My son has been going to gymnastics class once per week for about six months. I should note that my son told me several times that it was, "FIVE months", a time-frame which he has no concept of, but he was emphatic about it, so maybe he's right.
The requirement to be in the class is that the child be three-years-old, and what with me being the rule-follower that I am, I was rather messy when I wrote in his birth month because he was two months shy of his third birthday when he started.
He's done well in class, although he has trouble listening and sometimes he can't focus on the activities at hand because he's too excited or tired or who knows what other reason. I hear from the instructor that this is common for younger children in their first class.
I'd also been wanting to get my daughter into the class, but at only two-and-a-third, she's nowhere close to the three year requirement. That didn't stop me from asking the teacher though. One of the advantages on the coincidence side of things is that one of my daughter's teachers happens to be there in the lobby with me during my son's class. This is because she nanny's one of the students in our class. One day about two months after we started taking the class she showed up to bring the daughter to take the class. Ever since then, it's been a great hour to catch up on my children's education with our teacher while my son gets out excess energy in the gym.
But back to the advantage of that coincidence...when I asked about my daughter having a trial class, our teacher looked over and told our gymnastics instructor that, "I'm her teacher and I can tell you she'll most likely be more focused than her brother in class." With that recommendation, we had the go ahead to bring my daughter to a trial class today.
On the ride there I built up to my son the importance of helping his sister in class because she was coming for the first time. Bad idea. My son's idea of, "help" is mostly of the chasing and tackling sort. My daughter had no anxiety at all (probably because her brother was there) and was very interested in listening to and following the instructor's directions.
I had to pull my son out of the class and have a discussion with him to get him focused on the teacher and not his sister. I do think he was very excited to have her in class, but he wasn't showing it in a positive way. When he went back to the class, things changed. First, the threat of pulling him out of the remaining class if he didn't listen to the teacher got through and he knew it wasn't an empty threat. Second, it gave my daughter time to orient on the teacher and not her brother and third, the teacher came up with a plan: he changed the lineup of the children so that my two were separated as far apart in the class as possible.
From that point on, it was great. I was so impressed with my daughter in how well she listened and how easily she managed the tasks set to her in class. I was given the go ahead to bring her back on a regular basis. Tuesday afternoons are now going to be fun for both children.
The Big Boy Update and Tiny Girl Chronicles: As detailed above, both of my children did well in their first gymnastics class together today after an initially rocky start. I was proud of both of them for doing so well together in such an exciting and physical time.
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