Last month I signed Aoife up for gymnastics in the same time slot as Emmy's ballet class so that Aoife would have something to do for that 45 minutes other than sit with me in the waiting room. The class is right across the hall from Emmy's class and is a mommy and me type gymnastics class. Since the age range was 18-36 months, I thought that the class would be focused on having fun, running around and lots of bouncing. I was very wrong. It is an instructional class where the kids sit on the ground, watch the demonstration, and take their turn doing whatever it is. There is a lot of focus on hand position and toe pointing.
Aoife is a lot like Aidan in the area of physical movement. She likes to be moving, climbing, running or banging something pretty much all the time. This does not lend itself well to paying attention and/or following directions.
We had been to one class prior to today and missed the one last week because of the snow. The first class wasn't great but I chalked it up to a new routine. Aoife wouldn't run ON THE LINE or wait her turn or stay in the circle while they did 10 minutes of stretching. I thought that today might be better and I walked in excited to have fun. There was a different teacher today - and she was teaching 2 year olds how to do cart wheels. Maybe we should just stick to rolling over? Anywho - the teacher kept making mean comments about Aoife's lack of attention and skill and praising the other little girl in the class - there were only 2 of them in class today. The other little girl was 2 1/2 and smaller - WAY smaller than Aoife (who is 19 months). I don't know if the teacher thought that Aoife was older or if she was just annoyed that I couldn't make her follow directions. At first I kind of brushed off the teacher's nasty comments - I was frustrated that Aoife wouldn't follow directions too. After a while the comments started to include me and I just got fed up, picked Aoife and our bags up and walked out of the gym. She didn't even acknowledge that we had left! Imagine that! We had to wait for Emmy to finish her class so Aoife played in the waiting room and she didn't seem upset at all to have left class. We saw the teacher as we were leaving and she didn't say a word. Definitely made me feel that I made the right decision to walk out.
2 comments:
Sounds like there is a good reason that only 1 other child showed up for this "class"! The instructor has no idea how to deal with children and shouldn't be paid to do what she's doing. A word with the director of the program is probably in order. too bad...it could have been great fun!
WOW. That teacher is such a jerk! Good riddance!
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