Yoga, Babysitting and Kids

I’ve been told that dads don’t actually “babysit” their own kids. My wife says it’s called ” “parenting.”  Whatever. Whenever mommy is gone it is a crash-course in babysitting for daddy around here. Tonight mommy had some meetings to go to so it was just me and my three-year-old daughter Kennedy “hanging out” after dinner. Having been rather busy lately, what with moving across the country and starting a new job, life has probably been a little more hectic than a three-year-old deserves. So, I decided that tonight I would focus on doing exactly what my little girl wanted to do. With a face like this how could I resist?

We started out reading a book, moved on to coloring, and eventually the idea popped into my head to see how well an informal yoga class with my daughter would go over (with me as the teacher). A few weeks ago I received a free copy of a little yoga book from LibraryThing‘s “Early Reviewers” program titled The Yoga Adventure for Children by Helen Purperhart. Pretty much all I had to do was put the book in my daughter’s hands and she was quickly busy turning herself from a caterpillar to a butterfly or balancing herself like a tree in the wind. Each pose in the book is illustrated with a different animal juxtaposed with a drawn picture of a child in the pose, so she knew exactly what the pose was to look like and pretty much what it was called. Another fun part about the book is that it has an adventure story that children can act out through yoga poses as it is being read to them.

Kennedy loved it! I’m sure there are other good yoga books for kids out there, but I was very impressed by how well Kennedy connected with the pictures. As it turned out, we did yoga together for almost 45 minutes and Kennedy really worked up a sweat. When I finally got Kennedy into bed (late I might add), she told me thanks for teaching her how to do yoga tonight and asked whether we could do it again tomorrow night. I’m not sure Ms. Purperhart needs a much better endorsement than that for her book.