I might get flamed for this post. I hope I don’t. But I’ll understand if you disagree with me. It’s about parenting styles, and while we all have different ways to parent (and with each of our own kids as well), this little issue burns me up.

At the present moment, I am working very, very, very hard with Miss P to get her to listen to directions and follow people other than Mommy. She is a bundle of energy, an ADD kid waiting to happen, and can get very easily distracted, like most two-year olds. And, like most two-year olds, she isn’t too keen on getting redirected to the task at hand. Behold, the pubic tantrum. The kind that make a mother feel ill-equipped to handle, the kind that make said mother pick up her child and carry said child in to the bathroom for a little time-out and reflection. The kind that make a mother sweat.

Such was the case today at our regular gymnastics class.

The timeline of class is pretty set and goes something like this:

1. Group warm up in a gigantic circle to two songs
2. Classes separate to Preschool and Parent/Tot for stretching
3. Upon completion of stretching, the classes head to certain apparatus to do their ‘thang’

See that first one up there? #1? That’s where we usually begin to veer off track. Miss P does a pretty good job of following along with the warm up…until some other kid starts to go crazy (i.e. flopping on the floor, running away from the group to climb on a balance beam, etc.). Then Miss P becomes a Tasmanian Devil of unfocused, twirling and log-rolling energy that you cannot stop, you can only hope to contain.

I see the temptation, for sure. We have a teeny tiny house with no real room to let loose and run around like maniacs. So the wide open space of the gym seems like Mecca to our kids. But there’s a time and place for running around, and it is not when there is a teacher trying to get a group to focus and follow along. Now, I do my part and wrangle Miss P back to the group, try to get her back on task, with a 80% success rate. But those other kids? The ones that broke free and planted the wacky seed? They’re still at it. And the parent is either no where to be found (if the kid is in preschool classes), or are totally fine with their kids ignoring direction. This? This drives me fucking crazy. Because Miss P sees this other kid doing whatever the hell they want, and can’t understand why she can’t too. Enter public tantrum #1 of 4.

I know, I know. Lighten up a bit, right? I get it - sometimes it’s just not worth the battle and it becomes easier to just let your child wander at will. It’s just that I think there are some parents (the same parents every class) that let their kids run wild because they think it’s a free range type of class. But the structure is there for a reason. Otherwise they’d call it open play. And isn’t the point of all this is to have some instruction from someone who knows what they’re talking about? I do believe that these classes, while fun in every aspect, also present an opportunity for our kids to learn to take direction from someone other than a parent or nanny, and is laying a foundation for school later on.

Should I just relax a little and let Miss P go AWOL? How do you deal with distracted kids?