Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Of classes and masses

Contrary to what the title suggests, this post is not about the class differences between masses. Rather, it is a story of how a mom who got swept up the mass hysteria of ‘sign up your kids for as many classes as possible’, learnt a valuable lesson.
Now I’m not for pushing your kids too much. Never been a competitive person myself, will not be a pushy mom either. But I’d like to introduce my daughter to different types of fun activities like sports, music etc, in order to see what interests her and then let her pursue those interests. Also, I’d like to her to learn some basic stuff like swimming and cycling. That’s it. I have no grand designs or expectations beyond that. Then how did I get caught up in the ‘pack their schedules with classes/camps’ syndrome, you ask? Well, it all began a few months ago, when Apple turned three......
Apple has a lot of energy and loves jumping around, so when she turned three, we enrolled her in a gymnastics class. She loves it so we plan to keep her in the class for as long as she enjoys it. They also teach ballet at the place where she goes for gymnastics. One day after class Apple saw some girls dressed in ballet outfits and asked me why they were wearing those. I tried to explain to her that they were taking a ballet class. She asked me what ballet was and I explained. The last few days she’s been pestering me to enroll her in “the ballerina class". Luckily they were offering a class this summer at her school during school hours so I signed her up for that.
Now, last summer Apple loved playing in the pool . The pool in our new subdivision is not yet ready and Apple keeps asking when it will be ready. So for this summer I signed her up for a swim class.
So here we were, juggling the schedules for these classes when one day we discovered that the tennis courts in our new subdivision had opened. Apple saw some kids trying to play tennis and told me that she wanted to play.
“You are too young. You don’t know how to play that yet” I told her.
“You teach me how to play, mommy”
“Mommy does not know how to play”.
“Why?”
“Because mommy never learnt how to play”
“I want to learn”
“OK . When you are a little older, you could take a class”.
“OK”.

The conversation was easily forgotten especially by me who had no intention of enrolling her in any more classes at the moment. The next evening Apple was riding her bicycle when some older kids zoomed past us on their bigger bicycles. Apple noticed that they were riding their bikes without the training wheels on. She asked me why she’s not able to ride her bike without the training wheels.
“You are younger, you’ll learn to ride like them when you get a little older”
“Mommy, I want to go to that class”
“What class honey?”
“The class where they teach you to ride without training wheels!”

I was both amused and ashamed at the same time. Ashamed that I was teaching my daughter that she cannot learn anything without a class, that her schedule needs to be filled with classes. May be I need a parenting class!

7 comments:

~nm said...

I think I know what you mean. And its so true that we are so engrossed in our day to day life and workings that we do not have much time to spare for teaching our kids to teach them new things. Sigh..

Like you, I was never of the opinion to push too many things down the throat of our kids and so far I have kind of succeeded in that. But then if the kids is interested and is actually enjoying doing all the activities, I see no harm. its just that the "push" factor should not be there from our side.

Sraikh said...

Ohh I can imagine. The girls were in so many activities last year that all I did was drive them from school to class a to class b and back to home. So this year, I implemented a rule that there is only a activity/class per child. Made my life so much easier

SUR NOTES said...

i am anti pushy moms making kids learn any and everything. but hey, this is very different. its little apple seeing a world of possibilities open up, let her do as much as she wants(and whats practically possible!)

dont beat yourself up, its lovely that she is curious and excited, and great that you have the opportunity to teach her all of this.

and when she begins to get bored, you can decide to not enroll her for the next semester. who knows she might not get bored... or might decide to become serious about one...

and the cycling - tell her that you are the expert- and you will take classes!

Anonymous said...

a fine line, then!

I can only pity kids who have packed schedules.....may be cause my childhood was loads of fun, and an important factor was the fact that we had loads of free time to run around in the sun and play!

Rohini said...

I am still in the firmly anti-classes phase. Let's see how it goes as the son gets older and the peer pressure builds up...

Unknown said...

I plan on pushing only one thing down my kid's throat: vegetables. The sports and music will just be "strongly encouraged."

Anonymous said...

we still check everyday and we want a new post :)