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Thursday, September 08, 2005

First Semester

I was going to write earlier, but I had to wait for my blood sugar to settle. School is in session and I took Felix to his first music "class" today. I harbor no delusions that he will learn anything or become any sort of prodigy while sitting on a blue carpet surrounded by other infants and adult women singing "Edelweiss." He needs to socialize and when I say "he," I suspect I am really talking about myself. For his part, Felix loved music class. Anything with bubbles, music and a ceiling fan is bound to go over well.

But I have to say, while I was waving my kid around, mouthing the lyrics to "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" I couldn't help but wonder if they picked a song off the White Album to placate parents. Or perhaps it's for the teachers. This is apocryphal, but I did once hear that at one of the Disney theme parks insanity was such an occupational hazard of working the ride that plays "It's a Small World" over and over again that the management had to make the shifts very short and rotate employees frequently.

It must be a strange thing to teach these music classes- or any infant class for that matter. They have to perform for students who have very limited means by which they can demonstrate appreciation and the chances of the class content making the parents and caregivers feel like jumping out the window are pretty high. They must possess a certain ineffable kid charisma that doesn't grate on adults, and on top of these personality requirements, they need to be able to sing and play an assortment of musical instruments while encouraging little hands to grab them. It's quite a skill set, and I've never met anyone (before today) who has it.

But then again, it is hard to teach adults about children, too. The wonderful birth class I took, taught by someone with great compassion and intelligence, was informative and taught us how to be flexible and prepared, until a substitute teacher showed up for one lesson and put the fear of God into everyone. We went from being reasonable people to paranoid folks when the sub told us that epidurals resulted in children who never bond with their parents and the use of any narcotic painkillers created future drug addicts, according to a Swedish study she thought she remembered reading somewhere. The magic of the class was in the teacher, not the information.

And just indulge me for a moment while I revisit the horror, the horror that was CPR class. The teacher is someone who is clearly afraid of everything, and who embraced thinking about these fears all the time professionally as a means of dealing with her terror. This is a woman who still co-sleeps with her ten-year-old ("Now I would encourage early promiscuity") on a hard mat, and who will teach the Heimlich maneuver to any parent at whose house her kid might play. Unfortunately, her version of total-immersion, face-your-fears self-therapy makes for a terrible class, which one leaves trembling, afraid of the day one's child might eat anything more solid than squashed peaches and pulverized whatnots. The angst is receding, but I was relieved to know I wasn't alone in being frightened. By coincidence two of my sisters-in-law took the same class with the same woman two years ago and came away similarly freaked and mad.

At any rate, that was just a one-off. The music class will go on for weeks, and soon Felix and I will hit the pool together for some sort of infant swimming scenario, about which I have concerns of the bathing suit variety. The hope is that I will learn how to be responsible with him in the water and he will, in turn, not be too afraid of it. It seems so funny that education can start so early but I think one always feels simultaneously eager for the kid to start learning and uncomfortable that things are happening too fast.

While walking the dog this morning, a family toddled past me. The little boy was wearing brand new shades, backpack, sneakers and baseball cap. His father stooped beside him, holding a camcorder at kid's eye level, and his mother walked a pace or two ahead saying: "Who's my little kindergartener?"

posted by Elise at 12:49 PM