Swim Lessons

I think I had a fish!! Neil absolutely LOVES water. And, daycare schedules a field trip to a swimming pool once a week for the entirety of summer vacation. This is a very frightening thing for me. So frightening, in fact, that it gave me nightmares. Strange nightmares. About poisonous snakes, not sure how that relates to my son in the water, but every time I'm worried about Neil, I have a dream about poisonous snakes. YUK!! So, I woke up with a firm conviction that Neil needed to be in swim lessons, and we, as a family needed to go swimming at least once a week.

As soon as ISSI was over, I scheduled Neil for swim lessons. He spent the entire month of July in the water. I think between June 23 and July 30, he spent a total of 30 days in a swimming pool. 18 of those being lessons. I was prepared for another two weeks worth of lessons in August. But, after seeing the sheer exhaustion on my son's face, I bagged the idea. He can go back to lessons next summer. And, we can just make sure to get him to the pool once a week until then.

He passed his level one, fairly easily. But then came level two. He does great with almost everything. The backstroke is the true test of coordination for him. And, we need to do some extra work for him to move on to level three.




(he's the splash)






He started the summer unsure of jumping into the pool, and the diving board was too scary to be contemplated. However, by the middle of July, that was no longer so daunting. He's even quite pleased with being able to stand on his hands under water.
Not exactly what he was learning during lessons, but something he felt was important enough to


work on when the teacher wasn't
working with him directly.