Mom Advice: What to do when your kids broke an item in the Mall?

Moms, what will you do when you are in the grocery, and while your hubby is just paying for the stuff in the cashier, you decided to check something that is out in the display.  When suddenly your kid broke it!

I was looking at the dish cabinet, a 5FT tall, when suddenly my youngest 4year old baby girl appeard and she slipped and broke the plastic dish rack cabinet door cracked. Then I was just shocked did not react, when a sales crew approached us since he need to get advise from his supervisor because he might be charge of the item that costs 2,000PHP.

When hubby arrived from the cashier, and I explained what happened, he talked to our baby girl explaining what she did was wrong and the result of not obeying, while our baby girl was so worried since his dad is mad at her, but I told him to be calm, just take it easy and let us settle with the broken dish rack first.

We waited for the Supervisor, when he arrived he just informed us that Security will be the one to take over, no offense to us it is just the procedure.  Well, I said no problem we will be here to wait, but instead of Security it was the Store Manager who talked to us, I explained what happened and he said that based on the procedure we should pay for the broken item, since I begged off that I will only be paying for the cracked door instead of the whole dish cabinet (ouch!), he said that if we do not have cash on hand then I can sign for a promisorry note and we can pay for the item as soon as we are able.  However my hubby said that he will just withdraw cash from his ATM and to pay for the item but since we are getting a dish cabinet, then we need our sis in law assistance since they have KIA Sportage, we need a bigger car to deliver the dish cabinet, we called her to the rescue.

So we paid for the dish cabinet and brought it home and it was less 2,000PHP from our pocket in an instant.

I know this can happen to parents even how we guard our kids and I would like to give an advise on what to do when you experience the same!

1. Be Calm! - This is not the time to blame your yaya or scold your kids in public, be modest when explaining to your kids upfront what they did and the effect of being so inappropriately playful.

2. Be Apologetic - When dealing with the store employee for whatever position, be professional and be apologetic, accept the fact that it was your fault and explain what happened instead of being defensive and reasoning out just look not guilty.

3. Negotiate - You can ask a favor to waive the procedure and if there is a way not to pay for the item if that is possible, if not then you may negotiate if you can only pay the part of what was broken, if still no, then you may negotiate to get a brand new instead of the broken item - in our case this happened, just with the right negotiation skills.  We end up getting a brand new item as per the Store Manager approval.

4. Promisorry Note - Not all the time we have extra cash to spare, then you may offer Promisorry Note when getting the item you will not pay for it upfront and just negotiate the payment terms with the Person in Charge.

5. Give your child a lesson  - When you need to discipline your little one, make sure do it in private and not in the mall, when you arrive home then you may give your child a lesson so this event will not happen again and explain to them to be more very careful and be obedient when outside the mall.


The best advise is to avoid this kind of situation, by just watching over our little one 101% of our attention!