Reopening social distanced baby classes after Covid
Why are we opening our baby classes when others stay shut?
This week our sensory storytelling baby classes opened their doors again for new babies. We have faced many questions about our decision to open, some friendly and supportive and some not so. We thought we would share our thoughts here!
Mental Health
Becoming a new parent is a tricky experience made even more difficult by this pandemic. Feelings of anxiety, isolation and depression are commonplace among new parents without being cut off from the world for 17 weeks. We wanted to start back as soon as we could for those parents who were desperate to get out of the house and meet other new parent friends in real life.
Baby Development
The first year of life, in fact the first five are crucial to a child’s development. These are the years when the brain is like a sponge. It needs as much stimulation as possible to develop as many links and connections as possible. This early stage of learning has a big impact on future learning so the more sensory stimulation a baby has the better, the more opportunities to develop language and communication skills the better, the more opportunities to support physical, social and emotional development the better. These are all things we do brilliantly at Adventure Babies!
We LOVE what we do
We felt so excited to see families and babies again. Some babies had not seen another baby in 3d before! We all love the impact we have on parents and babies who attend our baby classes. This is such a special and short time in their lives we wanted to be able to let them experience and enjoy the magic of our baby classes whilst their baby is still small.
There is NO reason not to
We obviously wanted to keep our families and our customers and their families safe. We also made sure to follow government guidance rather than non government guidance. Luckily we are a creative bunch at Adventure Babies and were able to adapt our format so that distancing and sanitisation requirements could be met, our large team of franchisees have many years of experience at risk assessing both for Adventure Babies and in their past roles. We would never have opened if we were not absolutely sure about the safety of everybody involved. In response to the activity providers who have questioned our decision to open or say that there is no clear guidance for under 5’s the exact guidance that allows us to open safely is the government guidance for multipurpose facilities which does directly reference Early Years and youth activities as well as maximum capacities.
So there you have it. Why Adventure Babies are the first baby class to open our doors. We have felt overwhelmed by the messages of support and thanks from parents who attended our sessions this week. It was an amazing feeling that everybody had such a lovely time and to hear that parents were impressed by how we had managed to change not what we do, but how we do it, has made us incredibly proud and happy.
