At about the same time as we had our first child, my late husband and I expanded out antique business. We added an addition to out existing building just for the antique shop. Soon I began to see a problem with the parents with children. All the children were curious and the parents spent all their time in the shop saying, NO! or Don’t Touch!. The first thing we did was have a truck of sand dumped next to the shop and added trucks and other things for the children to pay with. Everyone loved this. I also had a cabinet in the shop, where I kept small tins and boxes and other items that were unbreakable and let the children explore it.
Soon our daughter became too big to be confined in the backpack or carriage. We didn’t want to give up antiquing and freak out all the dealers. I came up with the idea of telling her that she could touch anything she wanted and ask about it as long as one of us held it. This worked like a charm for all of our three children, with nothing ever being broken.
We spent many days as a family going to flea markets and antique shows. It wasn’t long before they started collecting and, “picking” for us. I think that they really benefited from being exposed to the antique community. They did a lot of traveling, learned history and business and met a lot of interesting people. Although, at this point, none of them are, “in the business” full time, I can see that our encouraging their curiosity and appreciation of the past has been a positive influence on their approach to life.
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