Taking the Plunge

I was a big swimmer. I took lessons early and went pretty far, it was the one thing athletically that I was pretty okay at. For the longest time I've wanted K to learn to swim. When he was little, it was the tubes in his ears that held us back from registering him. In more recent years, K's terrible tantrums shy nature has made me nervous.

Last summer James and I thought it would be great to get K into a few sports before he started preschool. We optimistically signed him up for both t-ball and soccer. Long story short, K was less than impressed with either activity, particularly when it came time to join a group of 3-5 year old strangers, and we totalled 5 actual practises between the two 10 week activities.

Preschool has been great, K seems to enjoy it despite the large group of kids, so on Tuesday I decided to take the plunge (pun intended) and enrol him into swim lessons. As luck would have it, a session started on Wednesday and we were there. He was SO EXCITED!! He talked about it all day on Tuesday, all  morning Wednesday, the whole car ride up, the entire time in the change room, he was thrilled...right until the time when we were standing right next to the pool trying to find his teacher. And there it began, in the middle of all the smiling, laughing, exciting, loud children, was K, arms and legs wrapped around me like a spider monkey pleading and crying for me not to leave.

I was stead fast. Determined. I would not give in like I did at Gymboree, T-Ball, Soccer. No, my child would swim, even if I had to get in there myself. While the rest of his class sat on the edge of the water, kicking their legs and squealing with excitement, K and I sat outside the pool, watching. While the rest of the class jumped in, I negotiated with K: I would continue to sit on that step outside the pool and not move if he would stick his toes in the water. And to my surprise, he did. In the same fashion I convinced him to sit on the side with legs in the water like his peers had. And he did. And finally, 15 minutes into a 30 minute class (and with the help of a cute swim teacher named Ana) he took the plunge and jumped in.

From that point on he did great. He tried all the activites, floating on his back, going down the slide, he was actually the last one out because he didn't want to leave. Ah, success, even if its a small one. With any luck, next week I'll be able to watch from the viewing area, rather than being the one mommy getting splashed, and if not, oh well, we'll just take it one week at a time.