Friday, January 07, 2005

Parenting Class

We went to a parenting class last night, for babies 0 - 6 months. The class was about two minutes of instruction and an hour of singing to our babies. I found the whole thing kind of freaky and disturbing and lame. I think one of two things are going on here:
* I've always wanted to be "cool", too-cool-for-school, the kind of guy who cultivates an "I'm bored with everything" attitude. Campfire songs are lame, organized social events are lame, everything's lame. Now that I'm a father, maybe this is a part of me I have to kill.
* Maybe it really was lame. I looked around: of the twenty or so babies in the class, maybe one or two seemed to enjoy and respond to being sung to. It's as if even the babies thought it was lame. Hey, who knows? Maybe we become too-cool-for-school as a sort of reaction to all this toucy-feely pap we're fed as children.
What's going on here? I'm some kind of pro-Ferber anti-singing parent? Maybe I should change the name of this blog to fathercurmudgeon.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jude used to go to a Mommy & Me class with Becca but found it lame for a number of reasons--too long, bad time (9:30am == nap time), and she wasn't really into the activities. Now she's going to a Gymboree class nearby, it's shorter, at a better time, and most importantly I think Becca is old enough to respond in a way that keeps *Jude* interested. Lots of squealing and stuff during the parachutes.

It's not as social between moms, either, which Jude likes, as she is a nerd like I.

m.

Anonymous said...

We didn't really go to any parenting classes, though we did read a bunch of books, separate issue.

Anyway, one bit of advice we got from a nurse was to actually talk with Luc about things that we were going through emotionally. With Luc, the delivery in particular was pretty scary, so we talked to him about that and how it all came out okay, even though we were really scared. It was a little strange, and I didn't do it often, but those few times that I did it I was really happy I had.

- Brett