Shop Safe At Malls With Your Toddler

M&B dishes out some surefire strategies to keep your child safe while shopping.

In cities, where space is at a premium, malls and supermarkets have become hub-spots for people wanting to shop, unwind, eat and drink under one roof. Malls have become the shining beacons which attract people who want to combine chores and leisure time in one go. In a way, they have also become a perceived safe haven to take out small children where the children get to let loose their pentup energy away from the harsh elements, and can be effectively engaged by all the shiny and glitzy sights which the businesses in the malls offer. In this age of shrinking real spaces and increased virtual horizons, malls have effectively become a pseudo-playground for our children.

Aside from individual perceptions of what a mall is to them, it essentially is a cluster of shops or stores, designed and developed as one architectural structure. Malls are rarely designed for security; as, most of the time, security is not ‘built-in’ but ‘bolted on’ in their layout. Malls are more centred towards ‘prevention and loss of the goods’ placed under their roof, than with the people who come to buy these goods.

Toddlers are especially happy in malls because it activates all their five senses, with bright lights and colours, transparent frontages which give an illusion of big spaces, happy sounds of music emanating, various enticing smells of eatables, large spaces where they are not admonished for exercising their vocal chords and where they can freely touch many different types of objects in their quest of exploration. When these five senses are overloaded in a person of any age, cognitive faculties generally get diffused due to extended exposure to such environs. Many a times it leads to very short attention spans, distracted body language and selfcentred attitudes amongst adults also.