Questionable Parenting Practice #7,854,765

Pretty much all of my parenting practices are questionable, so I hesitate to single out just the one, but this one is perhaps beyond questionable, verging on pretty bad. My mom hates to drive, so she has saved up all her errands for the last month, waiting for me to chauffeur her around. Usually she and my dad go out on their retired people rounds together, but he's not super patient about thrifting, or anything that requires browsing. Right now Dad is in Montana on a hunting trip with Lloyd and his father, leaving me, my mother and my mother-in-law to hold down the fort. I have been taking full advantage of the high quality, free babysitting during the day to go shopping and visit my friends, and in the afternoons and evenings we've been loading up the minivan and doing errands and taking my mother-in-law shopping. Now, the reason I need the free childcare so much is that it is virtually impossible to take Shane anywhere. He hates sitting in the cart, but if I let him out it's a guaranteed scream-fest when I prevent him from his heart's desire, which usually consists of hucking whatever fragile items are within reach or playing his favorite game ever, 'run away from Mommy'. Which brings me to this: twice in the past 48 hours, I have removed my children from a store where they were wreaking havoc by offering them ice cream. Yes, it's true: I have been rewarding them for bad behavior, simply to make my own life more tolerable. Luckily for me, I have access to any number of blogs with excellent parenting advice, and I will clicky clicky, tout suite.