It’s January and the swings are covered in frost. So my 13-month-old and I leave the park for Gymboree, an indoor play center for babies and toddlers.

Most of you moms probably know these places. McDonalds-like play areas with lessons. Gymboree’s motto is “Growing Young Minds” but from what I can see it’s about giving moms with babies something to do before meeting other moms with babies at Starbucks.

In the big bright room are another mom and her daughter, 22-month old Gymboree regular Izzy.

The girls enjoy a few minutes of free play, but when it’s clear no one else is coming, the perky young instructor calls us into a corner. She’s all smiley and happy clappy as she makes us sit in a circle, but I sense something hard under her stretched smile, like this isn’t much fun for her. Or maybe I’m projecting.

We’re not even through the first song when Izzy slips off to play on a rocking boat across the room. My daughter follows and so it’s just me, Izzy’s mom and Happy Clappy - let’s call her Vicky - sitting cross-legged on the mat singing rhyming songs. I’m feeling ridiculous and so I try to persuade my daughter to rejoin the fun.

Vicky hands out castanets. We’re told to pound them in rhythm on the mats and then together and then against our heads.  The girls slowly wander back. Next they have to climb up a wooden slide with hand-holds. Izzy scoots right up and is off to the next challenge. My daughter sits for a while on the bottom. Vicky tries to help, but soon suggests a different exercise.

On a platform they’re supposed to take little bean bag sacks and drop them through small holes. Izzy drops a bag or two before moving on. My daughter prefers to sit on the plank and suck on one bean bag after another. Vicky assures me that she will be doing these exercises in no time, and I’m thinking: how many kids have sucked on these bags? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

Then we’re tossing balls in a barrel - or at least I am - before we’re lead to a big soft log of a mat on which the girls will be bounced up and down. It’s this bouncing that disturbs Izzy and she starts howling. Her mom and Vicky keep up the bouncing as if that might soothe her. She cries harder and they take her off. At Vicky’s instruction, I put my daughter on the log, but I see where it’s all going. She looks unhappy from the start, so at the first sign of a cry, I take her down. Vicky looks on with displeasure. This Gymboree session is not going well.

After some bubbles, a game of bouncing soft toys on a sheet, more tears all around, and a closing song and dance with a homely doll named Gym, we’re done.

I’m handed a price list. It’s £50 a month for one 45-minute class a week, and use of the gym when there are no classes. Vicky tells me that after a few more sessions my daughter will be doing everything just like the other kids, and with that thought my daughter and I are off into the cold.

That afternoon I’m on the phone with my mom. Modern parenting baffles her. She doesn’t see why I should pay to sit on a mat at a kiddy gym, clapping and singing like I’m the kid. She’s equally confused about why I would want to encourage my daughter to climb up slides and jump up and down on big squares of foam.

“She’ll be climbing on your furniture soon enough,” she says, “and then you’ll be trying to get her down.”

She suggests I go to a friend’s house like she did when I was small. I remind her that we’re new to our neighborhood and I don’t have any friends.

“Oh right,” she says, “Well maybe you can make some friends at Gymboree.”

Photo by mil8.