Harmony in the grocery store aisle

Hey, parents of young ones:

Would you like your journey through a grocery store with your children to be more harmonious? Would you like a dependable way to short-circuit the circuit in your children’s brains that forces them to badger you until your patience is as worn as a teenager’s favorite shirt?

I figured out the grocery store problem when our first child, Alexander, was about 4. The pestering was mounting in relation to his growing command of English, and he would accompany his words with sounds of longing that couldn’t be found in a dictionary. It was a problem, and I needed...