The holiday season is a hectic time of year for so many reasons, but holiday shopping might be the most notorious of all. And the only way a packed mall full of stressed shoppers and a lengthy to-do list could get any more stressful is if you have kids with you.

Trying to get it all done is enough to drive you crazy. But trying to get it all done while keeping track of your excitable kids? Forget about it.

Anyone with kids knows that they tend to consider shopping malls their own personal jungle gyms. Running about, climbing on anything in sight, and begging for mall pretzels are just the start of the difficulties you’re bound to endure.

But then throw the holidays into the mix — the time of year when kids are, arguably, their most excitable — and your shopping trip just became borderline impossible.

So if you need to get your holiday shopping done, but you have to take the kids, what are you supposed to do?

This dad decided it was time he came up with a solution for this common holiday woe. And come up with a solution he did. His idea was so, uh, brilliant that he wanted to share it with the world in his instructional video titled, “How To Go Christmas Shopping With A Baby.”

“You’ve got to be prepared for the big crowds, so um,” Jordan Watson, the creator of the video, says to the camera while holding a red balloon on a long white string. The string has some sort of tiny clip attached to the bottom of it.

Well…we can see where this is going.

He walks over to his energetic daughter and clips the balloon’s string to his child’s pants! Soon after, the adorable toddler walks out of frame, but dad Jordan is not alarmed in the slightest.

“Easy!” he says. “She’s fine, she’s just over — I’ll show you.”

Jordan turns the camera to show us his perspective. In the distance, a red balloon bops up and down behind people and shelves, hilariously showing where the little girl is bounding off to next.

As the little girl runs around the mall, Jordan keeps track of her by the red balloon attached to her backside. He obviously feels completely secure in his system, giving the camera a thumbs-up. He even has time to snack leisurely on a sandwich, seeing that his daughter’s red balloon is nearby.

The video continues in its hilarity, with the little girl running about and dad Jordan casually watching her red balloon drift by. Each time he has his eyes on her (and her tracker) he gives the camera an encouraging thumbs up and goes about his business.

However, as he’s ending his video, the red balloon flies up to the ceiling in the background! Glancing backwards, Jordan curses, realizing that maybe his childcare method isn’t as foolproof as he thought.

While we don’t encourage you to strap a balloon onto your child and then allow them to run wild in your local shopping mall, we do think every parent should watch this funny video! Anyone who has ever dared to take a child holiday shopping will seriously appreciate Jordan’s comedic technique.

What do you think of this instructional video? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.