Grocery Shopping and Language Development
Part of my job as a speech language pathologist is to help support parents so that the skills we work on with a child in speech therapy can carry over and generalize to their natural environment. One of my common suggestions is to incorporate speech and language skills when grocery shopping.
Are you a parent that prefers to be efficient and go grocery shopping alone (a nice personal getaway)? Or maybe you are team grocery delivery? I get it, I get it, but hear me out….
What if you did the deliveries or solo shopping regularly, but scheduled a SMALL trip as an outing with your child? If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m a big proponent for creating quality connections to foster communication. These experiences of going to the grocery store can build so many important developmental skills— speech/language, cognitive, personal/social skills, I could go on and on! We can really adjust this routine for any age and target.
Here is a general guide and some of the skills that we can naturally target through just this routine!
Prepare. Include your child in making the grocery list. Check the fridge or pantry and notice that something is out or running low. (Targets some early executive functioning skills and basic language concepts)
Plan. Discuss your grocery shopping process. You might read a book, watch a youtube video together, or just discuss the steps that you will do that day. Name which grocery store you are going to (Publix, Aldi, Walmart) and what your expectations are. You will hold the cart while we go look for 5 things on our list together. Then we will pay, put our bags in the car and drive back home. (Targets sequencing, following directions, behavior management, planning)
Shop. Narrate your shopping experience and include your child in the process. I suggest including them in a little food hunt. Work on describing the item while you search for it.
"The first thing on my list is in the bakery. It's something we eat for dessert and I think we can find it on the bottom shelf. Oh look, cookies! We found them! Let’s check it off our list”
“Let’s see what is next. Hmm, this next item is a fruit, so we need to turn left and go find the fruit section. This fruit is small, round, blue, and comes in a square container. Do you know what we’re looking for?”
Recap. Talk about the experience you just had on the way home and repeat some of the vocabulary words that you learned!
We can target SO many language targets with this:
-basic concepts: top/bottom, high/low, small/big, round/square, left/right
-categories: dessert, fruit, vegetable, frozen items, bakery, deli, etc.
-following directions and sequencing: first/then/next/last
-object/function: this is something we eat, use to wipe our nose, clean the table, pour on cereal
-new vocabulary: shelf, register, cart, aisle, receipt, cashier, scan, etc.
Grocery shopping trips may sometimes seem overwhelming to do with your children and maybe a task you’d rather avoid. There are ways to modify and plan for the experience to make sure you create a quality connection and simultaneously build so many essential developmental language, cognitive, personal social, adaptive and behavior skills!
Any favorite strategies you’ve tried and love for shopping with children? Let me know!!