A mother stood at the counter of the store a while back and told me, half laughing, why she had come in.
Her daughter had made her.
Not her. The daughter. The mother had told the girl they were going to do laundry, and that was fine, until she mentioned which laundromat they were going to. The girl got upset with her mother. She did not want top to that one. She wanted the store that gives out the snacks on the weekend. So the mother rerouted the family's laundry to us, because a child who is not yet old enough to fold a towel had an opinion about where the household washed its clothes, and the opinion won.
I have thought about that story a lot. Because somewhere out there, at the same hour, an owner/operator was typing into a Facebook group about the kids in the store. Running around. Touching the machines. Leaving a mess. How do we get them to stop.
Both things are true at the same time. In one store, a child is steering her whole family through the door. In another, that same kind of child is the reason the owner is online looking for relief. Same child. Opposite conclusions.
The Child Picks the Vendor
The girl who chose our store was not unusual. She was textbook.
When researchers ask parents who actually decides where the family goes, the