I took Gavin for his trial gym class at Kizsports yesterday. 

In short, it was disasterous.

Well, not quite as disasterous as Gymboree since we managed to salvage the situation with a bit of fun at playland.

We arrived early and one of the staff manning the reception lead us to the gym room.  The parents and children from the previous class were still inside so the room so perhaps it brought flash backs of A’s party in Gavin’s mind because he immediately did not want to go in.  When I persisted and walked in, his fussing turned into crying.

I took him back out and let him play on a car ride for a while as I wondered how I was going to get him back into the room without the howling.  Shortly after, the parents and children from the previous class started clearing the room leaving behind only one girl and her mother.  I decided to try again. 

Spying a ball in the room, I asked Gavin if he would like to play with it.  He nodded.  We went back into the room and he started to explore, albeit cautiously.  He was okay until the instructor called everyone (which was the girl and her mother, Gavin and me) to form a circle.  She put on some music and sang songs, but Gavin didn’t want anything to do with it.

Despite enticing him with Toby and Percy (two Thomas and Friends trains that Jack had given him as a souvenir from his trip down to Singapore), he still wanted to leave the room.  Not wanting him to leave Kizsports with a bad memory of the place (there are only so many of these playschools around so I can’t have him hating all of them or we’ll have no where to go) I managed to coax him into playing at Playland - which is basically like a groovy indoor playground. 

Gavin discovered the ball pit where he sat for large part of the time we were in there.  It was only after watching some kids come down the slide that I could convince him to leave the ball pit to explore the rest of the playground.  It was about then that I began to realise my age when my knees started hurting from crawling through the tunnels and I struggled to keep up with my toddler. 

Although it was fun reliving my childhood, it was also thoroughly exhausting.  I’m sure I would have been thrilled to bits playing in an environment like Playland as a child, but doing so as an adult is a completely different experience altogether.  On a positive note, by the time we left, Gavin seemed in better spirits and he agreed to come back to Kizsports again in future.

It seems strange that Gavin can be so sociable in most scenarios - he’s friendly with adults and kids.  He loves music and dancing.  He likes to play at the playground and similar structures.  And yet, he hates going to gym class.  The theory is that he finds the environment threatening with its large congregation of kids with their parents.  The instructor’s recommendation is for us to come a little earlier the next time so he can familiarise with the room before it starts to fill up with other children and parents.

Hubby suggested I let Gavin play at Playland before attending his next gym class.  The other suggestion was for Gavin to go with another child that he is familiar with.  My friend CC and her daughter will be back in Malaysia in September and she was planning to take her daughter to the music classes.  Perhaps Gavin will more keen to attend class with more familiar faces for company?

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