Teaching a child how to shop for groceries, clothing, or other essential items is a key step in preparing him for financial and functional independence. As a result, it is one of the first skills that educators and other supporters will spend time on when preparing a child for the transition into “the real world.”
Does your student know how to shop on his own? Perhaps more importantly, can he do it well? Knowing how to shop isn’t simply about being able to waltz into a grocery store, load a cart up with items, and then pay for them. To be a savvy shopper, you need to make sure you teach certain “smart shopping” skills.
To be fair, these are skills that many adults have yet to master! Knowing how to save, budget, and shop for your own food and other essentials is a key part of being successful as an adult.
Here are some tips on how you can teach smart shopping skills to students with unique learning needs.
Set Appropriate Goals
The first step in teaching a child with unique learning needs how to shop is to start small – and to be realistic. Give some thought to what kinds of goals you might want to set for your student and keep in mind his age, ability level, and desired level of independence. Not everyone’s goal can be – or should be – complete self-sufficiency, and that’s okay.
Nevertheless, you should make sure the bar is set high. Write down a few small goals that the two of you (along with other supporters) can work toward as you travel down the road toward independence. Make sure your student is actively involved in this goal-setting process, too, to increase and encourage his self-determination.
Make a List and Break Things Down
It is very easy for a child with unique learning needs to become overwhelmed upon entering a store. There are all kinds of distractions and stressors that can arise in a store, and this makes the entire process very daunting for a child with diverse needs. He might walk into a store determined and ready to go, knowing exactly what he needs to buy – and forget immediately as soon as he is bombarded with the flashy lights and advertising displays on the shelves.
Therefore, it’s important that you work together to come up with a clear list that he can take with him into the store. If he’s more comfortable carrying this list on a cell phone or in a digital format versus on a piece of paper, that’s fine – but make sure the list exists.
Break things down, too, into subtasks and specific items. Don’t write, “buy cheese,” on the list but instead write, “buy two bags of shredded Cabot cheddar cheese” instead. Be as specific as possible and break things down to make navigating the store a bit easier.
Another tip when making a shopping list? Make sure the items on the list are meaningful and relevant to your student. Sure, you might need to pick up toilet paper – but is that something your student will care about? If you load up the list with a bunch of items that mean nothing to him, yes, you’ll get the shopping done – but you won’t teach the desired skills because there won’t be enough interest invested in the trip.
Pay a Visit to the Store – but the Same Store Every Time
When you first start working on shopping skills with a child with unique learning needs, figuring out how to navigate the aisles and displays of a store can be tricky. An easy technique is to start by going to the exact same store each and every time. You might even teach your student how to shop at just one particular supermarket. You can work on generalizing those skills to other stores later on, but it’s best to start small.
Try to frequent the store when it isn’t busy. Waiting in line or dealing with large crowds can be stressful for an individual with diverse learning needs. It will also increase your stress level as you try to keep an eye on your student. Make it easier on yourself by going to the store during non-peak hours – this will make cashing out a lot easier, too, when the cashier isn’t trying to rush you through the exchange.
Make it Fun
Is there a way that you can incentivize your shopping trips to make them more enjoyable for your student? It could be something like a physical reward – such as being able to get a donut from the bakery section of the grocery store – or an activity – like getting to visit the lobster tank at the seafood counter.
Whatever the reward is, make sure it’s tied to a specific action, like making it through an entire grocery trip without complaining or spending under “x” amount of dollars on a shopping trip.
Use Pictures and Social Stories
Making checklists with pictures is a great way to teach your child how to shop. Often, word lists can be overwhelming for students with unique learning needs. Adding a few visual displays will help them associate the items they need to buy with real-life items. You can even laminate them if you’d like!
Social stories can also help you when it comes to teaching a child with unique needs about how to shop and behave in a store. Create your own so that they are relevant and applicable to your learner’s life.
Practice At Home or School First
There are some skills that are best taught in a more controlled setting before you head out into the actual grocery store. For example, the checkout line should not be the first place you start teaching your student how to make change or interact with a cashier! Teach, drill, and practice these skills as many times as possible, and make sure your learner has mastered those skills before you venture out into the real world.
Don’t forget to play to your student’s strengths and skill level, too. You might not realize it, but there are certain words we take for granted as being commonplace – such as cashier and shopping cart – that you may have to teach directly to a child with unique learning needs.
If possible, you can also help reduce anxiety for your student by drawing up a map of the layout of the store. Teach him where each item can be found and how to navigate the shelves, aisles, and departments – this can make things much less stressful when you do ultimately head to the store.
Play With Apps
There are some seriously fun apps out there that can help make shopping a little easier. Depending on the ability level and age of your learner, you might want to try options like i See-quence…Going to the Grocery Store, which is a picture-based app that can help teach shopping independence. It’s not a free app, but for just a few dollars, it’s well worth the investment.
Be Sure to Budget and Save
While your students will likely need to master basic skills like shopping with a list and interacting with a cashier before he can do things like meal plan, coupon, or figure out cost savings, budgeting and saving are two skills that should go hand-in-hand with teaching smart shopping skills.
After all, you can give your student a list of products to buy, but if he doesn’t know the best ways to save money and cut costs, he’s going to wind up over budget and out of money the first time he goes shopping on his own.
Take the time to teach skills such as:
- How to read a price tag
- Comparing total price versus unit price
- Figuring out sales flyers (and whether an advertised sale is worth the money and a good deal – or just an advertising ploy)
You should also teach ways to stretch a shopping budget to make it last longer, such as choosing the off-brand product when possible, shopping during non-peak times, and making a list before shopping to avoid “impulse buys.”
A pitfall that many learners fail in as they are figuring out how to navigate a shopping trip is spending more money than they intended to – simply because they don’t realize how much common items cost.
Exercise Patience
Teaching smart shopping skills takes time, particularly when you are working with students who have unique learning needs. The best tip? Start soon, and practice often. The easiest way to ingrain these skills is to make sure they are a natural part of daily living so that they aren’t foreign concepts when it comes time for your student to incorporate them in his or her transition to adulthood.
Be patient, as it can take some time for the skills to become second nature. Over time, you might even discover that your student becomes an even savvier shopper than you are!
Further Reading
- Carol Gray: The New Social Story Book
- Carol Gray: A Social Story for the Rest of Us
- All titles by Carol Gray
- Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders: Supporting Teens and Young Adult on the Autism Spectrum – Setting and Pursuing Self-Determined Goals
- Nebraska Autism Spectrum Disorders Network: Social Stories
- Autism Speaks: Life Skills and Autism