My Daughter’s Gymboree Experience—Is Socialization Overrated in Toddlers?

Being a stay at home mom with my first and only so far makes me worry about the lack of interaction with kids for my daughter. I bring her to libraries and parks, even though she is not yet at an age to play with other kids, but I figure socialization is important, right? I see my friends signing up for Gymboree classes a long time ago, but I really didn’t want to spend the money when my daughter was so young. But now, she is reaching the mobile age, and I thought I would give it a try. I signed up for one of the free class and took her in. She was in shock the moment I arrived, she is usually wary of new environment and does take about 20 minutes of observation before she will make any moves, so during this time, I just let her cling on me for dear life. I see all the other kids laughing and running around, having a good time. Then the instructor rings her bell for a start of a new activity. She explains to us how the first activity is to lead the kids up the wedge to a bridge and drop a ball into the bucket. Well, that bell and all the loud music was a little too much going on for my daughter, so she was not quite ready to let go of me yet, so I respected that and let her continue to hang onto me. Slowly she start to let go of me and started to play with the balls she sees on the side, but is no way near letting me push her to do anything, hmm… as a matter of fact, I was never able to push her to do anything in her whole life so far, so I soon realize there is no way I can participate in any of the activities. The bell continues to ring for more different activities, but my daughter was solely interested in exploring on her own. That went on for the whole class, occasionally a kid would come over and want to grab the balls my daughter is holding, but the parent soon come in to stop them. Other than that, there is not much kid or adult socialization going on; all are busy running after their kids. After the class ended, it was hard for me to tell whether or not it was good, my daughter didn’t seem to like it that much, but it was only her first day, so I decided with the first month discount, I might as well try it for a month.

The very next day, there is open gym, I decided to take her in again to see if she will enjoy it more this time, I mean this is like a park right? But strangely she is still very unwilling to come down and play, even though she usually cheers at the sight of parks. Therefore, I lead her directly to the bucket of balls, she is willing to come down and play that, but throughout the majority of the time it is still the same. Except now there are more kids and the parents are not necessarily completely focusing on them. Many would come and attempt to grab the balls from my daughter. My daughter was able to keep her hands on the ones she is holding. One kid sneakily followed her until she bounces the ball on the floor and quickly snatches it, my daughter went after the kid to grab it back but was unable to until that kid lost interest in the ball. Then a maybe 2 year old went around the room and used his hand and wacked three kids, one including my daughter. It was not a hard hit, but I find myself dumb found and not knowing how I should react, I looked around for the parent and I see the mom, busy with a younger baby, no way of being able to notice what her son is doing. This really got me started to think about the value of socialization in daycare or preschool. Is it over rated? Is it really something I want? This is what I feel like my daughter might learn from this big group of kids of similar age in a small room, how to hold on tight to your toys or how to yank it from others and how to hit other kids or get hit by other kids. Do they really learn how to interact nicely with others by being in an environment like this? Something irks me about this concept. I know when my daughter is placed with nice and mature kids or people, she will model from their behavior; I really worry if all she sees is fighting for toys then what will she learn? Will she lose her trust in kids and be more unwilling to share?
Update: Since I signed up for the first month, I decided to go to yet another open gym time, but this time there was a lot less people. With a smaller group of crowd, and third visit, my daughter is able to relax and explore around. The smaller crowd has definitely made resources more available to all the kids. I guess this is the importance of small classes.