I was just reading a discussion on here about someone’s four year old wanting a tablet because his friends all have one a few comments said that parents that give their children a screen to play on in public is just being a lazy parent. How does this in your opinion make a parent lazy?

I have an almost two year old and I’m 36 weeks pregnant and I’ve recently starting letting him watch educational videos on my phone while I’m grocery shopping. Before I would just let him walk next to me but lately he hasn’t been listening to me at all and will constantly run off. Due to my fear of him being kidnapped I’ve stopped letting him out of the cart all together. For the first half of grocery shopping he’s fine but during the second half he usually gets antsy and will constantly try to climb out of the cart (even with the seatbelt on he can still stand up and twist out) and there’s literally no way for me to stop it and it’s also at this point that he’ll start to throw a tantrum. I try to be stern with my voice but he just wants out. I don’t give him my phone until it reaches this point because he’s being unsafe and I want to distract him. If anybody has any helpful tips that could help me keep him distracted in the cart while food shopping that would be great. I do try to keep him entertained beforehand by talking to him and playing with and I will even try getting his interest in objects and explaining them to him, this only works for a little bit. I’ve even tried making makeshift toys for him that are only “special” for grocery shopping and he got over them pretty quickly.

**Edit**

Just wanted to say, I can see how this can be seen as rewarding negative behavior but to me it isn’t. Kids have a “power” struggle and when he’s at the point he wants out of the cart I try to give some “power” (mainly just by compromising with him) by asking him if he would rather watch a video on my phone and he’ll tell me yes and he’ll be calm by the time I give him my phone. I don’t give into him wanting out of the cart, so therefore I don’t see it as rewarding him. He also gives me my phone when I ask for it back and he doesn’t throw a fit as long as I explain to him we’re almost done or I just need to check my phone real quick. There’s even times he hands me my phone because he’s all done and then he’ll sometimes want out again but at this point I’m able to distract him again. He’s also getting to the point that he knows the phone is an option and honestly there’s been a lot less tantrums in public because of it because now he’s starting to not even try to get out of the cart as much as he once used to because he’ll just ask for my phone instead because he knows his options now and getting out of the cart isn’t one of them.