This feels so trivial to me, but it eats at me a couple of days a week and I don't know what to do...
One of the playgroups we started going to this autumn is at what I can best call an outdoor play place. It is a farm type thing, with fenced goats, free roaming chickens (may be they are or hens, or roosters, I have no idea the difference
![Tongue :P](https://smiley.babywhispererforums.com/Smileys/classic/tongue.gif)
), a sandpit, a wooden pirate ship climbing frame, a bunny/guinea pig hutch, a small artificial pond with wooden rafts, and a very large trampoline. It's really good and DS absolutely LOVES the idea of the place. He is mad over goats and would feed them for hours, he loves nothing more than to run and chase birds, and apparently chickens qualify (anything that will run away in circles while he runs after them, pigeons are best!), and this trampoline is a mad obsession. So it is ideal.
One of my friends goes, and there I have met two other women there who speak English; due to other commitments this is the only day of the week when I can see these woman and their kids. One of them is an American/Canadian family and so fluent in English, one boy a bit younger than DS and one a bit older.
So the first few weeks I thought this place was amazing and looked forward to going every Tuesday. But I have not gone back in ages and can't decide what to do. The issues are minor but a big deal to me....most weeks we are not allowed to feed the goats. No idea why - the playgroup leader just says "today we are not allowed to feed the goats" and my good friend who is fluent in German has not been able to get an explanation or answer from her so it's not a language barrier for me. I have been told (three times now, the third time it was not a nice "telling") that DS is not allowed to chase the chickens. I guess I understand - but the reason given is not for the safety/protection/well being of the chickens but because one of the chickens is a bit mean and might turn on DS and attack him. I kinda feel that knowing that, if I choose to let him take the risk, it should be my choice, no? We are sometimes allowed to go into the goat pen and wander in the fields with the goats, pet them, etc, but other times not - it is at the whim of the group leader. Ok, that's fine, but we are there for 2 hours and she will randomly open the door and if you don't get inside *right then* then you can't go in at all, and are stuck watching the other kids inside the goat pen...when in there she says "ok time to get out" and gets angry if we all don't go *right then* (so a toddler who is in the middle of petting a goat has to be grabbed and dragged out the door, iyswim). We get to go to the hen house and collect the eggs they have laid but she chooses certain kids to go into the hutch and pick the eggs (it's a small space not room for 5 kids) but she lets a couple of LOs in to collect 15 eggs while the other kids have to watch and hope for next week....was an issue twice with my DS and now he won't even go over to watch the eggs get collected (which bothers her because when she annoucnes egg collecting time he should follow) and I have seen some LOs go away in tears. Like, can each child not get in, find one egg, put it in the basket and then get out and let another child go in and look for one??
My DS really just wants to jump on the trampoline (seeing as he can not feed the goats, collect the eggs or chase the chickens...) and fortunately this is okay. When we arrive e he sits down and takes off his own socks and shoes and goes right to it. But after 20 minutes or so the leader starts song time and insists that he get down and join her. My DS hates song time on the best of days but hers is so utterly boring and pathetic that it makes me cringe. So I have to get onto the trampoline, drag him off screaming and crying, battle him to get shoes and socks on with a circle of 15 mothers and toddlers watching me (she will not start song time until we are all there - I feel tears in my eyes as I type with remembering how embarassed and angry I have been with a group of 15 women standing staring at me and mumbling to each other while I drag my screaming child off of a trampoline and pin him down to put his shoes on
![Embarrassed :-[](https://smiley.babywhispererforums.com/Smileys/classic/embarrassed.gif)
) and then force him to stand around for 15 minutes of song time when all he can see are chickens, goats, bobby cars, sandboxes, and a trampoline. If he wanders off to go to the sandbox during song time, she makes me bring him back because other kids might see him and want to go to it as well. The thing is, we do song time RIGHT in the middle of all of this stuff, outside, standing on the gravel and there is no way to stop him from wandering, kwim? Or am I unreasonable -- should my 2yo be able to ignore these temptations and stand there singing songs (keep in mind neither he nor I understand the words!)
Any of you who read my gummy bear story on Anne's thread about feeding other people's kids, that is at this playgroup, too.
So I guess my problem is that there are a lot of what I feel, are unreasonable and difficult rules at this playgroup - my own way of facing situations with DS is sort of the attitude that if there are going to be arbitrary rules about when he can and can't use the trampoline, then don't put a trampoline in front of him; if he can go into the pen to pet the goats then he can, not he arbitrarily can or can't. And I am not sure if this is me being the kind of parent who does not want to say no to their child, who thinks that her child is "too good" to follow rules, rules are meant for other kids but not mine, etc. Next year (early August) he will start kindergarten/preschool at 3yo and there will be rules - but in my mind they will be more sensical than these ones - rules designed to protect not prevent if that makes sense? I dunno.
So I don't want to stop going to playgroup because I think the rules are stupid if the better way of thinking is that I need to take him to these kinds of groups MORE often because he needs to get used to rules and putting a reign on his spiritedness. That he needs to learn to "obey" rather than "explore" a his leisure. Or am I right that these rules are silly and are not "healthy" ones that are really helping a 2yo to put sense to the world?
The other side of the coin is that there is NOTHING else for me to do with him on a Tuesday and we are at home pulling each other's hair out. If I
don't go then we are not really doing anything in place of it, kwim? It leaves us with only one other "activity" in the week with friends/other toddlers for certain. I take him swimming, to soft play, museums, etc but only rarely am I able to convince friends come along with us (too far to travel, to expensive to get in, some do language classes, etc) so without this playgroup it cuts a big dent in our social life. It also means that the 2 other women who I know and like, whose children I like and think my DS would like, I won't get to know. And my social circle is limited here as it is! I think DS needs friends, interaction with kids, exposure to more situations than he currently gets and so on. So taking him from this one is hard to do...
What a long ramble...I realise it is such a petty issue when there are far more serious things to deal with in life but for such a petty issue it has been nagging at me for over a month now and Monday nights I lose a lot of sleep over whether or not we will go
![Roll Eyes ::)](https://smiley.babywhispererforums.com/Smileys/classic/rolleyes.gif)