Is It Just Me, Or Are Baby Groups a Bit Naff?

Alice West - 24 Mar 16

Today, I sang and performed the actions to Incey Wincey spider for what feels like the millionth time since bringing a small human into the world, and I was so BORED. Shortly after this, I zoned out and resurfaced halfway through Old MacDonald Had a Farm. Little T had by this point turned her back to the circle and found something to play with on the floor, equally nonplussed by the same, tired old nursery rhyme routine, no doubt.

While I’m well aware that it’s not all about me – little T tends to enjoy herself no matter what group she pitches up at of a Wednesday morning – I can’t help wishing that there were some COOL baby groups out there. Where everyone has fun, where everyone can relax a bit – and where it’s not all quite so… lame.

Now don’t get me wrong; it’s wonderful to have these little havens on our doorstep and I’m utterly spoiled where I live for choice of baby activities. For every retro (and not in a good way) baby group we’ve been to, there’s been a really great one to make up for it. In the fuzzy-headed early months just as much as today, a baby group penned into the diary can be a shining beacon in the mother’s week. Its benefits are manifold:

• A reason to both be dressed, breakfasted and relatively clean by a certain time in the morning
• New faces, toys, experiences for your child. Fresh air
• New faces, toys, experiences for Mama. Fresh air
• A fixed location and time to meet friends, especially useful when they get to the age where you can’t plonk them down in their car seats and have a natter while they sleep
• The opportunity to gossip between songs / lunges / downward dogs
• A chance to tire out the little rascals before their lunchtime nap
• Coffee
• Biscuits
• Tea
• Cake
• Squash
• Etc

Suffice to say I’m definitely a fan of baby groups. But am I the only one who finds some of them a bit… cringe? Did I miss a module in the antenatal course where you’re taught to tolerate nursery rhymes? Did I skip the chapter where you learn to sing them all without laughing – and know all those complicated signs and actions?

I found myself lolloping in a circle around a dusty village hall one morning a couple of weeks ago, baby in arms, as we sang a very ropey rendition of Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush, led by an enthusiastic but utterly tone-deaf lady in socks-and-sandals. And I had an epiphany: What am I doing? What the actual f**k is happening here right now?

Thank goodness I had a friend with me for vital eyeroll-exchanges, otherwise I might’ve struggled to believe it had really happened at all.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find that once you’ve sung nursery rhymes sitting next to someone you’ve never met before, it’s somehow harder to strike up a conversation and be normal afterwards. The same goes for doing anything that involves moving en masse in a circular formation. Feels a bit cult-like, no?

It’s hard in these situations to know whether the person sitting next to you is an ally – a fellow imposter – or someone who genuinely loves this shit and has a whole stack of nursery rhyme CDs in the car. Do we need a secret handshake? An ever-so-slightly raised middle finger during the actions to the totally sexist The Wheels on the Bus? (Mummies chat or say ‘Don’t Do That’ while Daddies snooze or rustle the papers, apparently.)

I daydreamed last week about a baby class where we all sit around and groove and shake rattles and bang drums to Motown music. Or hammer away at cowbells to old school hip hip, and experiment with ‘baby breakdancing’ (crawling) on a matted floor. I can’t help but feel that this would be just as great fun for the babies, but a little less naff for the mums.

We’ll have to make to with our 5pm kitchen discos and morning karaokes for now, and I’ll work on that secret handshake…

Alice West

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