Baby Shall Enroll: Mommy Knows
By TATIANA BONCOMPAGNI
Published: May 11, 2006
When Tracy Geller Doyle gave birth to her son almost three years ago, she made two phone calls, one to her temple to ask that her son's name be put on the nursery school waiting list, and one to Free to Be Under Three, a language-building mommy-and-me class on the Upper East Side.
"I literally called from the hospital bed to put his name on the wait list," Mrs. Doyle recalled. "If you want to get into Free to Be, you have to do it right away."
As if dressing their babies in $90 designer jeans and ensconcing them in $700 strollers wasn't enough, upper-middle-class parents in Manhattan are now making sure their infants and toddlers are enrolled in the right play group.
Of a different breed than classes at the local Y.M.C.A., these programs can cost upward of $500 for a series of lessons, say, in music, swimming or art and are sending parents into competition mode well before the typical preschool scramble.
The increased jockeying for popular programs, some with monthslong waiting lists, is fueled by word of mouth, as one mother tells another how much her son loved learning his ABC's to disco music. Some classes have acquired the reputation among parents — exaggerated, it seems — of being feeder programs to preschools that are feeder programs to private schools.
Parents often feel lucky just to get into some of these playgroups. Earlier this year, Nanne Puritz Allecia, who lives on the Upper East Side, waited by the phone to enroll her son in a class for 6-month-olds at Little Maestros, a popular music program with nine locations around the city. One of the program's most impressive features is a live adult band at every class, complete with five vocalists, a drummer, guitarist, piano player and sometimes a saxophonist.
Ms. Allecia called on enrollment day precisely at 8 a.m. and was shocked to learn her son would be filling one of the last two spots. "This was sight unseen," she said. "I didn't know anything about the class, I just knew about the hype." Enrichment classes have become more competitive at a time when the number of young children in the city is increasing. According to census estimates, the number of children under 5 in Manhattan rose by more than 25 percent between 2000 and 2004, after years of decline.
"It's become a craze in the city to get into a mommy-and-me class," said Catherine Shepard, the mother of a 3-year-old and an 11-month-old. Her boys have taken gym and art classes and have recently learned about music with stuffed animals at the Diller-Quaile School of Music on East 95th Street, where the cost of a yearlong program ranges from $1,290 to $5,745.
"I've been to parties or lunches with people while they're pregnant and they're like, 'Oh my gosh, I have to sign up for this or that,' " Mrs. Shepard said. "When I grew up in Manhattan, you went to the park and on play dates and that was that."
The obsession with playgroups is relatively recent, child experts say. "Basically, all of a sudden you can't stay at home with the baby," said Dr. Michel Cohen, the founder of TriBeCa Pediatrics. "That's the new trend." Dr. Cohen, who wrote "The New Basics: A-Z Baby & Child Care for the Modern Parent" (HarperCollins, 2004), said enrichment classes don't necessarily make a difference to a child's development. "The child is often oblivious to what's going on," he said. The biggest beneficiaries might be the stay-at-home parents, especially in the winter, when they can feel most isolated.
Parents say they like classes because they provide socializing for both themselves and their youngsters. Some say they sign up because they want to give their child every opportunity to flourish, and they fear that without the classes, their youngster might be at a disadvantage.
"I want my child to have any edge another child has," said Andrew San Marco, whose 3-year-old daughter takes four classes a week at a cost of $6,000 a year. He said the Little Maestros playgroup, has enhanced her vocabulary. "She's very well rounded," he said.
He also said he believed that her classes had helped her gain admission to the private preschool on the Upper East Side she now attends. But Karen Quinn, a former preschool and kindergarten admissions adviser who wrote the novel "The Ivy Chronicles," said that although schools like to see that a child "hasn't been sitting at home watching 'Barney' all day," they don't care whether the child has been enrolled in a playgroup that has "a degree of cachet" or a class at a place like Gymboree.
Some parents choose a particular playgroup because they have their eye on a preschool connected to it. One woman, who spoke anonymously to avoid offending anyone at the school, enrolled her child in a class at a Park Avenue synagogue and said her child was later accepted into the nursery school there. "I was told by friends that it's the best way to increase your chances," she said. "But when you join up they tell you being in this class is not going to help you get in."
Whatever the parents' motivation, enrollment in many playgroups is swelling. Glenn Pepper, who runs Take Me to the Water, a swim program at 22 private pools across Manhattan, said he adds staff members to handle calls on the first day of enrollment for his $300 spring sessions for babies. "We'll book about 1,000 spots in the first seven or eight hours," Mr. Pepper said.
Marni Konner, who founded Little Maestros four years ago, said enrollment had grown to 115 classes of up to 20 children each, from 7 classes of about 10 children each. Tuition is $360 to $680 a session, depending on length. "We get about 50 calls each day from people we've never heard from wanting to put their kids on the wait list or mailing list," she said. Some parents, she added, pay for a summer session even if they don't plan to attend, so they can retain priority registration in the fall.
Mr. Pepper said irate parents have threatened to picket because they didn't get into the class they wanted. Ms. Konner said she and her staff members regularly console crying parents and have been given baskets of gourmet food or luxury gift certificates by hopeful — or grateful — families.
Joe Robertson, who runs the ever-popular Free to Be Under Three playgroup at All Souls Church on the Upper East Side (tuition: $425 to $575 for 12 classes ), said he gets gift offers from parents trying to move children up the waiting list. "We once had a woman who was sure we needed a grand piano for our program," he said. "I said, 'Well, thank you, but it's first come first served. Even my godson had to wait.' "
Sometimes Mr. Robertson talks mothers out of enrolling a child at all. "We'll call them with a spot that's opened up and they can't do it because every single day they have two or three things. I tell them, 'I don't think you need another class.' "
Still, some parents won't be dissuaded. Mrs. Doyle, who had her son wait-listed from the maternity ward, said she had second thoughts about his being in three classes at just one year old. But she did it anyway.
"My husband thought it was way too much, my mother thought it was way too much," she said. She now spends $5,000 to $10,000 a year on mommy-and-me programs for her son, who is now 2½, she said. "I think it's ridiculous, but at the same time I'd do anything for my kid."
