Alison Godfrey - The Naughty Corner Blog

Working mum Alison Godfrey spills her guts on everything from labour to temper tantrums and playground fights in a brutally honest assessment of life as a parent...

After two weeks of non-stop rain I needed some way to keep the kids entertained and some way to retain my mental stability. They were tearing the house apart, toys rapidly flowing through the house faster than a bullet train. I’d lost a third of my skin to Lego and small toy cars. It was time to pay for play somewhere other than my house.

I was sick of the indoor play centre. CJ, 3, loves it. But poor Amelie, aged one, gets frightened every time the ball guns go off - and that is a lot.

So I decided to try out a kids activity class. I found one that looked like it would use up a lot of energy. It said “all singing, dancing” and guaranteed lots of toys. It cost me $20. It wasn’t worth $3.

The poor woman who ran the class looked like she had been awake all night. At times she stared into space. The singing came from a small old school stereo with the volume turned up to ear splitting levels. The dancing came from her at random intervals and the toys were sacks haphazardly dispersed then packed away in time to the music.

Children wandered about the toys aimlessly, picking them up, feeling them and then packing them back into sacks. The play was so un-engaging that one child had to be removed from touching a powerpoint five times. Many of the other parents were clearly using the service for free babysitting while they had a gossip (hence the powerpoint incident - it wasn’t the parent that led the child away from the electricity). I did my best to engage my children. I tried to dance, I tried to sing. I acted like a lunatic just to keep them busy. That $20 should have gone to me.

The thing that really bugs me is how much people can charge for kids’ activity classes. $20 a pop for a sack of toys and loud music is too much. And what got me about that particular class was how many parents were happy to hand over their cash for no obvious benefit to their children. It really was $20 paid for them to have a chat and not be responsible for half an hour.

Earlier this week news.com.au asked our Facebook readers what they thought about kids sport. So many of them said that it costs far too much.

CJ and Amelie both do swimming lessons. It costs us $26 a fortnight. But I consider that money well spent. They are learning something that could save their life, they are engaged by the teacher the whole time and they are absolutely exhausted after it.

Today I paid $12.50 for a ten minute pony ride.

I once paid $15 for CJ to do painting and play playdough - another waste of money. We now do this at home. I have paid $10 for ten minutes of bungy trampoline. But I flat out refuse to pay the $5 fee per child to enter the petting zoo when I know full well that my kids will want out within two minutes. There should be a refund clause that gives you your money back if the kids hate the activity.

But what do you think? Have you ever felt like you paid too much for a kids’ activity? What is worth it? What definitely isn’t?