This Particular Wednesday

I was teaching babies today. (Sorry but all the best stories are from my baby classes.)

One of the mothers in the class had her two kids at the pool with her. Their presence was not new, occasionally they come along, however normally the stay in the crèche area we have, providing parents like her free child care during the lessons.

But on this particularly Wednesday her two boys were being especially infuriating and all but demanded to be allowed to watch the lesson from beside the pool. Their mum, clearly sick of arguing with them, reluctantly agreed. The boys were sitting on the bench next to the pool and she got in with her youngest baby.

For the first five minutes, everything was fine. The two boys sat nicely on the edge, watching the class, and their mum was happy, glancing over every now and then to check on them.

About seven minutes into the lesson, the boys got a little antsy. Their mother’s frustration grew and bubbled over until about half way through the lesson she snapped. With absolutely no warning, their mum just said to me, “here, can you take him?” and then without waiting for my reply, she just handed me her baby and climbed out of the pool to scold her other children.

This was actually super awesome, though, despite my initial reaction of freaking out! I love babies and I got to play with one for a few minutes! Sounds super lame but it was awesome.

So, I continued to teach my class, trying to talk and sing whilst also demonstrating everything with this child in my arms. It was actually really useful because the other parents in the class saw how I held and manipulated the child and commented saying things like, “Wow, that's so much more comfortable,” and “that makes so much more sense!”

Holding children seems so simple, and as a teacher it’s super difficult to know whether the parents are comfortable or not, because from the outside it looks fine.

When the mother eventually came back, and her boys were looking thoroughly grumpy and told-off, I had to surrender her child back to her and I was a little sad.

The rest of the lesson continued on as normal, but that one mother and I had a running bet going on about how long it would take for one of her other children to fall into the pool! J

Answer: Well, technically they didn't fall in, but in the last few minutes one of them got super close.