Moscow Food Co-op Healthful ResourcesChild-Friendly = Good Business
by Carol Spurling, from the January 2004 Newsletter
A grocery store where I lived in Sitka, Alaska, a few years ago launched itself onto the cutting edge of smart business practices when they designated a few parking spaces up front for expectant mothers and mothers with small children. For a while I didn’t qualify and didn’t think much about it. Then, when pregnant, I huffily declared I didn’t need anyone’s extra help. By God, I could still walk! But six months later, about the time I was hoisting an 18-pound baby across the parking lot, I began to understand that these special parking spaces were a really, really good idea.
Soon after, I realized that the large public building where I spent my workdays greeting hordes of cruise ship tourists, many with toddlers and infants in tow, didn’t have a single corner designated for nursing mothers, or even a diaper-changing table in the restrooms. No wonder so many moms and children looked cranky in that building. It was supposed to be the tourist welcome center. But how welcoming was it, if it didn’t take into consideration such basic family needs?
Enter the Child-Friendly Initiative. This is a grassroots, non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of children. Their Web site offers tips for business owners who are interested in increasing their revenues by becoming child-friendly and provides information kits for folks interested in starting their own local chapter of the organization. The organization will even award a ‘Child-Friendly Seal of Approval’ for businesses who meet some of the criteria.
Here is a short list of recommendations for businesses who wish to welcome families:
More detailed recommendations for specialized businesses such as restaurants, government offices, and retail and service businesses are also listed on the Web site. The organization doesn’t expect every business to be able to follow every recommendation, but simply to do what it can. Making any kind of an effort at all goes a long way.
The Moscow Food Co-op is one place I think qualifies as child-friendly, although it doesn’t have the space to do everything suggested above. Certainly the two high chairs help, and the step stool in the restroom. Mostly, the welcoming attitude towards children shown by the staff makes it highly pleasurable for both me and my child to be there. One time, when my son bumped his head at the park, through his tears he cried, “I wanna go to the Co-op!” He knows where to go to feel good.
Several other businesses in Moscow and Pullman also make an effort to make children feel welcome, and here are a few I know about personally: Rosauer’s, Bucer’s, Hodgins Drug, BookPeople, Wally’s World, Daily Grind, Brused Books, Moscow Realty, Advantage America Mortgage, and Mikey’s Gyros. There are others, too. Keep up the good work!
Parents do the most important work of all, raising our community’s smallest citizens, and it is often very hard. Sometimes the smallest smidgen of kindness offered them will be enough to make their day: a smile, some crayons and paper for the kids, a drinking fountain with a step stool, a clean bathroom, a comfortable chair. Parents are often too tired or preoccupied to speak up on these issues themselves, and so far there’s no Americans with Children Act to force businesses to comply, so let’s take the child-friendly initiative ourselves.
I’d like to hear from other parents about local businesses they feel deserve to be commended for their family-friendliness. Where do you shop with your kids and why? Please get your suggestions to me by February 5, 2004.
Carol Spurling is a local mom and writer whose work currently appears in Brain, Child magazine.
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