There are certain things that I don’t love about raising kids: getting them to sleep through the night, potty training, and separation anxiety that lasts through preschool have probably been the source of 90% of our parenting headaches. Another one that is up near the top of that list is teaching our kids to swim. You would think since both Josh and I were certified lifeguards and swim instructors when we were in college that we’d have a head start on the process, but teaching our kids was like trying to give a cat a bath.
The closer we’d get to the water, the tighter their arms would cinch around my neck. Even with a life jacket on, Calvin would climb my body like a monkey scaling a tree to keep his head way above water level. Attempts to turn the task over to someone else weren’t much more successful. I was that mom at the pool that vacillated between anger and embarrassment as my kid screamed on the edge of the pool as the other kids happily bobbed up and down.
We’ve been a family of 5 swimmers for a while now, thankfully, and most of the swimming lesson nightmares have been buried beneath the fog that covers my brain’s historical record, but we haven’t attempted swimming lessons with Camille since that summer that I tried for 2 terrible days when she was 3 and then decided I was never doing that again. Ever.
^Big Mistake^
Camille learned to swim last summer, kind of. She can do front crawl arms and stop to come up for breath and do an underwater breast stroke, but since we want her to actually be a strong swimmer, we decided to try swimming lessons one more time, hoping that time had healed old wounds and left old phobias behind.
20 minutes before swimming lessons, the tears began.
On the lounge chair, poolside. (And yes, we were having a freakishly cold beginning of April so it was cold enough for a sweatshirt.) I kept talking it up and showing her what the kids were doing in the previous class that was taking place in front of us, pointing out that she could already do everything they were doing. I wasn’t having much luck until I started telling her horror stories about her brothers and how they were terrible swimming lesson participants.
How I had to bribe Calvin with a GI Joe doll just to get him to go in the pool and then he still cried whenever the teacher talked to him. And how he made me look like the most terrible mom ever when I forced him to jump off the diving board along with the rest of the class and his response was to play dead out of spite, floating on the top of the water, refusing to come up for air until the teacher fished him out and everyone hovered around him asking if he was OK. That got her laughing through her tears.
The class started and I walked her over to the group of waiting level 2 girls. She was nervous, but the laughing had done the trick. I promised her hot chocolate after class was over and she was off. There was one little girl clinging to her mom’s leg, sobbing and I was SO THANKFUL that it wasn’t me for a change.
After class while waiting for her hot chocolate, she beamingly declared, “I faced my fears!” What a little nutter.
Now she’s practically a professional swimmer and wants to go to the British Club every day.
Second class, piece of cake.
Hallelujah, no tears while waiting for class to start.
And she’s off!
Proud of her hard work. Looking forward to creating independent swimmer #4 and being able to put this parenting job behind us permanently.
