‘Mom and Me’ classes for all ages — and not just for moms

If kids sometimes get “separation anxiety,” parents can suffer from the opposite. Call it “eager inseparability”: the feeling that you want to do everything with your kid. Today, parents and kids — not to mention other caregivers, grandparents and dads — can team with their toddler or teen for just about any activity. Some of the best have been around for a long time; others would seem to be impossible on their face. Here’s how, and where, to pull them off.

At Gymkhana Gymnastics in Point Breeze’s Factory complex, combining fun and physical activity starts as early as possible. There’s the Toddler Gym, for kids four to 16 months, which includes a “silly pool” with no water but bunches of objects for kids to explore, and the Mini Gym, for 17- to 30-month-olds — all in a separate space with appropriately sized slides, steps, a tree house and other gym equipment.

My Grownup and Me classes, for those two and a half to three and a half years old, are for those “who simply aren’t ready to separate from the parents or their parents aren’t ready to separate from the child, or the child has special needs,” says Liza Barbour, Gymkhana’s administrator.

All the programs offer exercises leading toward gymnastics skills as well as activities building fine and gross motor skills, from manipulating textures and colors on boards to climbing, crawling up and down equipment, log rolling or somersaulting, as well as songs to build a child’s rhythm, movement and stretching habits and that all-important routine.

“That’s a stepping stone into our gymnastics program,” says Barbour. “It’s a nice transition because they have their adult there for guidance, but they are starting to use the cycle of equipment.”

Parent and kid programs at the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh have long served as the school-before-school, the school-after-school and even school-when-there-is-no-school — but don’t tell your kids.

“Our programs are purposeful and designed toward the development stage of the children,” says Mary Beth Parks, coordinator of children’s services. “They help children with school readiness [and] are intentionally designed to enhance literacy skills, in a fun, interactive, engaging manner. We hope to create life-long learning.”

A literate life begins for the youngest kids with Baby and Me’s 20- to 30-minute programs of hearing (and moving to) nursery rhymes and stories. Terrific Tales for Toddlers, for kids 18-36 months plus their grownups, are next. Then it’s time for the Family PlayShop, which offers one-on-one sessions for kids, their guardians and siblings up to age 4 (although they can be as young as 6 months). Across four to five weeks, for one hour per week, a librarian and a community-resource professional can answer questions about your own child’s needs and offer developmentally appropriate materials, toys and activities.

There are other pre-K programs for kids 3-5 years old and their caregivers, all designed to build language and listening skills, curiosity, imagination and self-image. KinderPrep gets kids learning topics covered under the Pennsylvania Learning Standards — called the Common Core — while Family Study Buddies prepares kids for good homework habits. The Imagination Builders: Building Program turns building blocks into tools for developing motor, math and communication skills.

Just next door at the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, three- and four-year-olds can go on the museums’ PreSchool Play Dates with their folks. They include art making and games right inside museum galleries.

These 90-minute programs have a different theme each time, in a different gallery each week. The summer session of Play Date starts in June.

“It’s a great way to introduce your child to what it means to be in a museum,” says Marilyn M. Russell, curator of education for the Carnegie Museum of Art.  The classes tell kids what they need to notice — colors and shapes — and helps them make up stories about what they see.

For parents who want to do more heavy lifting — well, light lifting anyway — there are Mommy and Me yoga classes in several places. At Shining Light in Lawrenceville, kids from six weeks to three years old join their moms for classes. They can just drop in or buy more classes at a discount.

Participants experience “a little bit of yoga for babies, a little bit of yoga for moms, a lot of good social activities for both,” says owner Deena Blumenfeld. The average of 45 minutes of physical activity each hour helps “to put moms’ bodies back together after childbirth. It’s geared toward beginners, so you do not have to have any yoga courses. It’s an open class, a fun class, a class that works on flexibility — not just on flexibility in our bodies but on our emotional make-up.”

Moms have their babies in their laps or arms during some positions. Other exercises involve moving the legs of babies to songs. Repetition is really important for children, so they learn what to expect, says Blumenfeld. “We try to keep the pace steady so that everyone gets something out of it. About the third or fourth week of class, the babies are, ‘Ah, I know what is coming next.’

“If the baby doesn’t seem to be having fun,” she adds, “or sleeps the whole way through class, that’s okay — maybe they’ll get to yoga next week.”

The first class costs $10, and future classes cost $15 each. Moms and kids don’t have to come to consecutive classes. Some pre-natal yoga students even come back to finish their classes as moms.

At two of Schoolhouse Yoga‘s four locations, Squirrel Hill and the North Hills, the Mommy and Me Yoga classes have similar prices and deals. Owner Leta Koontz says her classes are open to moms with infants to five year olds.

“The mothers may actually hold the baby and use the baby as a weight,” says Koontz. Kids often enjoy being placed on a body part that has to move as part of a yoga exercise, she adds; the older kids like assisting mom with a pose or a stretch: “The kids love crawling on their moms and ‘helping’ them.”.

“If you’re looking for a really relaxing, quiet yoga class, you should probably get a babysitter,” she concludes. “But if you want to have fun with your kids and meet other moms — they really love the class.”

Photographs by John Altdorfer.