Life Lessons from The Little Gym

My first job 'real' job (translation=full-time, with benefits) was with The Little Gym. It was here where I taught kids for 45 hours a week, yet I really learned a lot from the kids which helped form my outlook on life. The Little Gym is a non-competitive gymnastics based training program for kids ages 6 months old through 12 years old. I mainly worked with the 6 month olds-5 year olds.

I can't tell you how much I loved hearing those little ones call me Miss Karen for the first time, because they were just learning to speak, or seeing them take their first steps in the gym after giving their parents exercises to work on at home or hearing them laugh after doing a back flip over the mats with a big 'ta-da' finish! My heart always swelled seeing them succeed. It makes me wonder how much more intense that feeling will be when it's my own child doing those things.

As Instructors, we were trained to give specific positive feedback to the kids when they completed an activity. This meant something like, "That was a great cartwheel, Sara. I really liked how you kept your arms straight!" Sounds cheesy, right, but think about carrying that over into the 'big people' world. We get lazy in expressing ourselves and say things like, 'Good job' which is a blanket phrase, but not specific. Sometimes it's nice to hear specific positive feedback and it's always great to give it as it makes you think a bit more about what you're saying.


One thing I had to do with the babies is force them to try something new, like a backflip. It's not natural for a child to go backwards over something so there were often tears...the first time. Once they did it and saw how much fun it was, they wanted to do it again and again and again. Life lesson learned--be willing to try everything at least once, because you just may like it. Damn! Mom was right.

We always finished each class with bubbles. It was so fun to hear the kids say "bubbles? bubbles?" when the class was closing. They knew what was coming. Why use bubbles? They're slow enough for the kids to track with their eyes and try to catch on their fingers, toes, heads, whatever. They helped develop eye-hand coordination. Oh yeah, they were fun too! This helps me remember to try to find fun ways to learn new things. Who wouldn't want to play with bubbles each day? ;)

I think having such a fun job as my first 'real job' really helped set a precedent for what I looked for in future jobs. Even though I'm no longer working in the recreation field (I had 3 jobs in that area), I'm still having fun with what I'm doing. It's a priority for me. I'm really looking forward to starting the new job and being able to have some creative freedom in planning events and giving them my own taste of fun.