Raising Eli & Zachary + a little Princess

Eli was a brave boy when it came to swimming when he was a year old. At the YMCA we would participate in classes and thought that this was going to build a good foundation of confidence near water. What we didn’t expect was the second year to be the opposite. Getting Eli into the water from 2-3 years old was almost impossible.

This year we knew the only solution was to get him into a swimming school with a great teacher. We thought, and we were correct that Eli responds differently to teachers than us, and will do almost anything a teacher asks him to do without the tantrums and whining. So we enrolled him into Safety Swim and over the last six weeks we have watched him grow as a swimmer.

Just a quick recap: Week 1-3 was all about calming him down and getting him to stop crying. Eli has sensory issues and hates to be wet. So sprinklers, squirt guns and splashing…. they are all on his not fond to be around list. The good part was Eli’s willingness to try and he really did have a good attitude, albeit he was a big clingly.

Week 4 -6 has been a bit different. Eli will float by himself with his swimmies on, will jump in the side with just a bit of hesitation and goes underwater more, although he still throws a cow. At the end of our first six weeks we realize one thing, he needs another series of 6 weeks and it looks like this is something he will be doing for a long time. The instructors, who have been excellent say that all of this is normal behavior and he is doing very well. I hope that in another six weeks I will come back and look at this and laugh. I hope my kid turns out to be a dolphin, wanting to swim all the time. How else are scuba diving parents going to ever survive if our kids are not water babies.

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When Eli was younger we enrolled him in a Daddy/Mommy and me swimming class. Our goal was simple, to have Eli comfortable in and around the water at the earliest age possible. At the time, Eli did not hesitate to swim and bounce around with his mother or myself but that changed when he was between the ages of two and three. Eli’s idea of being in the water was limited to taking a bath.

As frustrated parents, we tried last year to make swimming fun, but we were always faced with a screaming, miserable child when going into the water followed up by a shivering miserable child getting out. We needed this to be a happy outlet for Eli, not because it is summer time, but because we love the water and need Eli to be safe and able to swim.

Deciding that maybe having Jodi or I bring him into the pool, we figured going to a class would be best, and we have not been disappointed yet. Eli took his first lesson the other day and it was a great success. He did EVERYTHING he was asked to do, and even got his head wet and jumped into the pool a few times. It was an instant success and Eli is already talking about wanting to go back and do it again. We hope that the future classes will build on his excitement and skill level and maybe, if we are lucky, he will be swimming on his own by the end of the summer!

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