Swimmer girl
by Cheryl, posted on July 19th, 2011 in Parenting
Sawyer is a natural swimmer.
He has no fear of the water and could swim at least 100 meters of crawl, breast stroke, backstroke and butterfly when he was five. Of course, two years without formal swim lessons and he’s lost a lot of the technique, but I don’t worry about him in the deep end at all.
Sage, however, has The Fear. She has no interest in being in the deep water. She panics. And when you live in Southern California, where you can’t spit without it landing in a pool or ocean, being water safe is very important.
I just wasn’t confident enough in her, so this year, I had to go hard core.
I signed her up for lessons with the woman known around these parts as the Swim Nazi.
Sage’s lessons started three weeks ago (Wednesday is her last day) going twice a week.
I don’t know who’s more terrified of the SN: the kids or the moms.
We were reprimanded for giving a thumbs-up to our children – or even smiling at them – when they were in the pool the first day.
We sit quietly and watch and pretend we’re not cringing or crowing inside.
The kids are expected to listen. Sage learned the hard way not to speak to the SN unless it was Sage’s turn.
Sage cried through the first two lessons when she learned she had to put her face in the water WITHOUT HER GOGGLES.
The SN threw another child off the diving board (but jumped in with her).
She’s tough. Really, really tough. But also? She’s incredibly encouraging. Funny, too. And most important, these kids learned how to swim.
Monday was Sage’s seventh class.
There were no tears.
Only this:
Tags: fear of the water, swim lessons
Cheryl Reply:
July 20th, 2011 at 12:43 am
At one point, after throwing the other girl off the diving board, the SN said to us, “I guess I lived up to my reputation today.”
Uh, yeah. She did.
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