids learned at a very young age that that type of behavior was taboo. I started with my firstborn at birth by removing him from the store/restaurant as soon as the fussing began. None of my kids had tantrums in public. However, there were a few times that we’d get out to our car after going to the mall and find unbought items in their strollers. My middle son had a penchant for 3 1/2 floppy discs that were usually bright colors and “displayed” on a low shelf in front of the checkout desk. The guys at our local Radio Shack quickly learned to move the discs to a higher shelf, but the guys at the mall Radio Shack were always victims of my son’s grabby fingers.

Lynn Johnston once made the remark that she probably used April far too much in her comic strips… She’s absolutely right.

How many shoppers do you see with a kid (especially one as old as April), carried around in a backpack, in a store?

I must have never grown up. I go through a store and think, “I want dat!”, too. I don’t get it, though. Nothing has changed….

Well, it worked once…

My mom said she doesn’t like this comic strip because it’s too close to reality. She couldn’t find it funny. As kids we didn’t really understand but now I do.

Never give in. Once you do, they learn.

How stupid is Elly for taking a toddler into a toy store!?

When our daughter was little, we had two ways to handle this kind of thing: one was to tell her that she could have it tomorrow (obviously well before she understood concepts of time), the other was to say we would “put it on the list.” Not really sure which list — birthday? holiday? — but it worked. (She got in the habit of asking, if she saw something she wanted, “Can we put it on the list?”)

It helped that our daughter was very sweet-natured as a little girl; she still is, but we joke in our family that she didn’t go through the “terrible twos”; she had the “terrible twelves.”

A little piece from a great song:

“Dat Dere”

Song by Oscar Brown

… Hey mama, what’s that there?

And what’s that doing there?

Hey mama, up here!

Mama, hey look at that over there!

And what’s that doing there?

And where’re they going there?

And mummy can I have that big elephant over there?

April in Toronto!

Although the store makes more money, I hate to see parents give in to a bratty kid demanding a toy or candy when I’m cashing people out.

My little girls did the same thing

This is why we never took our children shopping. One of us always stayed home with them while the other went shopping.

This is why you can’t take little ones with you when you go shopping during this time of year!

Elly farted all this week, so she has a way to deal with this. Just go to the food court and buy a bean burrito with extra guacamole sauce. Then go to the parking lot with April on her back, put on some rollerblades, let one rip and Elly is out of there!

40 YEARS LATER…

Senile Elly: "April. want dat! April, want DAT!

Old Elly weakly motions to a bowl of soup. April sighs as he slaves over a hot stove to prepare soup.

April then serves soup. Elly takes one spoonful, then flings bowl on floor, pointing to a framed diploma on the wall

Senile Elly: WANT DAT!

https://www.gocomics.com/buni/2021/12/15?ct=v&cti=1396304