Mommy and Me Classes are evil!

I wonder what’s wrong with me? Why am I such a mommy misanthrope that I can’t ever enjoy the most innocuous parent and me classes that every mom seems to participate in and enjoy? Asher and I had our first mommy and me class today at the preschool that he will attend when he’s old enough. Since my older son had spent several very happy years there, it felt like a home coming. I know all the administrators and the teachers and it’s like a family (albeit, a tad dysfunctional, but what family isn’t?). Yet, I still dreaded doing the Mommy and Me class.

Maybe it’s all the rigidly structured activities that have to happen in a certain order: free play, then rug time, then songs, then snack time, then finally outside time and then the goodbye song. The idea is to create a predictable routine for toddlers to bring a sense of order to their turbulent worlds. But for me, it’s yet another routine element to add to my already routine life. Not to mention the vigilant toddler wrangling I have to do for an hour and 15 minutes. Asher’s in the throes of teething and he’s a drool monster who insists on putting EVERYTHING in his mouth. So I have to follow him around prying toys out of his gaping maw and wiping them off and enduring the germophobic reactions from the other moms who watch what I plan on doing with the contaminated toy (will she put it back in the bin or set it aside to be cleaned?)

Along with the attendant drooling that accompanies teething, Asher’s also really really pissed off to be there. He doesn’t want anything to do with the other toddlers who have the audacity to look at him, touch him or play with the same toys he’s playing with. He spends most of the class crying or whining. Meanwhile all the other toddlers are happily playing quietly and the other moms are chatting in a relaxed fashion. Not me, I have an unhappy toddler velcroed to my leg and I keep looking up at the clock on the wall, counting down the minutes. He cheered up marginally during the circle time while everyone sang “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Row Row Row your Boat.” But now it was my turn to feel stupid and self-conscious singing these insipid songs and doing the hand movements while trying to keep a squirmy, bored kid on the rug.

Thankfully, snack time arrived and if there’s anything my kid excels at, it’s eating (just like his mommy). So in the short five minutes it took him to inhale cheese crackers and chopped up grapes, he was quiet and content. Although he kept trying to steal the snacks from his seatmates and I had to rein in his klepto behavior constantly. To my immense relief, we headed outside for play time and Asher perked up noticeably. He finally smiled and giggled as he did a face plant in the sand box and slid down the slide. We sang the goodbye song at the end of class (an annoyingly catchy tune that I can’t get out of my head) and it was finally over.

I had a headache as I packed Asher up into the car. He was exhausted and overstimulated and hungry and cried the whole way home - which really didn’t help my aching head. I put him down for a much needed nap and now that I’ve guzzled down ice water and Vanilla Diet Coke, I feel somewhat restored. I’ve never been a mom who’s been into group activities with other children. Even one-on-one playgroups will have me down for the count the rest of the day. It’s so draining to navigate other children and how your child behaves towards and around them. Not only are you trying to make nice with the other moms, you’re also under constant scrutiny and so is your child.

Every time a child (your own or another) does something “developmentally appropriate” yet undesirable like hitting, biting or throwing tantrums, it throws everybody into an emotional tail spin. In the case of my older son, he was a happy go-lucky kid who was the emotional equivalent of Switzerland. Totally neutral and non-confrontational. We never had the terrible twos, he never threw tantrums and I didn’t even know how time-outs worked because I never had to use them. Jonah was almost always the victim of another child’s aggressive behavior.

And now I have Asher. He just turned one and I can already tell that he’ll be a handful and seems to have no compunction about hitting and swatting other children. Sigh. I have another week before I have to go back to Mommy and Me, hopefully I’ll stop singing those songs by then.