Almost every day we encounter young children in public places with their parents. Although one cannot sit and observe the relationship between parent and child, some may wonder how the parent interacts with the child at home or in another public place. Depending on the level of treatment we observe in the couple's presence, we can assume that a particular type of treatment is occurring in the private sector of that child's life, based solely on how the child is treated in the public sector. Knowing that most parents do not want to expose their home or their children, it is difficult to determine how much interaction actually occurs in a private setting. Public Sector Assessment The most common setting for parents with children is often the local supermarket. With this in mind, Atkin (1978) chose to observe families with children in a natural supermarket setting, leaving aside any intervention by the research team. It specifically looked at how parent-child pairs interacted when choosing which breakfast cereal to purchase. Knowing that self-reports would be an inaccurate measure, he chose a “direct observation” method to observe the participants in his study. The observations were conducted at 20 supermarkets in downtown and suburban areas of Detroit and Lansing, Michigan. Subjects were defined as all families with a child aged three to 12 who were considering which cereal to purchase. The observer's responsibility was to record a description of the parent-child exchanges on a form. They also indicated whether any sort of conflict had occurred between the parent and child and whether both the parent and child seemed satisfied with the outcome of the situation. It was discovered...... in the middle of an article ......ts and collaborative parent-child interactions to foster the development of numeracy and literacy in Canadian homes. Journal of Early Childhood Education. Mitchell, GG, Obradovich, S., Herring, F., Tromborg, C., & Burns, AL (1992). Reproducing gender in public places: adults' attention to toddlers in three public places. Sex Roles, 26(7/8), 323-330. Pederson, D. and Moran, G. (2005). Gender and patterns of emotional availability in mother-child and father-child dyads. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 60(2/3), 111-132. Rossi, A. and Rossi, P. (1990). On the human bond: parent-child relationships throughout life. (pp. 10-148). New York, NY: Walter de Gruyter, Inc. Taaffe Young K, Davis K, Schoen C, Parker S. Listening to Parents: A National Survey of Parents of Young Children. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1998;152(3):255-262.