Great Tips from The Little Gym

As I've mentioned before, I juggle two jobs: mom & gym manager. Things that I've learned as a mom have definitely come in handy at the gym and vice versa.

Here are some tips and parent wisdom I've gathered along the way. Most of it comes directly from the curriculum for The Little Gym's parent/child classes. It's good stuff.

1. Stability leads to agility.  Though not every child is blessed with the genes and grace of a ballerina, you can improve on one's natural coordination. Activities that promote climbing, rotating, and all 4-limb weight bearing help to enhance core strength. Once a child has improved stability and balance, he/she can then tackle more challenging movements, like quickly changing direction, cartwheeling, and various jumps.
2. Don't over-react when your child has a fall. Most often, the fall caused the child to feel scared rather than feel hurt. Your calm demeanor and loving hugs are usually the perfect medicine.
3. Kids can learn how to share, take turns, and communicate their needs at a very young age. Participation in group classes, along with attentive parent involvement, helps to make your young toddler "head of the class" in peer interactions. I have seen countless examples of sharing and turn taking with kids as young as 14 months. And two year olds who can cope with situations better because of this early start.
4. Music is a universally great teaching tool. We have plenty of jingles at the gym and they all work! Babies, toddlers, and preschool-aged children love to move & groove to music and it also captures their attention whereas just speaking something may not. With just a little bit of effort, parents can create fun jingles to get kids to follow directions.

Best of luck to you parents! I hope to see you soon at The Little Gym.

Melissa

Impossible Impassable August

Our summer schedule is not going as I planned. But I am stubbornly unwilling to say that I am fully to blame. We lost our summer babysitter about a week and a half sooner than we had hoped. So even our best-laid plans and beautiful color coded Google calendar (accessible on my smartphone) were of no use anymore.

I was more than 30 minutes late to pick up my older sons from vacation Bible school. Not once but twice. That is not acceptable. Luckily, I volunteer there every year and know the camp director so she was willing to keep an eye on my boys until I could get there. I hope that the money I'm making at work is enough to pay for their psychiatrist bills later. 

The cavalry is on the way. My mother-in-law is coming in for a week. Hallelujah!  My husband bribed her with a few rounds of golf (and seeing her 3 beautiful grandsons of course). This is great--- now I don't have to be the bad mom who cancels Lego camp because carpooling is impossible. I might actually come out of this looking pretty good. Lego camp is still on, grandma is visiting, and we can actually get to the county fair too. As a reward for my greatness, I made delicious peanut butter cookies.