Swim Lessons
8/6/2019
The last few weeks, two of my kids participated in swim lessons at a nearby gym. I am highly satisfied with the results!
My 5 year old girl takes to the water like a fish. She has been asking to take swim lessons for months and months. She loved the lessons, smiling the entire time. She had no concerns dunking her head, blowing bubbles under the water, etc. She did great and is begging for more swim time and more lessons.
My 3 year old son is a different story. Last December he had a near drowning incident at a hotel pool. He remembers this vividly, though not in a terribly negative sense. He talks about it calmly, but nonetheless connects all water with "that one time I went in the deep water and couldn't see anybody and threw up all over Dad's shoulder."
So it was understandable that he was hesitant about swim lessons. He cried. He repeatedly told me that he didn't want to go. He pouted. For the first few days, anytime we made eye contact, he would pout and give me a big thumbs-down sign to show me how much he was not enjoying lessons.
However, by day 4 (halfway through the 8 days of lessons), things had changed. He started to smile a little bit during lessons. He wasn't as fearful. He was enjoying himself a little bit. And by days 7 and 8, he was laughing and joking with his instructors. He would smile at me when I looked his way. He gave me a big thumbs-up sign.
He's not able to swim on his own yet. But he is able to replace his entirely negative water experience with a positive pool memory now. I'm well satisfied with the swim lesson experience and the instructors who didn't give up on my boy, though he was definitely the toughest kid in the class.
We celebrated with ice cream after this big turnaround!
One of the great things about this particular gym/aquatics center is that they allow parents and younger children not taking lessons to play in the rest of the pool, children's swim area and lazy river. So I was hanging out with my 2 year old son in the water the entire time lessons were taking place. He, of course, loved this.
Big thumbs-up for swim lessons!
PS: I know the pictures in this post are not great. Oh well. They are the best we could do at the time.
0 comments:
Post a Comment