Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Why lessons for a two year old?

Last post,  I said offhandedly...
 
D. no more swim or music lesson obligations to get kids to. Yes, swim lessons (bad idea) and music lessons (great idea) for a 2 yo. They seemed like such a good idea during sign-up.
 
Someone asked... 
 
Just out of curiosity, what made swim lessons so much worse than piano lessons? (thanks)
 I replied...
 
PUI prof said...
Anon Tues 3:26- Someone from church offers music lessons for littl'uns. We've always thought that we didn't want to be "those" overscheduling parents. However, hub and I are both musically stunted due to childhoods with no musical training. So we were probably overcompensating when we signed him up for music class. Well, the music class is masterfully run- a lot of activity, a lot of variety and fun music we can use at home "pick up toys, pick up toys, now's the time to pick up tooooys". Boy asks if it's Tuesday yet, Tuesday yet, Tuesday yet, because he LOVES music class. Its also paid off. Dude's got quite a rendition of "Take me out to the Ball Game" and "Home on the Range". He matches pitch very nicely. Swim lessons were instigated because last summer our normally fearless child seemed terrified of the water. The swim lessons were clearly designed for kids older than Boy, becuase they did not take his two-year-old millisecond attention span into mind. OK, now swim on your back- kicking- for another lap, another lap, another lap, another lap. He grew bored with it very easily, for the end goal was to get the kids to do a formal front crawl. Moreover, it was in a lap pool, which is pretty darn cold if you have the surface/ volume ratio of a 30-pound two-footer. He, of course, can't do a front crawl from those five lessons, but we did get want we wanted...he's not afraid of water. So now we have a kid fearless around water who can't swim. Anybody else see a problem with that?

1 comment:

  1. (I'm the anon you replied to). Ah, so it had to do with how they were ran... good to know. As I enjoy both swimming and music, I anticipate that should I eventually have tikes of my own, I might enroll them in either or both of the two activities at some age. I thought the problem may have been something more fundamental that made them better or worse for a 2 year old. And naively, I had thought the physical activity of swimming would be more fun for the energetic and short attention-spanned, while I was imagining tedious practice on an instrument for "music lessons"... Lesson learned. Horizon broadened. Thanks again!

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