Another thing: I remember a few instances growing up where getting to go to this or that was treated as a minor coming-of-age thing, e.g., "You're finally old/mature enough to come to a restaurant with us! (Don't screw it up or we'll put this off another couple years.)"
I remember being very impressed with the seriousness of it. This included a restaurant, a cross-country trip (old enough to go with Dad on one of his business trips by myself! I got to see Dick Tracy in theatres before it came to our state), and I don't know what else.
We treat pushing the shopping cart as a big deal for my nephews. If you're in charge of the cart, you have to watch where you're going, keep both hands on the bar, not crash into anything (or anyone), not go too fast, etc. We let them drive even through the wine aisle, while calling attention to the fact that a little accident here means $20-$100 we'd have to pay (they seem to take it seriously).
It helps that a lot of stores have gotten those small carts, which makes it less nerve-wracking for us to turn them over to a kid, as they're easier to control and it's easier to predict how wide a turn you have to make. Albertson's, last I checked, didn't have them, and they said it's because they didn't want kids using them... which ignores the benefits to adult shoppers (using a small cart even makes me feel lighter), and besides which has just made us give our business to the two stores in town that have small carts.
Which just shows the way that this SHOULD work: If a store isn't meeting your needs, you go to a different store, and stores make policies based on what sort of services they want to order what sort of clients. Give stores the freedom to do this, and the market should sort itself out.
