teach my son to swim

An update… we’ve completed the second batch of Swim Kids classes. They were great, we loved the instructor, she did a lot of different things with them (more than the previous teacher) and he seemed much more in sync with her, much more willing to try things. He also had 4/5 familiar kids in the classes, making it more fun and adding extra support and fun competition.

He was much more comfortable and relaxed in the water, and made a lot of progress this run, especially with getting his face under the water and going into the deeper area. He did the whole set without goggles and we have more happy check-marks on the aquatic report card.

We’re still a ways from a badge, they expect quite a lot before moving to level II, but the plan is to spend extra time at the pool over the summer and then pick up with the lessons again.

He’s signed up (again, we managed to get into the same class with a friend from school) and ready to go! Swim Kids 1 lessons, batch 2 start next week. The two of us managed some practice time at the pool since the first set ended, and it’ll be good to start these ones off with less wet-face-o-phobia.

We’ve completed the first 8 classes (batch 1, Red Cross Swim Kids 1), which for Isak meant getting comfortable in the water and used to the concept of swimming and putting his face in the water. The face-in-the-water barrier has been tricky for him to overcome, but he’s been practicing blowing bubbles in the tub (mouth and nose) and did his final class without goggles, which have been a big security blanket for him.

I’m very proud of him for trying a number of things he had a fear of, and it was wonderful seeing him succeed and gush about what he’d done every week; go from clinging to the side of the pool to really enjoying himself. They’ve checked off a number of boxes on his progress card, but we still have a long way to go before he gets to the more advanced stuff required to begin level 2, but this has been an excellent start. It sounds as though the average kid goes through a number of times (one little girl got her badge yesterday after #4, was SO proud).

We’ll be signing him up for the class again, working on the personal suggestions they made, and hopefully spending some time with him at the pool ourselves. I’m extremely glad we’re on this road, even if it takes a while to get to the end.

^{In the immortal words of Dory, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”}

Saturday morning we gathered up the swim gear (which unfortunately didn’t include a new suit, although we tried valiantly to find him one earlier in the week) and M. dropped Isak and I off at the pool. After making it through the chaos of the family changing room, Isak met up with his school friend and the other 3 kids in the class.

The instructor seems equally nice and patient, and they all took turns breathing out across their hands, blowing bubbles in the water, ducking underneath the surface, floating on their back (assisted), and other things to get them relaxed about being in the water.

It all went rather quickly (barring the change room business), I may see about paying a few bucks extra to stay afterward and get in there myself, it’s something I’ve wanted to get back to. They have a childcare room there, as well as waterbaby classes, so I could even go with Iris. I’m also nudging M. to take a lesson or two, and picked up some info for him on adult swim classes.

All in all it, it went wonderfully – he needs to work on his below-the-water confidence, but that’s where you start, yes? And later that day (after hitting close to the 10 store mark), we lucked out on finding some great suits, even one for Iris.

Looking forward to next week!

I’ve wanted to get Isak into swimming lessons for years, but for some reason it kept getting put off or the classes we wanted were full. No more! The last playdate he had, his friend’s dad and I were talking about trying to get them both into a class together in the spring, then yesterday at school pick-up he mentioned there were a couple of spots left for the 6-year old first swimmers class nearby, and today we grabbed the last two places!

8 weeks of classes start this Saturday, which means M. can look after Iris while I take Isak to meet his friend and they can learn together! Everyone’s very excited about this, and I’ll feel a lot better knowing he can swim. Hopefully he’ll love it as much as I did when I learned. Yay!