Way back in January or February, or whenever it was, registering for Suzuki camp the first week in August seemed like a fine thing to do. If I was even pregnant yet, I was working with the tenuous nature of that pregnancy. That is to say, whether I would still be pregnant in August was an open question and nothing I would/could/should
really plan around. Even so—I figured it would be okay. Just an hour and a half each day for five days, and then all Isaac’s prerequisites for starting Suzuki piano lessons would be complete. Any thought of heat I may have had would have seemed pleasantly abstract looked at from the vantage point of sleet and snow. Also—the alternative was taking a several week course, doing a series of separate lesson observations, and a parent orientation night. Suzuki camp would take of all that in one fell swoop! That way, when Isaac turned four this October, he would have all his ducks in a row and be able to start piano whenever a teacher became available.
I mention all this preemptively in response to your query as to how I could be so STUPID as to try this business while 29 weeks pregnant during a heat wave. I didn’t know I would be this pregnant and I certainly didn’t know that the heat indices would pick this particular week to soar into the triple digits!
That being said, it was stupid in that it was totally hot and exhausting and I came home every day feeling like I had been run over by a train. (If you’re not familiar with Suzuki, the parent is closely involved in it, and often even learns the instrument at the same time as the student… meaning I couldn’t delegate this to a babysitter.) I did at least have the foresight to line up babysitting such that I could come home and go comatose in the A/C for the rest of the afternoon.
The other factor I didn’t really foresee, and how could I have, was how Isaac would take to it. You never know with these things. We’ve had a bad run lately in that his art class in June was pretty hellish—I mean, his non-cooperation and generally miserable behavior during the enriching experience left a lot to be desired. On the other hand, he loved his Dalcroze dance and music class all of July and I’m so glad we did that. So—you can’t predict really what all the factors will be and whether such an experience will be good or ill.
But, basically, he hated Suzuki Camp. Most of it, anyway, and he made it incredibly miserable for me also. It’s cold comfort that I was with a cadre of other mothers, mostly of boys, who also suffered through the week with squirming and overall stunningly ill-behaved children. That this sort of thing is normal and age-appropriate doesn’t really make it any easier to deal with.
Each day was in three half-hour segments. 1) Suzuki method, an okay but occasionally dull segment more directed to the parents, but some singing and clapping that seemed workable for the kids also; too much standing up and sitting down in a hot room for me; 2) Dalcroze, running around and dancing to piano music in a blissfully air conditioned dance studio while parents sat down in comfort; 3) a concert, back in the hot room, in which children were exposed to several different instruments.
For me the day broke down as basically 1) okay, so-so; 2) great; 3) pure hell. Although I should say that as the week wore on the pure hell part spread and colonized the others. Yesterday Isaac was horrible even in Dalcroze, where it’s mostly running around and he loves the teacher.
Some of the kids (note: all girls) could deal with this structure well. They could sing variations on Twinkle until the cows came home and would earnestly try to touch their little heads and shoulders and so forth as instructed. A few of the girls couldn’t and I didn’t see one boy who could. People have always told me that “boys are different” and I can confirm that it’s true. Sitting still and being talked to does not seem to work for boys. So what did Isaac (and the other non-cooperators) do instead?
Go limp and lie on the floor; when picked up, behave as rag doll, so floppy that even holding him on my lap was a challenge
Make a scene, demand to know what it’s taking so long, is it all done yet?? Etc.
Make a different scene along the lines of “where’s MY violin? When is MY turn to play?”
Run away, far away out of the room and down the hall—particularly effective when mom is great with child
Bother others; get in their personal space; crawl over them; touch them; shove them; be a nuisance; ignore the teacher’s repeated requests/commands to stop it
Yesterday in the concert, Isaac was really exceptionally bad. Trying to escape. Not listening. Whining. Struggling on my lap. Wandering away. And we were supposed to perform with our class! Our little Twinkle variation routine. The thing that made my head almost explode in frustration (granted I was hot and tired too) was that I could not come up with any sort of punishment or deterrent that would fit the crime. I had to reject my first idea—strangulation—on the grounds that there were too many witnesses. I had to reject my second idea because I didn’t have a hickory switch and there was not a woodshed for miles. So that left me really with taking him out of there—which made me furious because it was exactly what he wanted! He was being horrible IN ORDER to be dragged or carted out of there and tossed into the car and driven home. That was his goal. In the end, because he was disrupting others (although the atmosphere was brimming with the background noise of fifty preschoolers), I did haul him out a few minutes before the ordeal was really over.
And I lectured him the whole way home. Pointless, I know. He has the attention span of a gnat and much like yelling at a dog who pooped on the floor in the middle of the night and has now completely forgotten about it. But I needed to vent. I wanted to say in effect, “Why do I bother? Why do I bother trying to enrich your life? Why don’t I just plop you down in front of Thomas videos all day and let your brain rot away on its stem? You’d be happier and I’d be happier!” I know—this whole line of thinking is one big cliché about the thanklessness of being a parent. It’s been flogged to death since the beginning of human history.
Okay.
Silver linings. He wants to play the violin now. I mean—he really seems insistent on this point. I myself was totally charmed by the TINY CELLOS the tiny little people were playing, and their tiny footstools. I said to Isaac, “How would you like to learn to play the cello?” and he replied angrily, “I already know how to play the cello!” (Must be a past life regression thing. Or just the same arrogance that had him also recently insisting that he already knows how to write. Yes, but not in a way that others can READ it…) But all week, seeing the little kids with their violin cases and their bows and all the trappings, he just really was upset that he did not have one too. We’ll see how it goes. He can’t really start lessons this fall anyway, because too much transition is going on here as it is. But in January when the second semester starts, we’ll see if he still feels that way. If so, they start violin lessons on a little box with a stick glued on to it. Only after it really seems to be a go do you actually buy or rent a tiny violin. (One mom I talked to got theirs on eBay for 99 cents!)
Another silver lining—seeing Isaac belt out Twinkle Twinkle with ten other preschoolers… he reminded me of that scene in Casa Blanca where all the French patrons in the bar stand up and sing the Marseillaise with a glorious mixture of defiance and pride. Little fist keeping time, head bobbing, and voice at full volume. It’s a vision that sort of makes all the suffering worth it.
Another silver lining—getting up and getting there every day did set a nice steady rhythm to the week. He enjoyed feeling like a school boy, wearing his back pack (full of toys) and feeling at home in the place. He took to it, sort of, in some ways. I said something along the lines of “Well, at least this is good practice for when you go to school in a couple weeks.” And replied, slightly annoyed at my dimness, “But the ZUCCHINI CAMP IS my school!”
No, I’m happy to say, it’s not.