Learning to Swim

When we put an offer on our new house, I was ready to sign the kids up for private swimming lessons the very next day.  But then we decided we might want to do a program with church friends that taught swimming 4 days a week for 6ish weeks at the beginning of summer.  Then I realized that the program was going to be too big of a commitment while we were also trying to get things done on the new house.  So we finally signed them up for a week of private lessons with a recommended local instructor, who actually taught Brian lessons back in the day (yes, he must be pretty old by now, but we got recommendations from current parents for him).  Unfortunately the first availability in his "beginners" class wasn't until next week.  So what to do for the month between us closing on the house and swim lessons?  Well, check out some books for reference and teach them myself, that's what!

Every day that the big kids and I swim in the pool, they were both expected to have a "swimming lesson" with Mommy.  This involved taking off their life jackets, which I knew from experience that alone would be strongly resisted by Nathan.  But I was firm and started by requiring them to doggy paddle (with me supporting them) across the width of the pool.  Then we also started working on jumping into the pool by themselves, using a kickboard to do their part of their 1 or 2 laps, swimming on their backs and (for Nathan) walking across the pool in the shallow end without holding onto the edge (the water level is right about at his mouth and he was pretty petrified the first time I asked him to do it).  As expected, they grew more and more confident with their skills every day they were in the water, and went from pouting about and resisting their lessons (Nathan) to asking to do more laps then what I was requiring of them.

One of our neighbors is a family that goes to church with us and we've managed to have them over once to swim in our pool, though Nathan begs every day for them to come over again we've just been having scheduling issues.  But it was so great for my kids to watch even just once how they played so confidently in the water.  The older sister (9) and Nathan's same-age buddy can both swim on their own and all three of the kids were fearless off the diving board.  After seeing her friends go off the diving board, Sarah was ready to try it that day herself, though at the beginning she wanted someone to be swimming right there to "catch" her when she jumped into the water.  I got a video of Sarah going off the diving board, and after pondering a few days (and I suspect watching the video of his sister go off the diving board), Nathan reported to me one day on the drive to our new house "I'm going to go off the diving board LOTS today!"  And he did, without any hesitation.  And then again and again and again...  So this first video is a compilation of the kids having a blast going off the diving board.



The other breakthrough came earlier this week when I realized that Nathan had started swimming with his head in the water (while wearing his life jacket).  He liked having his goggles on and being able to see under the water, and he especially liked to play a game where I would trail my foot in front of him and he would try to catch it and hang onto me.  So for his swim lesson on Tuesday I did something new and asked him to jump off the steps and swim to me "under water"... I was ready for him to just sink but HE DID IT!! I was so thrilled and made a huge deal about how proud I was of him and he was just beaming about his accomplishment!  He swam back to the steps and I challenged him to swim to me again after I took one giant step back, and he did it again!  Then he just wanted to swim back and forth from the steps to me over and over again (no breathing while swimming yet, so he's limited to how far he can make it on one breath).  The next day Sarah took a cue from her brother and started putting her face in the water while she was swimming around the pool (though she still uses a "marshmallow sandwich" on her back).  I am so proud of these kids for the big strides they've made over the past month!  Here is a video of the kids' swimming skills as of Wednesday of this week.


So I'm thrilled with the great progress they've made over the past few weeks.  And I think that because of their increased confidence and skills, they are going to learn even more next week from professional swim lessons then they would have at the beginning of the summer.  So swim on, my little fishies!!