I attend a weekly Music Together class with my three children, ages 6, 3, and 4 months. I like the mixed-age group, the low-pressure environment, the well-trained instructors. I like the format, which allows the toddlers to express themselves, experiencing the music, with lots of whole-body motions like jumping, running, rolling balls, dancing with scarves, playing rhythm instruments. It’s boisterous, yet the instructor’s skill keeps it "all about the music." I love it.
The last two weeks, however, have been a nightmare.
Two new babies are in the class, one MJ’s age, the other born a few weeks ago. Their mothers each have a toddler as well. Clearly the mothers believe the class is for the toddlers, not the babies (although the class is expressly for ages birth through five years). Last week, both of those babies’ moms left their infants strapped in carseats in the middle of the floor, often getting up to dance around the room with their toddlers.
Imagine six boisterous toddlers and preschoolers running around the room, pretending to be airplanes or kangaroos or something, also three or four moms, while two little babies sleep in the center of the room, defenseless, "like little oysters on the half shell," as my friend put it when I described it to her.
Not only that, but there were RHYTHM STICKS. And BALLS.
Why couldn’t those mothers see that this is dangerous? Do they think that the car seat is magically protective on the floor? Do they think the handle is a roll bar? Do they think the other children will remember that the carseat, which looks for all the world like an inanimate object, contains a tiny human being?
Milo, my three-year-old, is pretty boisterous. When the teacher says, "Let’s run around the room!" he doesn’t jog, he goes at full speed, colliding with the walls. I occasionally have to take him out of the class to remind him not to throw things. That’s a normal part of learning to respect others.
But this class was a nightmare. The parents are, reasonably, responsible for our own children’s behavior towards others. If Milo knocks into a one-year-old, the worst that’s going to happen is a bruise. I can make him apologize. I can take him out of the class if I have to. But if he gets overexcited even for a moment — which is hardly unexpected in a class like this — and knocks over one of the carseats, the newborn inside could be seriously hurt.
I had to keep a grip on him the whole time because I was afraid he would run into one of the carseats. When it was time for rhythm sticks, he did throw one once, and I had to take him away. I had to take him out of the room again when it was time for ball-rolling, because I know from experience that he will forget he is not supposed to throw the balls.
We’ve been doing this class for nearly three years, and I have encountered the babies-in-carseats problem before. My strategy has always been to sit right next to the baby. Then I can point the baby out to my children, remind them constantly to be gentle, and also can serve as a human shield if need be. (Why the babies’ mothers do not do this is beyond me, but the fact is, they do not always stay by the carseat.)
Last week’s class was the first time there was more than one baby on the halfshell, and so I could not protect them both at once.
I went up to both moms after class and apologized profusely for the near misses — Milo, by far the most physically energetic kid in class, had run past their baby’s carseats several times. My hope was that (a) they would forgive me for not keeping better control over him (I tried, but recall that I have a new baby myself, who is IN MY ARMS during class) and (b) they would get the hint that the baby was not safe in the carseat in the class.
It gets better. Yesterday’s class, I planned to arrive early to talk to the instructor, who is in all ways excellent and who owns the business. The instructor was not there and a substitute was teaching. One of the two mothers kept her son in arms during the class (whew). But the other mother still had her brand-new little girl in the carseat. When she saw my concern that Milo was going to collide with her child, she said to me, "Don’t worry, I’ll put her where she’ll be safe."
So she got the baby out of the seat and snuggled her in her arms, singing songs to her all through the class.
No wait, that’s not what happened.
Actually, she picked the carseat up by its handle, with the baby still strapped inside, and placed it up on top of a half-wall, four feet high and barely wider than the carseat, that separates the dance room from the coat room. Where it teetered all through the class. I could not look at it without imagining some child throwing a ball at it and knocking it down, baby and all, onto the hard linoleum floor. Or some dancing mother tripping over a dancing toddler and careening headlong onto it. Or my own 6-year-old son trying to peek into it (he could reach it) and knocking her off the wall.
It gets better! On the other side of the wall, just below where the mother left her baby, is a combination boot bench/slide that the children always climb on while their mothers are getting their coats. I forgot about that till class was over and I came out into the anteroom. I sat on the bench to keep children off it. The mother got all her winter gear on and all her toddler’s winter gear on before she came to get the baby.
"Oh, excuse me," I said cheerfully, as I got up. "I was blocking your baby."
"Oh, that’s all right," she said with a friendly smile as she grabbed the handle and took the baby down from her precarious perch. "You’re not in my way."
She still didn’t get it!
After I got back to a computer I composed an e-mail to the instructor/business owner begging her to formulate a "no carseats in the class" safety policy. More when I hear back from her.
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