Gymboree is too clean and safe

So we've started going to Gymboree.

For the uninitiated, Gymboree is an indoor crazy playground with loads of soft fun toys and sturdy slides and everything is in primary colors. Every two weeks they switch up the whole place, emphasizing some physical skill kids can acquire by messing around on the equipment. There are balls everywhere, and there are one-hour "classes" in which a teacher (ours is a cute lady named "Teacher Julie") goes through a series of activities with the parents and kids.




During the classes, the teacher sings a bunch of songs, which is nice because Teacher Julie has a lovely voice and Babycakes is developing a crush on her. And the parents are supposed to sing along, which, because I'm new, I don't. I feel the same way I used to when I'd visit a Catholic church and they'd all be singing various tunes throughout the service, and I'd always be startled when the crowd around me piped up with some new religious ditty and I had no idea how to sing along.

So anyway, yesterday I took Babycakes to the Free Play time at our Gymboree, so she could mess around on the equipment for longer than an hour, and so that she and I could kind of get our bearings a little better. As it is, for the two classes we've already attended, everyone is SO ACTIVE and popping bubbles and dicking around with a parachute and sliding down slides and jumping on a TRAMPOLINE for pete's sake, that my child and I have kind of sat off to the side, mute and amazed and the crowd's energy. We've been like a couple of "squares" at Woodstock.

I've tried putting Babycakes on the spinning parachute or clapping her hands to the music as Teacher Julie guides us to do, and she's always looking at me with a quizzical expression, like, "Why, mama? WHY?"

So at Free Play, she really opened up and started to mess around on the equipment, climbing on various wooden play structures and watching older kids, picking up cues from their ball-throwing, hollering good-time behavior. It was all good. She even climbed up on two separate play structures, weaving her little body in among the railings and seemingly having a good time exploring the place.

I was so proud of her, thinking in an overly prideful manner, "She's really GOOD AT Gymboree! My nine-month-old child is a Gymboree MASTER! She's so advanced and superior as she climbs on this equipment, and I'm doing more to develop my child's brain and body than probably, oh, say, 99% of parents around the WORLD!"

Then, thank goodness, I got ahold of my haughty self, and thought, "Wait. It's Gymboree." It seems that what I'm actually teaching my child here is that the world is a big safe play gym and you can just crawl on anything and there will be pads so that you don't bump your head. Yeah, everything is in primary colors and you never have to ask permission before you grab a bunch of Wiffle Balls and stick them in your mouth. It's a big, sanitized child-centric universe, so rock on with your bad self while I root you on!

I mean, I'm all for a big indoor party, but instead of Gymboree, I kind of fancy throwing her into the backyard and letting her make her own Gymboree. Perhaps she would invent tools, not unlike our primate cousin, the chimpanzee. Perhaps she will get dirty, and possibly ingest various weeds and insects. Perhaps she will get scratched on the bark of the redwood trees, or the thorns on the roses. Perhaps she will dig a big fat hole and bury important things without our knowledge.

But anyway, we have a good time at Gymboree, but I don't want to get addicted to the Gymboree experience, which it seems completely possible to do (Did I mention how much we like Teacher Julie?). Instead, I want to take cues from it and teach her how to be creative in the outside world, how to squeeze her body between branches, how to pick a flower without cutting her hands, and how to fend off a raccoon -- all skills available for free in our backyard.